The very best and worst of days

When I’m feeling blue, I will often lie in bed and stroke my husband’s jawline. Sometimes he’s awake, sometimes not. I usually do this on the day he’s shaved. In those few hours it takes for regrowth to resurface, I will run my fingers with the ‘grain’ of his skin, and get comfort from the smoothness. Then, because I am a masochist, I will turn in the other direction, run back up towards his ear and scratch my knuckles on the stubble because dammit if it doesn’t hurt. But it is the downward strokes, the unchallenging, soft yielding of his skin when I feel that perhaps everything will be okay. There is no need to be sad.

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But there is need to be sad this week. And the jaw-stroking isn’t helping.

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Monday started out to be a great day. Successful book launch on Saturday and then I walked into a bookstore and saw mine on the New Release shelf. Completely unexpected. I took a photo with my awful mobile phone, but the picture is only 20kbs so I daresay it’s not going to be worth the trouble posting here. Let’s just imagine the joy, eh?

A few hours later, my mother rings. My father, who has been unwell these past few months and is steadily getting worse, has finally gotten his 99% sure diagnosis: Motor Neuron Disease (also known in the US as Lou Gehrig’s disease). I haven’t discussed this here on the blog before now because a lot of possibilities had been floated around to explain his declining condition and none were good – but this was really the ‘worst’ of what they were expecting.

My book launch now seems insignificant. The bunches of flowers scattered across the house as presents on the day seem colourfully inappropriate. All of what I held important mere days ago has been shunted sharply to the right.

So. There it is.