Reflections

Walked into town today to join a group of friends for coffee. What we have in common is all being Mental Health service users. One member of the group spoke of the problems she and her husband have been encountering in selling their house and moving to another area. She had been accumulating her annual leave ready for the move, but upon learning that for various reasons the move would be postponed until September, she had suddenly realised just how tired she was and decided to take a week off. That seemed to be the signal her body had been waiting for to manifest various annoying symptoms of physical illness, minor in themselves but sufficient in their accumulation to leave her feeling well below par and vulnerable to the serious depression that stalks her life.

Intelligent, articulate, artistically gifted and highly organised, this lady has considerable insight and the ability to convey things conversationally in a manner that makes entertainment of her struggles for her audience. As I listened, I recognised a pattern I have noted before in my own life and others’, that the body sometimes will defer illness until a season of work ends and a lull begins. This phenomenon is so widely recognised that pre-retirement counselling is provided to minimise the risk of succumbing to an early visit from the Grim Reaper upon reaching that time beyond regular employment. I knew all this, but hadn’t previously made the connection my mind now supplied. I thought back to Vic’s trip to France. I had filled his absence with a foment of activity. That word, foment, originally had the sense of applying warm liquids to the skin, and in similar vein, the pleasant activities had acted like a balm to my soul, washing away any anxious thoughts or feelings in a gently enjoyable stream of consciousness. Then came the night of his return. It has been said that where our deepest fears and desires meet, nightmares are born.

-----***-----***-----

I had intended to spend Friday afternoon over the allotment but the weather was a bit ‘iffy’ so instead I popped into the supermarket on my way home and bought some leeks and brie. The courgette plants over the allotment have produced a prodigious crop and I’ve been giving them away on the ‘café’ offshoot of the local Freecycle group. One of the recipients shared her Courgette & Brie soup recipe with me and I wanted to give it a go. It was yummy!