My mum called me on Sunday while I was up in the garden. My dad was supposed to go into surgical examination on Thursday to see why he was still having a sore throat and trouble swallowing after they’d blasted the cancer with radiation therapy. That was postponed due to his regiment of blood-thinning drugs, so he went in today.
Anyway, on Sunday I spoke to my Mum for nearly two hours. A long time, given that I hate being on the phone. The first hour was all about my Dad, and the second hour was almost entirely about… Roses!
(I know that’s an asters, not a rose, but it’s a plant I got from my Mum’s garden, so it is appropriate in this entry!)
My Mum is trying so hard to cope with my Dad’s illness and arranging the move and everything, and it seems her relief from all the “serious” stuff is to think about the garden. When Life is all about the next six months, at times it’s good to think about the next six years, as one does when planning a garden.
(Okay, this is not a rose, either, but it’s also from my Mum’s garden)
We garden for the future, and planning a garden is all about imagining what Life will be like years ahead. My Mum wants a garden for two, and I hope that’s what she gets.
(Both the images above were taken in our garden, but the plants come from my Mum’s garden.)
Hope your father improves soon. The white pelargonium in my garden, which grows happily up to my shoulders, is from my mother’s garden.
To me, heirloom plans has never been a matter of the age of the sort, but of getting them from family. I like the continuity of growing plants that were around when I was a toddler in my parents garden…
As for my dad, well… He seems unlikely to improve very much, but I do think we can hope for a few more years, hopefully with a decent quality of life.
I hope the results from your father’s exam are encouraging. Gardens really are essays in hope and continuity.
Well, the results are not unexpected so far, but neither are they very encouraging. When a doctor mentions “shadows on the lungs” when speaking about an X-ray, it hardly seems like a cause for celebration, but my parents are handling it as best they can.
-And planning for the new garden seems to give my mum a breathing space from the constant coping she’s done for the past year since my dad got diagnosed with cancer, so that’s very nice to be able to be part of. Last weekend they went to a rose nursery and had a lovely time walking through the fields of roses together, so it’s not all hospitals and men and women in white lab coats.
I too second your father’s good health. Hope all is going to be well for him. Your mother is lucky to have your help for advice, comfort and your ideas. Hope she has her garden for two for a long time to come.
My dad’s health will go as it can, I guess. I leave that to the doctor’s who can actually make a difference, and then I’ll occupy myself with the “smaller” things that I can influence and try to make a little easier for them.
And the garden will be planned for the long haul; low-maintenance with flowering shrubs and a few sturdy perennials that are vigorous enough to cover up any weeds.
My mum has some serious stuff going on in her life (not cancer, but her husband is going through dementia right now, and it’s another kind of terrible), and us talking about flowers cheers her up too. I’m a fellow person who hates talking on the phone, but if it cheers our mums up, it’s worth it, right? 🙂
Sending good thoughts for your dad’s health!
Dementia is definitely hard to handle as a relative. And talking on the phone is some times the only real substitute for being there, and “being there” is difficult to arrange very often. So hour-long phone calls it is…
That word flaneur keeps creeping up in my book. How interesting to read your thoughts of therapy – I have just done a stint with the Thrive charity who work to rehabilitate people from all forms of illness or brought-lowedness.
Sounds like a very worth-while thing to do! I’m guessing you mean http://www.thrive.org.uk/, which seems like a great initiative, both for the users of it (I hate the word “client” in connection with this sort of scheme) and for the volunteers.
My best wishes for your dad’s health and your mom’s strength.
gardens can heal both mind & body.
I think in this case the body might be beyond repair, but a bit of beauty and plants never hurt anybody. And for my mother’s sake I do hope they will see their new garden bloom together.
As we get older and having spent most of our lives with our partner there are so many memories to fall back on. Age never prepares us for the inevitable. I hope all works out better than expected and your mums wish for her garden for two will be fulfilled.
Right now, sadly, the newest results are not better than expected, but the opposite. Still, even with the risk that things might suddenly happen very quickly, it’s important to plan ahead. And dream. After all, not planning and dreaming is to plunge oneself into the abyss.
I’m so sorry to read this. I lost my Dad just 3 weeks ago and my heart is broken. I hope you and your Mom get to spend more time with your Father … cherish every moment you can because when he leaves you will realise it won’t have been enough. I’m sending you good thoughts and prayers. xx
I’m going over there Thursday afternoon to help them pack for the move Saturday and will stay there through the weekend.
So sorry to hear about your loss. Parents do matter an awful lot, especially when we are faced with loosing them.
I’ve not been following your blog for a while, my fault, time pressured, and I was thrilled to see that you have shifted to wordpress because it makes it easier to follow you, but I am so sad to read the news about your Dad. Our lives are currently controlled by cancer too, of an Uncle not a father, which is truly not the same at all, but I know enough about the terrible rollercoaster of good news, bad news, treatment hopes and disappointments, hoping for and dreading test results, to have an inkling of what life is like. Gardens and gardening are such a refuge, and as you say, sometimes the only defence against the horror of today is to take refuge in dreaming about the future.