As The Year Draws To An End…
With the job at the Bat Conservation Trust taking me into London a lot more this year, one of the unexpected joys has been the galleries. Cezanne at Tate, the Royal Academy Summer Show, wandering through rooms with Mum talking about brushstrokes and colour palettes and ideas. It has been really fun exploring art together again, like when I was younger. And good for Mum too, it takes her mind off everything else for a while.
Her treatment has finished now for a little while as things seem to be ok. Isabella went back to Greece a few months ago once treatment wrapped up and Mum went with her for a bit to enjoy some sunshine and warmth. It has been a tough year for all of us. Chemotherapy is tough in ways that are difficult to fully grasp until you see it up close. It is not just the physical side effects, the fatigue that settles deep into the bones, the nausea, the changes to appetite, the hair loss, the way taste shifts and simple tasks suddenly feel monumental. It is also the emotional toll. The waiting between cycles, the uncertainty of how the body will respond, the quiet resilience required to keep turning up. There is a loss of normal rhythm. Days revolve around hospital visits, blood counts and recovery windows. Mum has lost a lot of weight through surgery and treatment and watching that change has been hard.
At the same time I have gone the other way. All the cooking, the stress, the constant low level adrenaline of caring adds up. I reckon I have put on at least a few stone without really noticing it happening. It is strange how that works. When you are focused on keeping someone else going, appointments, meals, medication, morale, your own needs slide quietly down the list. Exercise becomes optional. Rest becomes rare. You tell yourself you will deal with it later. Caring can be all consuming and somewhere in that, self care becomes background noise. Not dramatic, just gradual. A reminder that looking after someone else does not mean disappearing yourself, even if it sometimes feels that way.
Back in Nottingham my bat best friend Natasja came to visit, which meant long chats, countryside air, a cabin out in the sticks and some time in the hot tub. Exactly what was needed. And then Isabella came back for Christmas, bringing that familiar mix of chaos and comfort. We spent time in Nottingham as well as going down to London to visit Dad and his partner. It has been a year of movement, cities, gigs and exhibitions but these pockets of time with the people closest to you are what actually matter.
