Patch In A Box

"Patch is ready to collect."
The Scottish voice on the other end of the phone said, cheerily. It was the vet.

For a split second time stood still and I thought "Oh good I can bring him home." Then I remembered.

It hit me like a sledgehammer: it wasn't my lovely, living, breathing Patch that was ready to collect - it was his body. Patch in a box.

I didn't want to collect him in a box. Couldn't face it.

"Patch is ready to collect....would you like to come with me or shall I bring him home when I go to the farm?" I asked Andy.

Why don't you just say what you mean? "Will you come with me? I Can't face collecting him alone. I don't want to collect him in a box."

"You bring him home - that's fine," Andy answered.

No - it's not fine - it's anything but fine!

Eventually, I told Andy and it wasn't a problem. He came with me and he went into the surgery and collected Patch whilst I sat in the car. I cradled the box all the way home.

"Now what do we do?" The voice inside my head screamed.

"We find something beautiful to make from what we have left to remind us every day of our lovely Patch. That is what we do."

So the hunt is on: find something beautiful that we can keep close to our hearts and cherish forever.

A Sad Susie

We have a sad Susie.

Susie is a lovely little Labrador and she owns my grandchildren, Andy and I.

Susie misses Patch - she's never lived in a household without another dog before. She is forlorn without him.

Earlier in the week her former housemate, my daughter's dog came to visit and it was lovely to see the two of them together. It did Susie good.

Her behaviour has changed back to what it was when she first arrived: barking at everyone who comes to the door or is walking anywhere near us in the street or indeed passing the house. Her senses are all heightened. It's as if she thinks she now has to guard the house and me in the absence of Patch and it's all a bit too much responsibility for her and she is very stressed.

It's difficult to know what to do for the best with her. I thought a good long walk at the farm to blow away some cobwebs might help earlier this week but from the minute she got into the back of the car to the minute she got out again she cried. She's never done that. Whining, stressed and not wanting to sit in her usual place in the back. I believe it's because Patch wasn't there with her but maybe she could still smell him.

I keep seeing her sniffing the air in the house and looking around. I find this strangely comforting because I feel Patch is still there with us - just that I can't see him. Maybe it's because he's been there so long - I don't know - but what I do know is that I don't want to lose this sense of him being with us.

Susie is giving the most amazing cuddles since we lost Patch.

We are helping each other.

One step, one day, one week at a time we are learning to live without him.

I Am Broken

The day started off like any other "normal" Wednesday morning: my first alarm sounded at 4.45 am, Andy rang me at 5 am. I needed to be up and out early to my breakfast networking weekly meeting.

"If only it could have been any other normal Wednesday."

I dressed and went downstairs, let my dogs out, put my boots on, donned my coat. Opened the door to bring the dogs back in. Only Susie came - wagging her tail, seeking the biscuit she knew I was about to give her as she went "back to bed". Patch didn't come in. I called him. Nothing. I called again and then I heard the most awful noise; a noise I will never forget as long as I live.

It was the sound of something being dragged across the concrete outside the door. I looked out. Patch looked back at me from the darkness, his big wide eyes full of fear as he silently pleaded with me to help him. His back legs splayed on the floor as he dragged them behind him, desperately trying to get to our back door.

The horror of the scene unfolding before me was unbearable. I don't remember going outside but I do remember scooping him up and carrying his soft, helpless body inside to his bed. My beautiful, loyal, best friend was in trouble.

"When did he become so light? Why had I not noticed his weight loss?"

I now know he wasn't any lighter but in that moment when I needed to carry him, he was as light as a feather.

I rang Andy. He was in Manchester and would be 2 1/2 hours before he got home. I rang Denise from our Networking group, explaining I wouldn't be there and the emailing what she needed from me to enable someone to take on my role in the meeting. Bless Denise she added words of comfort but I couldn't tell you what she said.

Then - practicalities all taken care of - I fell apart. I went and sat on the floor next to Patch's bed, cradling his head, stroking him and I rang my friend, Julie. I have no idea what I said to her but 20 minutes later she was with me. Then something amazing happened.

I went to make Julie a cup of tea and Patch got to his feet and followed me into the kitchen! He went from there into the lounge and, exhausted, flopped onto the floor. I couldn't believe my eyes. But my joy was to be shortlived.

Patch was sick, very sick. My amazing friend had found the strength to stand up because he didn't want to be alone in what he knew was his last hours. His breathing was laboured, his gums pale. My precious dog was dying and there was nothing I could do about it other than to be there for him and to make him as comfortable as possible during his final hours.

I was knocked for a six. I was just not prepared or ready for this. It was the last thing I had expected when I got out of bed that morning; a morning that had started so normally, just like every other Wednesday morning before it. Only this wasn't any other Wednesday morning. The nightmare that was rapidly unfolding was horribly real and it was a roller coaster ride, spiralling downwards and I couldn't get off. It was going too fast and I, we were going to crash.

Julie left and shortly after Andy arrived home. Then the vets arrived. They listened to my account of what had happened and then gently examined him. Then they told me the news I didn't want to hear. His heart was broken and we needed to say goodbye to him and let him go. My heart was broken. Andy's heart was broken. In that awful moment, we were all broken. A broken family.

"No, no, no....this can't be happening. I did not expect this today. I am not ready, we are not ready. No - not my beautiful Patch. No, please just no. One more minute, hour, day....more time please just not now. Please not now."

But the words I was screaming did not come out.

Andy cradled my beautiful boy and I stroked him as he peacefully took his last breath.

We clung to each other and cried. Huge sobs.

Life was never going to be the same again.

I am broken.

An Amazing Lady

This week we lost my favourite Aunt.

She hadn't been well but it wasn't expected either. My mum - her sister - is bereft. I find that hard to deal with. We had a call from the hospital she had been admitted to saying that if we wanted to say goodbye we needed to go that morning. Mum, my cousins and my other Aunt set off on the 60+ mile journey. As they were on the outskirts of the City where the hospital was another call came through to say she had passed away. Devastating - so close, yet so far. What a difference 10 minutes can make.

As we grieve her loss it has become apparent what an amazing lady she was and what a difference she made to the people around her. She was a retired primary school headmistress and she had that rare quality of being able to relate to people across the generations.

An avid Facebook poster, I communicated with her frequently by PM. She "liked" and commented on my daughter's posts frequently, giving her encouragement in the way she was raising her children and her artistic flair. She rang my mum and chatted to her several times a week. My dad liked her! We are her extended family. Within her close family it was the same story.

She was an amazing, generous and kind lady. I can't believe she's gone. I didn't want her to go and now I miss her dreadfully. For me she had her angel wings here on earth.

She Who Wears The Trousers

"I thought Lily's (*) legs were feeling a little cold so I got her some trousers...."

It was a simple line in the daily notes section of our client folder, kept at Lily's house. We each write what has happened during our visit in the daily notes section and there is a column for anything which requires attention or we want the next carer on shift to be particularly aware of or action.

The same carer had written a few weeks earlier: "I've arranged for some of Lily's skirts to be altered to button up the front to make dressing and undressing easier."

I smiled as I gathered together Lily's clothes for the day - including a pair of trousers from the selection we now had for her. My colleague had thought about Lily's needs and how we could make life a little more comfortable for her and had acted on it. The same with having Lily's skirts altered. Due to her deteriorating condition, most of Lily's care when it comes to dressing and undressing is now undertaken on her bed by having her skirts made so they button up the front they were a lot easier to put on and necessitated very little moving Lily around in order to dress her. It was thoughtful and very caring of my colleague to not only notice the issues we were facing but to find such a fantastic solution. She had gone above and beyond her role in her duty of care to Lily.

Lily's personal care and dressing requires two carers. I was on a double up visit with my colleague mentioned above and as we were washing Lily she was holding my hand, Lily looked at my colleague at the other side of the bed and said: "You're wonderful, you are. Tell her she's wonderful, Sharon. You are all wonderful, every single one of you. You take such good care of me."

It was totally out of the blue and unexpected. Lily had a twinkle in her eye as she said it. Moments like this are very rewarding. These are the moments that keep us going when sometimes the going gets a little tough and demands on us and our time are high.

Domiciliary care and care givers are often in the news at the moment and receive an lot of negative press. Often with good reason but there are companies, such as ours, who go the extra mile to ensure we, where possible, exceed our client's expectations. I am relatively new to home care giving and researched carefully several different companies in the area before deciding which one I would like to try to gain employment with. I thought about my own parents and what I would like and look for in a care giving company should I have the need to employ one. I chose carefully a company who I thought would enable me to give the care I would want for my own loved ones.

I'm happy to say that I chose well. The lady at the helm of our company is passionate about the standard and level of care we offer and the staff she employs are all hand picked by her: people on which she can entrust her reputation. In short I'm learning from the very best available people in home care. What it means in reality is ladies like Lily are looked after by us all as if they were a much loved part of our own family and that feels good - not only for them but for us too.

(*) Lily'a name has been changed in order to protect her identity and privacy.

Today I Made A Little Old Lady Cry....

Today was a special day. Today was the day I made a little old lady cry. I was pleased she cried. She cried because she was happy with something I had done. It's ok to make little old ladies cry under such circumstances I believe. Allow me to explain...

The lady in question is one I have the honour of caring for as a small part of a team of carers. I spend 2 - 3 days a week looking after her. Amongst a few other things she suffers from a condition which affects her memory. A few weeks ago I noticed in her file a booklet entitled "My Life Story". There was hardly any entries in it since none of us knew her life story and she herself was unable to remember a lot of it. So there was a picture of her, her husband and child along with very sketchy details such as her birthday and her wedding date and the birthday of her child. There was the odd photo in it but only a recent one of her and one of her in her late teens. She was beautiful - and still is. It wasn't enough but it was all we had since neither she nor her husband could remember much and her husband really didn't see the point of such a book.

I made it my business to find out all I could about the beautiful young lady now in the twilight years of her life. What I found out filled the booklet and some. I went to talk to her sister, her son, her husband and her friends. I asked them about her life and little anecdotes which I could retell in the booklet.

They all painted a picture about how my charge was a stunningly beautiful young lady who had many potential suitors chasing her, one in particular was a handsome young soldier. My lady was dainty - a talented dancer with the smallest size 2 feet. She could rock and roll with the best of them, jive and twist. She could also glide around a ballroom and was gifted with being able to dance the perfect quick-step and other ballroom dances.

In her younger days she used to cycle with her best friend and her sister from the village in which she lived just outside of her local market town to all the surrounding villages attending the local village dances. During the war years if planes were flying over they all had to switch off their bike lights and cycle in the still darkness of the night time in order to not alert enemy planes to their position.

A young soldier noticed her in a ballroom at a dance and made a beeline for her. He was stricken by her beauty and elegance. She danced with him and then, realising he had "two left feet" and couldn't dance discreetly excused herself. He couldn't keep his eyes off her and used to ask her to dance whenever they met. She wasn't so keen. She used to say to her sister and her friend "If that soldier is coming for me keep him away because he can't dance!" He persisted and now 56 years later they are still happily married and hold hands when they sit next to each other on an evening and during the day.

They told me about her first job and how she used to cycle to work. If she hadn't had a bike it would have been a 3 mile walk! They shared about her wedding day and who was there. I learnt all about the day her son was born and how her husband had registered his name incorrectly in his excitement omitting to give him his own Christian name as a middle name and how annoyed she was that he had forgotten to do this.

I wrote about the day she went with her sister and mother to the fun fair which came to the local town market place every year and how her mother had been spun off one of the bobbing horses on the carousel. I heard about the day her son had fallen off a wall whilst on holiday and dislocated his arm and about the many holidays they took I wrote it all down and between us we documented what we could of her life story. I learnt about how she hated school but loved swimming and would go to school in order to go to the swimming lessons. I heard about how she loved military whist drives and domino drives and what a good player she was. We wrote about the cabaret shows she used to love to go and see and taking her family to the pantomime.

She was a very clever lady who ran a tight ship of a home and controlled all the family budget and managed the house - which ran like clockwork.

It was a very humbling experience, one which made me think about my own life and what, if anything, someone would write if documenting my life story. I'm not at all sure that it would make such good reading as her does! That made me feel a little sad but the thought that no-one would bother to do it for me made me even sadder!

Today was the final piece of the picture I had built about her. Today was the day that we went through her family photos together and chose pictures to match her story and then I read it to her.

It was then that she cried. She called for her husband to come and hear it. Her face lit up with excitement and she kept saying "that's all true, I remember that's what happened. How did you know all this? I can't believe it but i can remember that." over and over again. It was then that I realised that today, at least, I had done a really good job.

The Thorn Bird In The Age Of Oak.

The glossy catalogue sits on the settee at the side of me. It is elegant and expensive, luxurious looking. There is a montage of photographs on the front cover and it is entitled "The Age Of Oak" - not something that would especially interest me in the normal scheme of things but this catalogue is different.

It is full of auction lots and on the reverse of the catalogue is a photograph of an Oak chair. I flick through the catalogue and look critically at the photography within. It is flawless and beautiful in it's detail. It portrays each item of furniture in the minutest detail showing the patina on the auction lots, leading the viewer to imagine years, in some instances hundreds of years of care, wear and tear on the furniture. One can only imagine the history of the pieces - what decisions have been made around the tables, what banquets have been eaten, who has sat on the chairs, slept in the beds. It is fascinating, awesome. A piece of English heritage and history. I have not seen furniture photography like this before. The way the photographer has documented the detail and beauty of the individual items is simply breathtaking. It is artistry. He, the creator of these images is an artist.

Yet it rather poignantly reminds me of the mythical "thorn bird". The thorn bird, you see, searches for thorn trees from the day it hatches. When it finds the perfect thorn it impales itself and sings the most beautiful song until the day it dies.

I muse to myself about some of the famous artists we know from history were tormented or faced great personal trauma - Van Gogh, Beethoven, Mozart, Michael Angelo, Shakespeare, Vermeer, Freddie Mercury, Michael Jackson. Maybe it is only at times of great challenge that such people produce their best and most beautiful works of art?

I am familiar with the author of these images and I know the pressure he was under as they were created. His only, precious, son was critically ill in hospital and nearly died. He was needed and needed to be besides his son's bedside but he had a deadline to meet with the auction catalogue photography. Those who commissioned him were unforgiving, ruthless and callous, showing very little empathy to his situation. He worked long hours on his commission and then travelled directly to the hospital some 100 miles away, remained by his son's bedside until the early hours of the morning when he left and travelled back to the studio. The strain he was under was colossal and yet his work is unlike any other furniture photography I seen. The furniture has been brought to life through his images, his creativity and his passion to fulfil his commission to the best of his ability. It is beautiful and it is simply exquisite.

I stand in awe at what he has created under such stress and admire his tenacity. It is hardly surprising that the lots sold for record prices - but at what cost to the creator of the beautiful imagery which brought them to life? This, of course, remains the so far unanswered question.