Until very recently it felt like my life was getting back onto track. I’d finally moved in with my Other Half and our house was in some kind of metamorphosis from undecorated bachelor pad towards a fully painted home replete with furniture and places to put things away in so at some future day I can unpack my moving in boxes and settle everything in properly. I was getting to grips with looking after our own home after a series of rented flats and we’d even managed to install a new bathroom to replace the seventies mustard suite with bare floor-boards and a leaky cistern. However unlikely to ever feature in ‘Ideal Homes’ slowly our place was really becoming our own.
At 6am on Monday OH’s father phoned to say he’d called the paramedics as he thought he was having a second heart attack. He’d managed to have minor one a couple of months previously without actually knowing at the time that’s what it was. Typically he put his stomach pains down to eating some bad fish and only discovered days later that his lingering breathlessness was the result of a cardiac arrest. After a week of long hospital visiting hours it was clear that he would need to move in with us. At least until the waiting list had cleared for him to have whatever surgery he needs. In fact the hospital doctors were not prepared to discharge him unless there would be somebody at home with him at all times at least until further tests could be done perhaps a fortnight or so later. In all likelihood he would need to stay us for a few months. So. There it is. My life forcedly mapped out in a way far from any kind of reality I had envisioned.
I managed to get through the week somehow. I cleared out our as yet undecorated dining room as the guest bedroom is full of my as yet not unpacked boxes. Made a solo trip to IKEA late one night after visiting hours to get a bed for him to sleep in. Borrowed spare bedding as all mine is still packed up somewhere in the boxes. And tried to be as supportive as I could during OH’s gloomy prognostications about the likelihood of his Dad ever having any kind of a life again. Somewhere a rational corner of my brain was numbly saying that this will not be forever or even very long but this week I can’t see it. Things imploded so far it’s hard to see how life can ever return to normal. Or how to say no, I cannot do this for more than the short term. No option other than to try to cope and do whatever is needed. At the weekend whilst OH was home my Mum dragged me out for a couple of hours break. Over cream cakes and coffee I wondered what would have happened if I didn’t work from home. How much more difficult this would be with the kind of boss that simply expects you to be there. And that however unbelievable it feels, OH’s Dad will get well again. Right now I’m just gritting my teeth and hanging onto that.
