Dances with DS

I cannot believe it but I have the flu. Dayum!  It kicked in, full force, yesterday evening. It must be a virulent little virus as my son & his girlfriend have it, my youngest son has it and Pete has it too. We are a house of sicko’s at the mo.

This is a very rare goat since my DS and as I have been the recipient of loads of sunshine borne Vit D in Africa lately, I’m a trifle miffed.  I doubt it is a deficiency but nonetheless I have just swallowed a great big whack of Vit D 50 000iu’s in a desperate bid to try to diminish the flu-ish effects which are gripping my body faster than I can write. I’m also pushing up my Vit C & zinc intake right now.

It’s possible all the travelling on a stuffy virus laden plane has been the cause.  It might unfortunately be the swine variety as I have nausea and a sensation of being hit by a bus in my bones and muscles. My keyboard appears strangely elongated and it is an effort to write.  I’m fighting it…I detest being ill. I hate lying in bed at the best of times and right now the thought of bed is not pleasant.  Problem is my fuzzed up mind is hyperactive.

Last night I made up a cough brew of licorice root, lime juice, star anise, satsuma peel, a good sprig of homegrown thyme, cloves and marshmallow root with Croatian lavender honey (Manuka honey would be great too) and it seems to be helping as an expectorant and soother for the old gunged up chest and sore throat.  I’m not all au natrel though - I believe in good old paracetamol too.

The best thing though was a bath salt soak I made - after using it last night I felt almost recovered, deeply relaxed and slept very well. But alas it is temporary. This morning I feel shite again.  Like all alternative approaches it will need to be used often to maximise the effects,  so I might go and take another soak just now.

Here’s my ‘Flu-fighting Bath Salt Soak’ recipe. 

(Make it up before  flu starts to hit anyone in your family so it is on standby, as it was quite a mission to get it together while in the grip of flu - but it is so worth my effort. My family think so too as I notice the big jar I made is fast diminishing!)

3 cups Epsom salts

2 cups Sea Salt

1 cup Bicarb of Soda

1 teaspoon (5ml) of eucalyptus essential oil

1/2 teaspoon lavender oil

1/2 teaspoon rosemary oil

15 drops of Cajeput Oil

10 drops Black pepper essential oil (Tip - if you don’t have black pepper eo you could try adding 3 tblespoons of mustard powder instead…I think it would do a good ‘warming’ job & plan to try it soon!)

Total essential oils (eo’s) = 12.5 ml.  If you want it stronger you can safely add another 2.5 mls of oil, but I suggest leaving the black pepper as it is! You could add more of the other eo’s & admittedly I do - but please use your discretion as eo’s are powerful stuff. If unsure, research & work inside usual safety eo limits.

Glycerin 3 teaspoons (get from your local pharmacy or Tesco’s pharmacy- moisturising)

Optional: 1 tablespoon of oil (if you have a dry skin) - almond oil does the job well but olive will do too!

Optional: Polysorbate 20 - around 1 teaspoon (this disperses oils evenly in the bath)

Optional: Food Colouring. I used green food colouring. Use only a drop to start with as this is pretty concentrated stuff. Less = more.

Mix all the oils into the glycerin plus polysorbate if you are using it.

Add to the salts mixing well.

Add food colouring & mix well until the colour is even.

Use 1/2 cup in your bath and soak in a hot bath for at least 10 mins.

If you have flu I hope you feel better soon!

And  sooo after all of this… and a nice hot soak in the salts, it looks like I might be reluctantly resigning myself to my bed after all,  as I am totally knackered now.

After a very long and exhausting flight back home via Dubai - I hit the ground running in the UK on the 23rd!

We traditionally celebrate on Christmas eve with a candlelit dinner and all the trimmings so time was very short. Shortly after arriving I went  to Costco to gather supplies for Christmas dinner and a few christmassy odds and ends. Then a swift decorating of the mantelpiece and a  mini tree to put a bit of Christmas spirit into my home.  Spent the 24th cooking and cleaning for our evening celebration plus many moments in the day spent on bended knees cuddling my two little dogs who I have sorely missed.

My daughters boyfriend made us a wonderful ‘Cerviche’ (?) with lime marinaded fresh sea bass as a starter. We followed this with a huge hock of mustard & pineapple ham and a roasted fillet beef replete with sweet potatoes, buttery nutmeg parsnips and asparagus.  Dessert was rich chocolate sauce, ice cream and berries.  So quite a simple meal, but delicious if I say so myself!

We caught up with each others lives, pulled crackers, read silly jokes, exchanged gifts, laughed  and  I felt at peace and extraordinarily blessed.

Christmas day was a lazy day - I finally got a chance to do a bit of reading and pottering around the house. Mostly we just lolled about in a relaxed fashion eating leftovers, mince pies and dipping into chocolate boxes!    Not the best diet for a DSer but Christmas comes but once a year and I felt no guilt about eating so profoundly badly! lol

I have in recent weeks not thought much about my DS. It is so much a part of my life that aside from times when I’m shifting out of routine (like on the recent Truck trip through Zaire, Botswana and Namibia) I don’t feel the need to focus on it.

It goes like this in these ‘longerterm’ years. There are long periods of time when I don’t think about it. There is no need really.  I’ve long forgotten how difficult it is to adjust to a wls initially and what I live with now is generally easy for me. I say ‘generally’ because there are times I’m desperately aware of my bowels shortcomings such as when I was running across a campground deep in the night with my torch & bum clenched,  frantic to get to the communal toilets in time.

My DS did play up to a degree while out in the African bush.  Usually I have a bowel clock that wakes me around 8 am for the usual hummungous deposit in three parts. Suddenly I found myself needing the loo at 4am.  Which was not such a bad thing as most mornings we left our camp at 5.30 to 6 am, and the prospect of needing to do the biz behind a bush was not a pleasant one. It is very strange how my metabolism and ds clock adjusted itself and it convinced me that the DS certainly does have it’s own intelligence all over again!

The big prob is that this intelligence did not right itself for 3 weeks after the trip!  I’d awake at 4am with uncanny precision & then find there was no camp and no truck waiting after all!

I found the toilety side of DS life bearable after all my pre-trip fretting.   I’ll always detest communal toilets as a matter of course but I coped. What I did find hairy was the lack of privacy sometimes. Some showers left one with no space to undress except outside the cubicles in full view of the female public. I devised a complex process of undressing under a sarong as no way do I feel okay with baring my 120 year old looking body full of saggy boob & skin publically.

I also got the bloats again - which I think was partly down to less time to eat meals.  Meals were often rushed affairs during the day as we had to hit travel deadlines. I’m a very slow eater since my DS. My food often goes cold on me and I can be seen still chomping through my mains long after others have finished dessert. Eating fast is not good for me, but there was no choice.  Also I admittedly ate a lot of crappola en route. With 8 of us on board the chocs, crisps and biccy snacking never seemed to end.

By 4 pm most days  I was in true bloat looking 12 months preggers. I was also in dire pain trying to hold my wind so as not to cause pandemonium among fellow travellers.  And the truck had no suspension so I was jostled and bumped about to further cause discomfort.  Once or twice in the first week I thought I would start to cry with the pain of it. I thought I might have made a big mistake doing such a trip as I convieniently blotted out the fact that this misery was self caused.   I started to take Beano & Lactase twice a day and this combo worked brilliantly. Too brilliantly really … as I continued to snack heartily on junk between my meals.  There are times I don’t understand it - why did I eat this crap given that I don’t even like it much and given it’s side effects???  It’s still a mystery to me!

Still, amazingly I did not gain any weight at all.  A little gain might not have gone amiss in reality,  but then again I seem to be stable at around 54 kilo’s -55 kilo’s which is okay. When I think of my recent lapses into bad eating practises, I have to say this DS is a seriously incredible weight loss surgery and I do love it to bits still!

Aside from a bad reaction to the anti malaria pills ( I think - or is it a deficiency of some kind rearing it’s head…Zinc or Vit B12 maybe?) which resulted in me getting raised blister like bumps all over my hands and arms plus a weird de-pigmentation problem after the blistering subsided - I had loads of energy and felt well.

I’ve not had time to assimilate my journey yet, what with Momli’s death, travelling home  & Christmas preparations. But it was an incredible time full of beautiful landscapes, happiness and warm sunshine. I’ll write more about it soon. 

Meantime I hope you have had a happy Christmas and I wish you all the Very Best for the New Year. x

Our Mother 

( in loving memory of Jean Colman)

Our Mother

Who remains forever in our hearts and memories

Hallowed be the Love you gave us

In every Joy, in every Truth, in every Breath

Your life is sung by all of us

in unfurled flowers,  in silent rock, in brightest stars

and in our children

We remember that when all is resolved in deep acceptance

the need to forgive, or be forgiven,  no longer exists

May we always be led into compassion

and delivered into the Light of  Understanding and Insight

by the Shining Grace of your example

and in Loving memory of your Being.

On the 10th of December  our Momli went to a better place surrounded by all her loving children.

It was a befitting date as she went on the exact same date that her beloved husband, John died two years ago.

Today we collected mom’s ashes. I was struck by this small box sensitively and somewhat poignantly wrapped in wrapping paper depicting clouds in a blue sky, that I held on my lap.   I was struck  by the wrapping paper design as I often refer in my life to clouds that cover blue sky as a personal metaphor that puts me in touch with the idea that even when times are difficult and one has suffering, one should try to remember the bigger, often unseen picture in one’s life. The same goes for the psyche. When the head is adrift with ‘clouds’ of thoughts that make one feel negative and depressed, it helps to know that this is just a passing state and that one’s Being, one’s true essence, is unaffected by the shennagins of one’s thoughts.

It is strange to think all that remains of a precious body is a small box of concentrated grey ashes. A body that bore 5 children, that loved them, that held many grandchildren in it’s arms, that always had a smile on it’s face and a kind word to give to many people. A body that tended to flowers and animals. A body that lovingly and carefully knitted bright squares to make warm blankets for our African Aids babies. A body that knitted all of us together too.   It was a body that mattered greatly and the vessel of a beautiful spirit.

So I don’t know why, too often, on bad days, I can’t get the meaning of my own body. Why can’t I accept that even if my skin hangs like a hundred and twenty year old’s, even if I am scarred from top to bottom and that my wrinkles are happening el rapido,  I should not negate all that my body allows me to express.  Looks matter little where real Love exists. I know this as surely as I know when rain is falling on my face. But somehow I forget it and I lament my body instead of honouring it.

  We live in & through our bodies in an intricate & wonderful vision of synergy between flesh & spirit. I need to learn to come to a full acceptance of this and to remember it!   Another life lesson and one that seems to peak and ebb in my life, alas!

I miss momli’s body. I can almost hear her saying in my ear (as I write this) that actually she does not miss it at all!  She so wanted to leave all the pain & suffering of her body behind her in those last emaciated weeks of endless discomfort.

But I miss giving her a hug and a kiss hello - or goodbye.  I miss delighting in her joyful body movements  - she used to quite often break into a ‘happy little jig-dance’ when she heard of something that made her feel happy.  Sometimes she would do this to cope with her encroaching dementia too. She’d lose a thought and then do a funny little dance and we’d all laugh  and jig arms around her waist, to a song she would sing and end up forgetting what she was going to say anyway!  I always thought there was serious latent genius in this diversionary tactic.  

I don’t miss her presence because spiritually I feel her energy all around us.  Before she died we spoke about how Love continues across the ether, through all dimensions  and that this is the one thing that is eternal. Therefore if her time to go had come I tried to assure her that she should try to hold this close and not worry, because we’d  both draw comfort and peace from this after she had left her body.  We affirmed this for each other as we held each others hands with a deep unified knowing.

In her last weeks her dementia seemed to fade and she often had very lucid times. Later she’d forget these moments but somehow it did not matter because the process of dying is uncannily timeless.  We lived very much in the moment and that was all that mattered really.

I will be back in the UK on the 23rd - just in time to celebrate Christmas with my children.  It will be a humble christmas this year as there has not been time to prepare for much other than our traditional christmas eve dinner and a few wee token prezzies.  There has been no time for putting up a tree or a big shopping spree and tbh I am glad, because it is a great feeling to release all the commercial baggage of Christmas and just celebrate the real gift of spending a happy  time with my loved ones.

I have not yet arrived.  In England that is. Metaphorically too!  Right now I am in Cape Town after the Truck trip through Zambia, Botswana and Nambia.  And it was just the most incredible journey which I hope to write about soon. However journeys take many forms and sometimes one gets a ride on the unexpected train of life.  Right now, my mom in law is dying and so this is all that matters right now.

I love my momli, as I call her. She has always been just the best mom in law to me.  She has taught me a great deal about patience even though I am still crap at it. She has been there for me at all times during the phases of my life. She makes people laugh and has a kind word for everyone always. Even now - ravaged by cancer she has time and kindness for others. Once, after a day of gut wrenching pain and discomfort she told me that she thought of others in her position. ‘ How do they cope all alone? I am so sad this happens in our world…’ Her inherent goodness of being is unaffected by dying. In fact her being has become amplified and Divine in the true sense of the word, even as her body is reduced to skeletal bones and a pain that is currently kept in check by large doses of morphine.

I am so sad that she is going soon, but this is just my sadness playing out it’s tune.  Momli, on the other hande is in a full blown fragrant acceptance about her imminent death. ‘When I pop my socks….’   she says and then proceeds to inform us about what is important in one’s life.  Not to fight over trivial matters , to hold to the truth at all times, to stay together as a family.  It is all the more touching because she does this with such love and despite hardly even being able to drink water to slake her thirst and to be able to speak as her mouth is so dry, despite our puny efforts to rinse and swab it.  Morphine has not affected her lucidity.

All her children are here from various places in the world. My son and daughter are also here. We flew them in on a rushed flight from the UK to be with their granny.

We don’t deny her process even though sometimes we go home and cry and wish she could be here forever. We acknowledge that death is close, that it is not seperate from life.

Actually,  we are blessed. When death is slow, even though it cracks one’s heart open in the most awful way and thrashes it on rocks, there is time to express one’s love, to throw what is not needed out of the junkbox of one’s being, to reach a here-now way of being and acceptance. To say the final goodbyes and give back rubs, hugs and kisses.  We redefine what truly matters.   Every minute she is here is precious. Her children and grand children are just beautiful with her. Her room is a shrine of love and peace.

She told me a few days ago that a very big angel came and sat beside her. ‘I have no fear anymore’ she said. Bless her. In my life she has been my very big angel and so knowing how comforting this is and that her angel is beside her all the way, I let my darling momli go in terms of the wishing she could remain.

In between the waiting we went to the beach yesterday. Walking has a way of being a clearing house too and we needed to look out over the ocean, to feel wet sand under our feet, to breathe in fresh salt air a little.  I found a gorgeous chunk of top grade ambergris, white, and scented with sea, musk and leather. I had been hoping I might be lucky enough to find some as my learning of perfumes continues and there it was!  An alchemy. White ambergris lying on white sand! I had to look several times at it before it sunk in that I was actually looking at a chunk of the real mcoy.

Ambergris originates from the sperm whales gut. Some call it whale vomit, which it is in it’s first form upon the ocean. After this people lose the plot and baulk at the idea of it.  Yes, indeed, it is foul smelling in this new form, but later as it floats in the sea it undergoes transformation. Baked in the silent hot sun and sterilised by many tens of years of salt water, the smell becomes a bouquet of it’s environmental journey.  In a perfume it performs magic, shifting the ordinary to the extra-ordinary.  It is the amplifier of all that is beautiful. Even  that which is not so beautiful in a perfume has no choice but to reveal it’s innate (if hitherto hidden)beauty in the presence of ambergris. It benefits all the other fragrances in a blend, bridging them together, softening edges, breathing a new dimension into them. Dissolved from it’s original solid form it is all the more potent and tangible. Nothing is lost …only refined, redefined and amplified.

Finding a chunk of this incredible rare substance on my first visit to the beach in South Africa  is pretty amazing and great good fortune.  It is also a very apt and potent metaphor for what I currently experience in this capsule of time I am living in.  For me it represents some of the essence of momli.  It is funny how in my life, usually at times I am soul searching,  nature often throws me a full blown gift and metaphor to mull on.

For now we just sit in the global waiting room of earthly departure. Soon momli will be with John her beloved husband, soon she will not be in a broken body. Death is not all bad.