Fidelma Cook: Let’s face the music and dance

AS the ambulance bringing me home turned into the drive, a black and white collie unfurled itself from the stones and trotted alongside it.

He stood a little distance away as I was put into the waiting wheelchair to enter and a beaming Miriam threw him two biscuits. The box sitting on my table was the first thing I noticed.

He arrives every morning and stares through the glass doors awaiting his biscuits. Nothing will entice him over the threshold.

He does the same as night begins to fall, then returns to the family who acquired him in the summer when I was in hospital.

Perhaps César sent him a message that I’d be in need of a canine presence, however fleeting. Or like all dogs he instinctively knew there was a soul in need of comfort.

He is all the dog I can cope with now for I am a poor, weak version of the woman I was, with not enough strength in me to even uncork a bottle of the wine I ordered for my return. Now that IS a bloody tragedy.

So, I was finally home after almost nine months away and although I would love to say I felt LM’s embrace – I felt nothing; just the brooding silence when finally, alone.

She has not softened or yielded towards me and I fear she only enjoys me in party mode.

Only relaxes when within her walls is laughter and music or people loudly appreciating her rustic charms, admiring her ancient beams and strange quirks in the run of her floors, now just an added hazard for a Zimmer driver.

But I am finally surrounded by my beloved books and pictures which provide a balm for the soul. They at least seem to welcome me back, appreciating my loving possessiveness and inner leaps of recognition; warmed once more by a familiar, long known eye.

My lovingly collected silver, including all photographs in ornate frames, are gone – taken to Pierce’s house in case of a break in; so is my jewellery and the pierced holes in my lobes are closing up. Other things he’s moved or re-arranged. Why?

“I didn’t think you’d ever come back here. I thought you’d be coming to London,” or something, are the unspoken words.

Each morning Miriam arrives to open the house and shutters. I have not been well – cumulative aftereffects of treatment – and I’m finding it hard to keep positive and hopeful.

My thoughts are now darker and I struggle to find happiness in the awful maw of aloneness and loneliness, as the world itself does in this plague-ridden time.

I start thinking of time left instead of time still left to be lived and then superstitiously rub, rub the negative away in case it taints and hinders me.

Of course, I’m suffering from the loss of my safe place in the SSR. Suffering from the loss of kind, constant caring staff and experts, there at a buzzer’s touch.

I miss the background noise in the corridors – the fast walk of a nurse going from room to room dispensing pills and reassurance; the evening hello from the night staff and the last goodnight as you prepare for sleep.

I miss life around me and these dark, uncaring sudden nights, and my early lock in gives no relief at all.

I also miss my own bed and its well heated comfort, which I can’t risk because of a high step into the salon which leads to it.

I’m in the flatter guest wing bedroom which is equally comfortable, but with its three exterior walls is a perfect summer room not a winter refuge.

Occasionally I stand at the open glass doors looking out at the bleak winter scene, mist ridden for most of the morning.

There has been little sun or blue skies to gladden the heart since my return.

I’m sorry. I know you don’t want to hear this from me – you want my lightness, my optimism, my determination … my hope

Oh, it’s still there and will rise again, please God, but just now I’m struggling and frightened and that’s all right too. It’s allowed.

But it cannot be indulged too far or I may not find my way back to enjoy the life that is still, still, within me..a privilege for as long as it is there.

So, tomorrow, as I write, the day before Christmas Eve, I will be back in hospital for another session of immunotherapy, praying for calmer side effects later.

Then on the 28th I will have the ten days of preventative brain radiation. Perhaps it’s no wonder all seems dark around me.

But, but, but, I need to remember that all this has a point – to give me more time; to let me savour the months left and be grateful for all that’s gone before.

It’s the rhythm of life and I need to dance with its music until it’s over. And I have a visiting dog relying on breakfast biscuits.

Meanwhile, my dear friends keep those prayers and wishes coming – they have their own – magic – music too.