Two sides to every coin, to every argument, to every – well almost everything, and I sometimes find it hard to see the sunny side of life. The coronavirus lockdowns causes all of us to keep looking for the bright side as we adjust to a ‘new’ lifestyle which is different, restrictive, and often challenging. Because I have lived alone for some years now, I am able to keep myself fully occupied with hardly any spare time to feel dejected or alone. Nevertheless, sometimes I do feel that way but, like most people, I have various strategies to dispel those depressing days and nights.
In fact, there are always a number of activities that await our attention, everyday things like house-cleaning, laundry, shopping, meals to make and dishes to wash! They are constant and universal for us all. But in addition, we also need to cope with all the other important life activities, like walking for pleasure and exercise, reading for brain stimulation and recreation, watching TV to catch up on the news and some entertainment and, in my case, writing this blog or some letters, repairing computers for fun and profit, drawing and painting for fun, visiting friends and relations when possible, doing crosswords, and managing personal finances and filing all the paperwork, phew!
Now, overlying all these, I’m following through on all the consequential details from Dorothy’s death. One of our children thoughtfully gave me a written list of things to be closed off. I am so pleased that I had separated our finances and medical records when Dorothy first went into institutional care, which has made those transitional and follow-up items a little easier; but it all takes time and care.
Fortunately, I’m in reasonable health and able to cope with the mental and physical demands on my time, and luckily, between community coronavirus episodes, I was able to visit my son in country Victoria who recently had a serious jet-ski accident and spend time with him, even celebrate his birthday with him and his family to see for myself how he has been blessed with a complete recovery. He had been jet-skiing with a group (always a group!) and, whilst almost stationary at the riverbank, was thrown off when his ski hit a submerged root which threw him off into the swiftly-flowing river water; he actually, momentarily, died but because of the prompt and skilled resuscitation by one of his jet-ski friends, then a long and tortuous ambulance ride and hospitalisation, he is now back home, fully recovered!
That experience has highlighted for us all the need to cherish our lives and each other, and that must be difficult when you are unwell or physically handicapped. Now I’m also safely back home, catching up after my week away ((just squeezed in between lockups!) and not sure if I’m ‘Arthur or Martha’ or whether I have an upside or a downside but, like my son, happy to be on my feet most of the time and looking for the upside! Never a dull moment, eh?