Some new poems.

Time to give some serious time to this blog so there is something to fall back on if Twitter dies. That is something no one would have believed if we put it in a novel. There are bits of unfinished business that needs polishing. Looking at earlier posts you will see I am a full-time carer to my wife, who has brain damage and paralysis. That is 24 hours a day every day.. Starting in November 2015 that covers 7 years.

The danger of being a housebound carer is to be isolated and social media has protected me a little, Facebook for family and friends, Twitter for people I don't know face to face. Many of those are carers too giving each other moral support. 

I wrote a few observations for a research group of which this is a part.

Loss of personhood..
We take for granted a body/spirit dichotomy and when my mother died she was sure that she would go to heaven to be with her late husband. It is not a belief I share which made giving her eulogy quite tricky. It did however help her decide that the end had come.

In this section I deal with self-hood / personhood. From that moment in time in November 2015. things that mark us off as human persons began rapidly to disappear in her. The accumulated knowledge and wisdom of a lifetime disappeared overnight. A keen historian who volunteered in Kelmscott Manor (William Morris's home) lost all the knowledge that made her outstanding at her role as guide. A keen plantswoman, that knowledge disappeared and she could no longer differentiate between garden plants and weeds. She became unable to read even children's books although for a while practiced decoding words, but without comprehension. Her vocabulary decreased from whatever is normal for a Masters Graduate to around 50 words. Now she speaks no words at all with comprehension but plays with sound like a baby. For a while she lost normal behavioral controls which made her difficult to deal with as her condition had given her vice like upper body strength. She cannot use knife, fork or spoon but will feed herself if food can be picked up in finger size portions. She can no longer pick up a mug but will drink from it if it is presented to her mouth. I advise friends if they come to see her that she will not recognize them, as she indeed does not recognise me.

However she is living a life in her head and will sometimes appear to have inner conversations and sometimes get the giggles. All this raises the question of how this person now relates to the Jean who once was, who had a husband, close friends, views and insights. To me that blasts a hole in bodily/spiritual dualism and points to the body/brain as a single entity within which we construct our personhood and values, and lose these if the brain malfunctions and deteriorates. In Jean's case a blow on the head playing hockey at 16 began a slow process of brain damage of which I am now seeing and dealing with the terminal stages.

In the posts which follow, I  introducing a few poems I have written in 2022. I am not a poet, but want to comment on the life of a caring carer. and giving voice to someone who now has no voice.

© Stephen Bigger 2022