Sometimes nothing can lift the sadness I feel……

On Sunday, no matter what I did, nothing could lift the sadness I felt. I tried hard, I always do, but sometimes you just have to admit that the day will be a sad day. I’m sure I’ve said before, how dementia has stripped me of many emotions and now I’m left with just three, happy, sad and content and today sadness fills my head.

Usually I can go for a trundle; immerse myself in nature; but the weather was so matching my mood. It was cold, windy, damp and grey. I did go out for a while, hoping the fresh air would blow away the blues and nature would give me a big hug, but even the birds and squirrels were hiding away that day. No bird song, no scurrying of animals into the trees. When the ponies looked forlorn, waiting for the wind to stop so they could venture out into the open.

I even poppped into my daughters in the village for a cuppa tea. Even though that hour spent with Gemma, Stuart and Billy was lovely, the sadness hung around me, willing me not to be happy.

It was due to be the last of the cold, which the arrival of, funnily enough, are the next few days blogs. But sometimes I have to type immediately and my blogs are often a few days out. But I felt this one should be published immediately to make sense to me and reflect my mood

The snow had stopped falling days ago, the beauty of soft white flakes falling were a distant memory and all we were left with were treacherous sheets of ice coating the lanes – another reason forcing my hibernation. How can something so beautiful moon turn so lethal?

I sat in my conservatory, hoping the birds were lift my spirits and they did for a while, especially the Robin making an appearance

But even their visit seemed cut short, instead hiding in the hedge out of the icy wind

I cant ‘do’ as much as i did. My head not able to stay capable for as long as it did. I know have to pace myself, giving myself more breathing space to recover.

My head feels heavy with sadness, I know then I have to stop or risk overload. As though the storage boxes in my head are full to bursting, unable to use the safety boxes of pre dementia, where a hundred and one things could enter my head and be neatly stored, ready to take off the shelf at a later date….

I can usually deal with friends ill health and death, but now my best friend is dying. Sylvia, from the very start, wanted to understand everything about dementia. She understood my lack of emotions and even now, when she knows she doesn’t have long, she didn’t want to make me sad by telling me. She didn’t want to tell me that she’d been in hospital since well before Christmas so as not to spoil my child like excitement. She told me afterwards, because she new how sad I would be. Even in her darkest days her thoughtfulness was touching. What she didn’t realise, as I told her afterwards, was that we’re so close, like sisters, is that I could read through her words. I too, was concerned for her, told her I was always here for her, and simply waited until she was ready to tell me. That’s true friendship.

We’ve said our farewells poignantly and with true affection like no other so she can concentrate on her loving family.. But such is this strange time it all has to be via txt. It breaks my heart to think I’ll never see her again. No holding her hand and reliving our good times, our bad, our laughter and simply breathing the same air for a time. Covid has stripped goodbyes for many people and now for me. I was hoping dementia may take the memory away, but such is its cruelty right now at the stage I’m at, that I remember strong emotions of sadness and happiness, this being one of them…

I can’t take any more ‘doing’ and ‘thinking’for today, this flimsy bookshelf of a brain overloaded  threatening to topple over, so instead I’ll just admit defeat and simply sit in my upstairs room, my daytime abode, and simply ‘be’. Hopefully tomorrow the sadness will have disappeared just like the snow……