Layers

This view caught my eye - or rather, it filled my eyes - as I drove down the track to the cowshed this morning to fill my milk churn. 

If you look carefully you can see snow-capped Southern Alps in the distance, behind the Kirkliston Range. And there’s a line of fog just visible, which was filling the Waitaki Valley on the other side of the green farmland plateau. And the row of trees on the edge. The vapour trails. The lines of fence posts. 

It was a beautiful calm and sunny morning. Perfect for gardening at G’s, spreading pea straw mulch all over the herbaceous beds. 

As I type this late afternoon a southerly change is blowing through, bringing with it a great thunderstorm and some hail. Fortunately I’ve done all my outdoor tasks!

I have realised that my weariness and feeling of ennui is related to a constant low-level sadness about my #3 brother’s ever so slow decline. Now I understand that, I feel better able to live with it. And I recognise that it’s something that is likely to continue for the length of his life, and probably well beyond. 

He is unconscious most of the time now, with only one or two days each week when he’s awake some of the time. He has seizures even then. He’s barely eating, although breakfast seems to be a meal he eats regularly, but not every day. 

My #2 brother visited him last week and managed to communicate with him for maybe five minutes one morning. When he returned in the afternoon he was unconscious and completely unable to be roused.

It is no life at all.