‘We are happy here.’
‘Yes, we are.’
I was waiting until I had something good to say. A cat is sprawled above the television set, where there is just the warmth he likes. The sun has come out after a shower, so that even the privet hedge glistens and looks good. Sarah, who gives us massage, has cried off because of her hay fever. So suddenly it is very quiet. And Anna says ‘We are happy here.’
The calm after the storm. ‘’Please put me back where I am.’ But I couldn’t do that and her headache got worse. Even her best friend Lynne was her worst enemy. ‘You are a liar,’ she accused without reason. Lynne’s husband Bob was painting the hall and stairs, with Geoff and Louie. Reparation in tins of emulsion, but blocking the way to the toilet. I went out to buy cat food and bleach from Tescos. But they have all gone now, Dullette the carer, who cooked liver for her lunch, Lynne, Bob, and the others, and we can sit and think, or just sit. A dementia moment.
There is a lot talked about happiness. It is not a stable state but a moment of relief, a change in the weather, a pain stopping its stabbing, a first sip of whiskey, a drowsiness, a comforting creak on the stairs, a smile instead of a frown.
Anna has a favourite poem:
Sometimes things don’t go, after all
From bad to worse. Some years, muscadel
Faces down frost, green thrives; the crops don’t fail.
Sometimes a man aims high and all goes well.
A people sometimes will step back from war;
Elect an honest man; decide they care
Enough, that they can’t leave some stranger poor.
Some men become what they were born for.
Sometimes our best efforts do not go
Amiss: sometimes we do as we meant to.
The sun will sometimes melt a field of sorrow
That seemed hard frozen: may it happen to you.
[Sheenagh Pugh}