There Will Be Days Like This…

It’s often happened that soon after I’ve written a blog post something will happen to hit the point home in some sort of ironic twist.

Yesterday was a case in point. In a “one day I might find this funny, but it could take awhile'” kind of way.

You might remember from previous posts that my daughter was due to arrive home this weekend from university, she’s not returning in September so that she can instead take care of me.

My gratitude towards her is overwhelming. I could go on, but I’ll save that for another post. I’m not missing any opportunities to tell her directly.

My wish was to make her feel as welcome as possible, for her to feel that this is truly her home. Until now she’s been at this apartment for the occasional holiday but hasn’t yet lived here without the expectation of being on her way again.

To make the apartment feel welcoming, my wish was to make space for her clothes and personal items, find a way to give her a small amount of privacy in sharing a one bedroom place, and to have her not feel the true weight of what caring for me entails right off the bat. Part of that was to have a clean apartment waiting, and as of Friday afternoon that was the case thanks to the lovely woman who cleans it for me every ten days.

Within hours the plan started crumbling. Anything that could drop, break, spill, get tipped over, overflow, clog did exactly that. I didn’t have any visitors coming, and for the most part I wasn’t able to rectify much of it myself.

By yesterday midday I had spilled a bag of kitty litter on the carpet (used of course, quite fitting with the way my weekend was proceeding) after the cat had a fight with his litter box (and won, it would seem), the bathtub had clogged,  there was a sticky flood on the bathroom floor with shards of glass mixed in (let’s not even go there with as to how that came about), dishes were piled up on the kitchen counter, and the cat had tipped over his food and it was strewn across the kitchen floor.

There was very little cleaning up that I could do, imagine trying to keep the oxygen tubing out of the way as well as attempting to not use my injured right hand. Not to mention that I can’t get down to floor level on my own, and the pain that is brought on by any moving about.

A phone call went out to my daughter who was packing up her apartment at school, with my sincerest apologies for welcoming her in a few hours with a disaster zone. I was beside myself, this was quite far from how I’d envisioned welcoming her.

The truth is that if she hadn’t been coming home to stay this weekend,  it would now be time to have a serious chat with my support team about how to move forward.

The crushing reality is that I can’t be on my own for extended times anymore, as I have been for sometimes days on end since moving into this apartment. By way of physical weakness and disability I can’t always get myself fed, dressed and stay hydrated. Fetching a glass of water is at times impossible, opening up a sealed bottle of water usually a task beyond my capabilities too.

The forethought that went into each day became exhausting. Had I asked the last person that was here to fetch me enough drinking water (or pre-open bottles for me)? Move wet laundry to the dryer? Fill the humidifier? (a necessity on oxygen therapy) Take out the garbage so that it didn’t start to reek in the passing of a few days with no visitors?

Asking is already hard enough in the first place for me, realizing after they’d left that I’d left out an important request worse.

My daughter has with her return given me gifts that I can never repay. Above all, time with my favourite person. Next, more time in my own home before facing the possible necessity to go elsewhere. Next, fewer physical challenges/more time resting (and accordingly possibly less pain).

I sense that I was being delivered a lesson yesterday, being that despite my objections to my daughter leaving school it has to be this way for now and I need to accept her assistance graciously. In many ways, it’s harder to accept help from her than it is from friends and volunteers. She’s supposed to be off making a life for herself, it should be me looking after her instead of the other way around.

On the other hand, if I could have only one person by my side as I each day become more vulnerable it is she. I trust her with my life. With the end of my life.