It felt good to get a task done that I’d wanted to do for a long time. I put an ad for my big jute carpet on our Gabriola Facebook pages. I’m keen to be rid of everything I don’t need. Last week it was my lawn mower, this week the big rug. Without the rug that was in my studio, the room is much more practical for storing my outdoor furniture over the Winter.
Friday began with a walk with our friends, and then I came home to water and putter in the yard and garden. A fellow came to pick up the rug I put up for sale (it took about 3 minutes to sell it), and then I got to work on a bed of native growth that died in the deep freeze this past Winter. It took a lot of bending over, so I needed breaks every half hour, but the area looks good—raw, but clean.
At 1:00, Ron came to walk Sheba and I kept at the removal of dead material, and I watered the gardens. It got quite warm; it was almost 25° in the late afternoon. I loved the day working at a safe pace. Weeding requires bending, but watering is vertical, so I switch back and forth between duties. Over the next week, I’ll be focused on stacking the 3 cords of wood that I’ve bought. Once I’m done, it might be when Bronwyn comes back, and we’ll both get to work on the beds.
It's lovely when Ron walks Her Highness, I keep working and when I am done, I get into the spa because I don’t need to walk her. But before I could to that, I had vines to dig up, roots to pull and a shitload of half-dead Oregon Grape, Salal, Blackberry, and wild Honeysuckle. I amassed mounds and mounds of it. I burned all the woody stuff, three incinerators full, and I schlepped all the other stuff (rocks, twigs, needles and cones) into the forest.
I’d removed everything I wanted out by 3:00, and it was just too hot to keep working in the sunshine (27°), so I took a welcome break, had a lovely long cold drink of Diet Coke. My arms are purple. I. have bruises on my forearms from my wrist to my elbow, not from any accident, just from working hard and having occasional brushes with the shrubs. I bruise in a breeze due to my blood thinners.
But what a lovely and huge improvement my work had made. I saved all the native growth that wasn’t dying, so I still have lots of lovely ever-green Salal forming a background for the bed closest to the back gate. Today will be another day like yesterday, and I could not be happier. But today, I must work inside the shed to prepare for wood stacking that starts on Monday morning early.
•
My social life is comfortably shrinking. Everyone’s patterns change in the Summer. I see less of my local friends in Summer. They get very busy, as do I. So, aside from Alysson and Peter’s visit, I’ve been alone a lot of this year. There’s no denying, I like being alone very much. I forget about my symptoms.
I speak well with David and Andrew. I like each of them very much, we’re outdoors, I’m over there almost every day since he started building. And I’m fluent with neighbours who pass by as I’m working and stop to say hello. As long as the talk is superficial and warm, I’m fine. If they ask a personal question, however, my speech becomes very laboured. But that rarely happens.
A very sad fact of life for me, is that speaking with my friends is very difficult. Even on video calls, I struggle. And it gets worse over the time of the call. I really struggle with Dwight, so he does all the talking. And then he’ll say, “Now what about you?” But then he knows to ask me questions so I can respond with Yes or No. And he’ll break down complex questions, so answering remains one or two syllables at a time. And he’s very patient with me when I want to say a sentence or three. Steve’s does the same thing, and we, the three of us, have never planned how to communicate. With both men, we have simply evolved to the same pattern.
Gardening, like reading, stimulates me. I think about what I am doing or reading, and it takes me into a Zen-like calm. No one can see me in the backyard except Dave & Ursula, on the one side, and Coleen on the other. Dave, I see every day, briefly. Coleen and I rarely speak or visit. I feel private in my backyard, and I am completely relaxed.
It’s Jekyll and Hyde-like, my life. My friends see a man who shakes and jerks, contorts, and speaks very badly. I wonder if that’s who they think I am because I don’t. Alone, which is what I am most of the time, I have no symptoms. That’s who I am. What a mess, but I accept it all now. No problem.
Last night, I was thinking back on my psycho-neurological experience to date, and it led to me recalling a magical moment that brought me ever-lasting calm about my condition.
It was a sunny day, here on Gabriola, and I was driving my van. All I can remember is a field on the left of the road I’m on, with tall grass, brown from Summer burn, shining in that wondrous golden light of the setting sun. The radio was on, an announcer was talking but I wasn’t listening, I was marveling at the light and the field. And then I heard the announcer say, “Oliver Sacks, the famous neurologist.”
Within moments, I was such a shaking, crying, happy man, so overcome, I had to pull over onto the side of the road. I was overcome because I’d read almost every book he’d had published. I became a passionate fan, and then I read his book, Migraine, because I’d had horrendous migraines for many years as a child, when I was with the Tyrells.
And in that book, he discussed the very specific hallucinations migraine sufferers can sometimes have. It described what had been happening to me for all those years, and I never told a soul because I feared they’d think I was mad. Oliver Sacks took all my fear and shame away. How do you not love such a man?
So, when I heard his name on the radio, my mind immediately came to attention, and then I heard the word “neurologist.” Of course he was, I’d always known that, but this time, when I heard it, it meant something to me. I had a wonderful, “I am one of his people” moment. Suddenly, my diagnosis was giving me entry into his world. I was like his patients, all of whom have symptoms like me. That moment changed my relationship with my condition, for the better.
I love him more.
•
Last night above Gabriola:
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