"Is there no way we can go on holiday abroad this year?"
My wife and mate for 12 years is so predictable! "Unless you want to undo all our hard work and saving; no there isn't really" I said, trying to be nice, knowing her brain was already in gear, working out how we could escape to the sun for a week or two.
"I hope you don't mind but my mum suggested we go with her - she's got some savings and has offered to pay for the holiday." Only couple of weeks have passed and the solution is already afoot.
'stop being a miser' I hear you say. That's what I was saying to myself.
Oh, did I forget to mention, my lovely mother - in law suffers from Alzheimer's.
She is doing her best to deny the condition and hide it from everyone. The combined smell of pasties and pee gives it away, but you try telling a mature lady that she smells and that the aroma proceeds her wherever she goes. Then try explaining that she needs to have a wash when she's crying, convinced she's already done that and you're being unkind, suggesting she could forget such a fundamental grooming process.
Welcome to Menorca, August 2014.
Lord, please show us why you want us to do this?
My little savings pot of nearly £1000 going into the holiday fund, taking my girls on a holiday that is really just a glorified babysitting excercise for a self centered lady who only sees the world from her eyes?
Never having 5 minutes of family time in this unbelievable heat to enjoy it in our way. My daughter pretending "nana doesn't smell that bad". My wife feeling guilty because she too hadn't realised what we'd let ourselves in for. And then there's me - I just want to get home and back to work, to recover the money we've put into this week so we can have a break of our own in a couple of months. I just want to get back to the UK and take my daughter rock climbing before she's back to school next week and forget the smell.
"Where is it?" She's looking confused. Nana is turning in circles in the marble bathroom in our Spanish Apartment having finished on the loo but unable to work out how to flush. The same lady who, through tears of desperation and almost panic, told me the day previous that she is more than capable of looking after herself at home alone.
That's my wife's next challenge - she's not a nurse, although she is very patient. "I'm not sure I can spend my days washing my mother's 'bits' thank you very much" and who am I to challenge that? Somehow, when we get back, Di is going to have to sort some sort of home-help. Otherwise, nana's worst nightmare of going into a nursing home might become very real.
It's ironic how the things we focus on in life, particularly when we fear them, can often come to pass. If nana refuses help because she's worried that they'll 'take her away' the chances are that the health system will raise it's 'one size fits all' hand and stick nana in a home, full of people who've forgotten what marbles are, never mind having lost them.
I'm typing this on my trusty phone, my back roaring out for more after-sun, the bottom of my tee shirt wet from my trunks and it's not yet 1 o'clock in the afternoon. The faint waft of sweat, pee and dirty pants coming from three deck chairs up and I'm realising that part of my original question is answered in my wife's response to this whole thing.
She could, just like her two brothers, have feigned concern with the occasional phone call to us to 'get an update' happily going off on their holidays after sending a few quid to us in 'support' of the situation.
She could have used the distance from our house to nanas as an excuse to ignore it all. A 35-mile round trip three or four times a week is getting quite time consuming. And once there, instead of the obligatory "shall we have a cuppa Mom?" like the two brothers, Di has concluded that nana needs a break from the monotony of life imprisoned in a goldfish's existence, so she takes her out here, there and all the other places in between. "I always remember my mum smelling of cold chicken. Me and Allison used to laugh about it as kids. But it's getting really difficult sitting in Costa, wondering what people make of the smell..."
This whole situation, I'm beginning to think, is actually about Di and her mum, me and Di and the struggle between the two scenarios. After all the things her mum should have done for Di as a child but didn't, part of me wonders why Di doesn't respond in like fashion, burying her head in the sand and hoping it will all go away.
But, it appears, even in her humility, my wife is doing the right thing. She isn't openly a believer but I know this; she is behaving how Jesus would have. And she doesn't read the bible or go to church, but deep inside her is a really big heart, a kind person who doesn't take the easy route when it comes to family and responsibility.
Maybe that's what is being communicated to me, via the host of heavenly radio waves? Perhaps, despite the challenges we've faced since nana was diagnosed, those same splinters in the skin of our day are actually markers for us to recognise that as always, out if chaos comes beauty. God's perfect plans are always on-the-money and maybe this is about living in the moment, grabbing the little gems along the way.
This may be the last time we come away with nana. By doing this, I'm teaching my daughter that we 'serve' because we have been saved. Every little glint of light in nana's eye is a gift to nana from God, via her family. Zante 2013 was a challenge but the decline since then to this point is probably the saddest and scariest thing I've had to mentally process in a while.
This holiday has been about our little family learning to find the gold in the mess and enjoy those trinkets there-and-then; living in the now.
Who knows what will happen when we get back to England next week? With regards to nana, I can't say but for my wife, daughter and I, the result will be a better understanding of what we mean to each other and that together, we're a force to be reckoned with.
Praise God and thank you Lord for my mother, who taught me to never quit and for my wife and daughter who surprisingly share a tenacity that as yet, has remained hidden until Menorca 2014.
