Ill or old?

Chapter 14

At the top of the garden is the old crone sculpture that I made about a decade ago. “Well”, says Bob, “If you think that you made it ten years ago, it was probably more like fifteen”. He’s right, my memory is often vague about the passage of time and the older I get, the faster time seems to hurtle by. Strangely, it slows down when I’m sitting with a cup of tea. My original plan had been to build a large yet sinuously graceful crescent moon, on a weekend Introduction To Sculpting. “That’s quite an ambitious project” the tutor had said, “For a two day beginners course”. Constructed around a flat bit of wood with a metre high upright stick I’d nailed to it, the crescent shape fought back from the beginning.

The chicken wire layer sprang into every position that didn’t resemble a crescent. From the start it had intended to be a stubborn old crone. Towards the end of the second day, the rest of the group had either completed or abandoned their sculptures to help. We doused cloths in wet plaster of Paris and wrapped them over the chicken wire. Bulges and lumps formed of their own accord until she, and we, were all covered in white splodge. At home, I painted her with acrylics in patches of khaki green, lichen gray, and splatters of this and that. Over it all went three coats of thick yacht varnish. Finally, she stood, planted amongst some rocks, at the top of the garden. Her body twisted, with a long pointed head and narrow turquoise eyes, which still stare out over the valley.

Now her paint is peeling and flaking off again. She’s been renovated twice already so maybe this spring, decay will have it’s way. We could remove her and put something else in her place. The decay plan appeals more. I like to celebrate the beauty of things falling apart and am getting plenty of practice with my own appearance. Over the last decade (or two), I’ve shifted from bewailing how various bits of me don’t work as well as they used to, knees in particular, and hearing. These days, as mortality stares me down more assertively, I’m inclined to celebrate what is working pretty well, All Things Considered.

At the time of my seventieth birthday, I feel pleased with, and rather proud of my ability to dance vigorously and move with ease, though I can no longer squat to weed or wee. During the spring that follows my birthday, all that begins to change. Throughout the spring and summer I grow increasingly tired and pain in my joints becomes a constant issue. “Maybe I’ve overdone it today”, I say to Bob. Or, “Perhaps I’ve been sitting still for too long”. Working in the garden turns into a miserable experience.

“Do you have a lot of aches and pains”? I ask Sunnara. She says that she doesn’t really, but I wonder if she just makes less fuss than me. “Do you think that some people are less good at putting up with pain?” I ask Jean. “There’s no answer to that”, she says, “You feel it as much as you feel it”. I battle on through the summer, and think that’s maybe what most people have to do at my age. Anyone older than me who isn’t complaining is obviously braver than I am. It would be embarrassing to approach my doctor in case she says just that.

In the end the pain in my joints is so bad I do go and see her. She immediately does some tests and diagnoses Poly Myalgia Rheumatica which means inflammation in some or, as in my case, all the major joints. There’s a risk of going blind if it’s left untreated. Steroids are the only medication on offer. After a month of trying every alternative treatment I can find whilst the pain level steadily escalates, I started taking steroids. From being unable to take my socks off, never mind putting a bra on, within days I’m practically pain free.

It was during that painful spring and summer before the diagnosis, that I began writing about the garden. It comforted me at a time when trying to do any movement meant gritting my teeth and suffering. Then just before Christmas and my seventy first birthday, the steroids magically transform my body to supple energetic health and I throw myself back into all the activities I’d had to stop.

Bob and I fly half way round the world to visit Daughter and her family in New Zealand and because it’s summer there, I happily do lots of weeding and digging in her garden. I’m fortunate that I don’t suffer many side effects with the medication. Apart from growing a moon face and putting on a few pounds. It seems that I’ve been given a second chance.

It was always a part of the treatment plan to lower the dosage of steroid gradually when the inflammation was supressed. What I hadn’t known at the start was that this part of the procedure could be very complicated. Although I don’t regret taking the steroids because it seemed the only solution, I wish that I’d been more informed about what can happen when you are down to a very low dose.

“The pain is back”, I tell my doctor. After about eighteen months of happily gardening at more or less my old pace, I’d reduced my dosage to a few milligrams of steroid. After some tests, the doctor says it isn’t a flair up of the disease and sends me for physio. The physiotherapist advises me to get off the steroids altogether as, in his opinion, they can’t be helping at this low dosage.

The physiotherapist says that the reason I’m in such pain is because I’ve been doing too much gardening and it’s straining my aging muscles which are already weakened by the steroids. He says that I should stop gardening. Before I know it, tears involuntarily pour down my face. He hastily suggests that I could do a little, but no slopes. Our garden is all slopes. This brings an end to the months of struggling to garden when it hurt so much, but I’m lost without it.

Although I’ve no idea how I thought that my gardening life would end, I didn’t think that it would be like this. It’s September and for several weeks, under the physio’s direction I no longer garden and limit the number of times that I laboriously go down to the first, second or third terraces. My muscles are increasingly stiff, painful and weak. Holding a cup of tea in both hands then raising it to sip, is a massive effort. My doctor has no explanation or remedy for my condition so it’s hard and a bit frightening, succumbing to Bob installing grab handles by the bed and toilet, and having to crawl up and down the stairs.

“At least I know why I’m hurting, and have some hope that it will be better in a few months”, says Sunnara. She’s recovering from one knee replacement and the other knee is on a waiting list. “It does help, having a moan”, I say, “I’m so sick of being grateful for all the help Bob gives me. Then I feel awful for feeling like that.” “Gratitude can get very tedious”, says Sunnara, as we snail our way around the edge of a field full of buttercups. We’ve already had a rant about politics and have moved onto our health. Finally, we admire the buttercups and go home. With gasps and yelps we get out of our muddy boots and thankfully collapse with cups of tea and some aptly named “Ancient Grain” buns.

Sometimes I sit at the table on the narrow flat lawn, at the top of the garden. Here, I’m only able to look at the border in front of me, as the rest of the garden dips out of sight. It’s infuriating to see dandelions springing up between the Irises, right beside my feet. The patch of parched scabious next to them is growing powdery mildew, and I can’t even lift and carry a watering can to help it.

When I get down the steps to the first terrace I don’t know what to do with my despair that the rhododendrons and azaleas have a forest of tall grass growing through them. The fireglow euphorbia has tumbled over down a bank and is smothering the plants below it. The astilbes are being swamped by a carpet of mind-your-own-business which is also surging over the heather and rock area in a sea of bright green. A pale cloud of michaelmas daisies, has collapsed onto the pretty silver and pink variegated dogwood, below it. These things have always happened, but before, I could make it tidy again.

If it was someone else’s garden, would I find this neglected wilderness beautiful? The clambering deep blue geraniums and their cousins, the gap -toothed magentas ones, need dead heading so that they’ll keep on flowering. I can’t get onto their slope to do this. I can’t do anything. Apparently, this is how life will be from now on. Bob is being brilliant but he can’t spend the time gardening that I had, as well as doing the cooking, washing and just about everything else. And he doesn’t care about the plants in the way that I do.

I begin to spend most of my time in the house writing about the gardens I’ve known, picking up from where I’d started a couple of years ago, with the onset of the illness. When the steroids had brought their miraculous cure, I’d abandoned the writing. I begin again with this, “I don’t know what to write about me and this beloved garden.” Pause, then, “Actually I do know what to write. Thank you. A million times, thank you.” Then I get my hanky out to give my sleeve a rest.

The garden becomes a stranger for a while and then I begin to know it in a different way. Just looking at it and not doing things to it. Over the last few years I’d attempted to interfere less and not just force it to my idea of what should thrive and what should be removed. The intention was to help the wildlife. Now, I can only watch the garden cultivars and wild plants, fight it out amongst themselves.

I reflect on the shadow side of how I used to garden. How driven I could be. At first, I’d tried to get all the flower colours to look the way I wanted. As I let go of that ambition, my growing love of nature itself, became a mixed blessing. “Do the dear living green things have enough water?” I’d fret in a drought. “Is one crowding another out?’ And most worrying, “Are they all happy?” Endless vigilance to see if everyone is alright, including the bees and other insects.

Now the daylight is shortening, and autumn is nipping at the leaves. The birds zoom past, stuffing in fat balls and seeds as fast as Bob can reload the feeders. Our bedroom is quiet and I sit in our cosy bed writing. Outside is beautiful and behind glass. The once familiar part of me, yearns to get out there and be in the garden with cold feet and tired legs, and lungs gasping from the slopes. But sitting in bed is pain free, peaceful and gentle. With my Bob close by me. Feeling only half alive.

Outside the sun gleams softly through a haze of mist and low bonfire smoke.