Falling into the Moment

~ Kate Wilson ~ 4 Comments

Do we always have to search for the upbeat?
Is it ok sometimes to write about how bloodly unfair life is and how painful and how it is a struggle just to get through the next moment?
I’ve been doing a lot of reading about cancer and dogs. There is a lot of information to plough through and it is good to get informed. I am now almost an expert.
I know about the survival rates with and without chemotherapy for the different cancers but especially lymphoma which is what Bonnie has.  I know that without chemotherapy the average dog dies in 4-6 weeks.  I know all the commonly used supplements and what is the best cancer diet.
In the process of reading this information you also find hundreds of stories about people and their dogs.  Dogs are getting cancer in their thousands. Perhaps it is millions. People are making decisions, trying their best, agonising over side effects and when to call a halt and let their dogs go. There is a mountain of pain there.   And a mountain of love.  It is interesting that we know so much about cruelty and abandonment of dogs but what is invisible until you start searching is the incredible love.
I have cried and sobbed my way through so many blogs and emails and yahoo group stories about dogs and their owners dealing with cancer and dealing with death.
And in a funny way it helps me to feel these other peoples pain. I don’t need them to find the positive or end their stories with what they have learned from the experience. It is just something horrible that happens and we try to deal with it and if we can reach out to others in the same place then it sort of eases the pain.
Sort of.  In the end there is one day after another and I have been really struggling to find my way through. I feel I am being squashed beneath a gigantic roller. It wants to squeeze out my stuffing.
I want to accept and be strong and keep cheerful and stay calm. For Bonnie. For everyone around me. For myself for Gods sake.
I keep asking ‘How do people deal with awful things?’  Human beings have had plenty of practice.  Illness, cruelty, war, torture, loss. What are the ways and means of putting one foot after another? You never know which experience will push you to your edge.  I’ve been through bad times before of course but there is something about this experience that is threatening to flatten me. Being in this ‘other’ country, not having my friends call round to the house to chat or give me a hug, Bonnie having a death sentence but being at the same time weirdly healthy, wondering if I somehow caused the cancer, wanting to get out into nature but not wanting to be alone there, still having this bloody ankle problem which makes walking so difficult. Oh you know what I mean!  I am not trying to say this is the worst life can throw at a person but for some reason it has exactly the ingredients that give me meltdown.
Anyway, having said I don’t need to end on a positive note I just want to say that today I did catch a glimpse of something that helps.  We walked back from town through the park. Bonnie had her first attack of diarrhoea which I instantly decided was ‘The Beginning of the End’. We found a bench and sat in the sunshine and I tried to breathe slowly and calm my racing thoughts. Bonnie jumped up beside me and as I watched her, trying to memorise her every curve and the exact colour of her hair, wanting to stretch time so it would never move on, she was just watching the birds
Her nose was in constant movement. She was receiving smells at the rate of a hundred a second. She was not the slightest bit concerned about her health. She wasn’t worried or sad. She just watched the people, the children playing football, the pigeons and sometimes turned and looked at me.

I tried to tune in to her.  To tune out of me. I felt myself almost falling into the present moment. Each time I managed to just be there with her, there was at last a sense of peace, of something eternal. Then my mind would try to analyse and it would be gone.

Over and over I let myself fall into the moment.

Just Bonnie and Me.

Sitting in the sunshine.

Nothing more

Sunday morning in Granollers

~ Kate Wilson ~ Leave a comment

Church Square. 
Ferrer Cafe
  • I sit outside. Its not too cold even though it’s nearly the end of November. A man and a young girl come out through the sliding doors. She looks like him with thin spindly legs, straight hair and a quiet serious face.  Another little girl comes running out after them, the little sister, about 5 years old with a tartan scarf and curly brown hair.  The man grabs her arm roughly and pushes her back inside.  She resists and he pushes her harder, her arm is twisted up awkwardly,  ‘go and stand with your mother‘ he says in Catalan.  A few moments later they are all standing outside in the dappled sunshine. Three of them are grouped together and the little girl is playing with the leaves under the tree.  The parents talk a little and the man tenderly does up the zip of his elder daughters jacket but his face remains stern and unsmiling. The corners of his mouth seem to be pulled down by gravity.  The little girl is a few feet away exploring the world and humming to herself.  She is full of life but not noisy or bad. The group of three start to move off and the mother calls over her shoulder, ‘Maria, come on‘.  Obligingly and merrily scuffing her feet in the leaves she runs to catch them up.  Noone smiles or waits for her or offers her a hand.
  • The uniform of Granollers women of a certain age in winter is black trousers and shoes and a brown jacket, a black handbag and well coiffed hair usually tinted slightly red. Younger ones exchange the brown jacket for a black one.  If I continue to work on constructing a Catalan female character to perform (she is called Pepa) then I need to sort out my costume. I have a black coat but its not puffy enough and I have black trousers but they are not that crinkly sort of drip-dry fabric that you could buy in M&S
  • There is a large circle of children sitting in the middle of the square. They appear to be in an organised group but I can’t see who is in charge. Is it a sunday school activity while the adults are in mass? After a while they start playing ball and several times it bounces into the cafe tables or bashes up into the trees making the leaves fall off.  I find this annoying but no-one else seems to notice. 
  • So many things that children do are quite irritating to adults.  Or is it just British adults? Or is it just me?   Unless it is your own child of course.  The ball bangs about, the children, mostly boys, scream and yell. Another boy waiting for his parents who are inside the cafe races up and down past me on his scooter. Outside the church a boy plays with something that looks like a belt and when you flick it in the air it makes a loud noise like a banger. The first father wanted to control his own daughter and  I have a desire to tell the boys to play ball further away. Perhaps we are affected by gender…. would the father have dragged his son back into the cafe in that way?  And would I  look on kindly at girls playing ball in the square?
  • Actually there are a few girls in the group.  All about 10 years old I would imagine. One girl in a pixie hat stands alone.  My eye is drawn to her but everyone else ignores her. Noone throws her the ball and neither does she run to catch it. When they all sit down again in little huddles she sits on the church steps by herself.  She looks perfectly normal to me, nothing to mark her out but still she is isolated.  Later when the adults organise the group again into a large circle she is sitting there and smiling.  I think she is more comfortable when the group is controlled. 
  • Now mass has finished.  Crowds of people flowed out onto the square. The crowd of children has moved on  in a large group.  The girl with the pixie hat is sitting on the church steps not speaking with anyone.  An older couple  join her and a little boy.  At first they seem like a family but as they move off down the street,  they all separate.  The boy is chubby and full of himself, shouting out to his friends as he passes. The couple now I see them better are too young to be her parents. They must be Sunday school teachers or perhaps it is a meeting of the scouts which includes girls here.   Pixiehat passes close by with heavy steps and a very sad face. Alone in a crowd. Always hard but even more so in this country where the group is all important.
  • The square has emptied but there are still about 7 children with scooters. They are all boys. There are also two older boys with identical black sweatshirts with a green, yellow and red logo.  They are practising jumping off the church steps and spinning the scooter 360 degrees mid jump. It is quite amazing.  And a 360 degree flat spin. And a jump onto and off the wooden benches. This dexterity and flair and determination to master the move is something wonderful to watch. Imagine if they applied this power to changing the world!
  • As I leave the square I am horrified to see the whole group of children return from another direction. It is some kind of organised walkabout and still the girl in the pixie hat is walking at the back alone. Organised torture for a Sunday morning. 

Bonnie is the Star!

~ Kate Wilson ~ 3 Comments

  • A sunny Saturday and I took Bonnie out in the car.   We took the windy route over the hills towards the sea which is one of my favourites as most of the traffic goes the other quicker way.  People drive faster here perhaps because most of them have have been driving these same roads all their lives. If you don’t move far from where you were born you probably know each and every bend. And if you assume that all other drivers are similarly confident you won’t have much patience with ditherers like me. 

 

  • At the top of the hills there is a derelict petrol station and if you turn off there it leads to a quiet country lane with views down to the sea.  We parked and walked. There were lots of cyclists around who surprised me with their total disregard for the large signs warning that the hunters were out shooting wild boar in the woods. 

 

  • In the local newspaper El Nou they recently reported a cyclist being clipped by a bullet as he rode along a popular route in Les Franqueses.  Five hunters were stopped by the police and their guns taken away as evidence. These hunts are normally approved by the authorities but they are supposed to keep away from houses and roads. That local council has even been discussing banning hunting as it is impossible for it to coexist with the growing numbers of people who like to walk, cycle, run in the countryside.  But they finally decided that banning it would only make it less regulated.  Hunting is very popular throughout Catalunya and I once had lunch at a country restaurant with a truck parked outside loaded up with a very large and dead wild boar.  I wonder what it would take for the Catalan government to ban it altogether?

 

  • We sat down for a while with the sound of shots ringing in the far distance. Bonnie brought me a twig and as my main task now to keep her as happy as possible,  I broke my normal rule of not throwing sticks. It was also a very soft one! She is totally back to normal after the surgery  

 

  • It was a joy to watch her jumping to catch it like a puppy

And My News

~ Kate Wilson ~ 1 Comment

I wrote that last post as it was something I had been thinking about. And as a way to distract myself from what is going on right here. 
In case you are waiting to hear about Bonnie, here is the news.
Yesterday the results arrived from the biopsy and it was confirmed she has an aggressive cancer, a lymphoma. The traditional treatment would be chemotherapy to slow down the growth of the tumour and possibly buy her more time, up to 9 months. 
There are several treatment options, all of them causing possible side effects with the most powerful being the worst and the single drug option being perhaps too weak to make a difference.
We also have to keep in mind that Border Collies have a special sensitivity to chemotherapy. They don’t always deal with it well.
 
Now it is decision time. Not just about that but about diet and chosing between the vast array of natural supplements which are  known to be possibly tumour reducing.  And where do I spend these last months with her?  Here in the city with no garden?  On the Costa Brava at Sant Nicolau in a beautiful and much loved environment but far away from my normal life?  Or do I even consider a mad dash up through France to get her ‘home’ to Cornwall?
 
November always has this shady side.  A month when fears and shadows can loom large. 
The desire to bury my head under the duvet threatens to overwhelm me.
But I must be Bonnies decision-maker and primary carer even though I feel totally inadequate for the task.
I am not ready. I wasn’t expecting this to happen, not yet. 
 
She meanwhile seems well, or so I think. She is eating and sleeping and playing ball as usual.  I try not to look at her with a mournful gaze.  I am stroking her head with fast soft repetitive caresses as recommended by the Dog Cancer Vet. It is supposed to remind her of her mother licking her face when she was a puppy and it’s true that she always ends up falling gently asleep

Watching TV

~ Kate Wilson ~ 2 Comments
Watching television can be stressful in a multi-cultural home.
Many people argue about what channel to watch or whether a certain programme is enjoyable or rubbish. But if you add in different languages and cultural differences it gets more complicated.
I actually feel guilty for watching British TV.
I tend to switch it on when there is no-one else at home. I don’t like to impose it on others but on top of that I have my own judgements about watching English language programmes when I ‘should’ be improving my Catalan or Spanish.

If I am tired or stressed then it is such a huge comfort to watch something like Downton Abbey, or Have I Got News for You? or even Antiques Road Show.  But I notice a tendency to apologise if someone else comes into the room and catches me at it.

It is one of the things that I wouldn’t experience if I was living in the UK.  Perhaps if I lived here with another native English speaker it would be a shared guilty pleasure?  Or if I lived here alone I might still feel a bit embarassed with a slight sense of failure that I hadn’t adapted properly.  But I would still do it.

I do watch Catalan TV and late at night there are often good documentaries and films. But I have never discovered any programmes like for example, Last Tango in Halifax which was on a couple of nights ago.  I put it on after a friend alerted me by text and then had to grit my teeth and ignore sighs of incomprehension from the other end of the sofa.  Humour is the worst problem….it is so hard to shift it across cultural lines and so when I laugh, I often laugh alone. I notice that the longer I am away from Britain, the better I think the programmes are.  Is this some kind of exiled delusion?

At 11pm I can catch the news at 10 on the BBC.  Then we switch back to the Catalan news which seems to be all about politicians or Barça football matches.  No-one gets challenged or pressed for answers and I don’t hear the journalists making dry comments in their introductions or analysis.
TV3 is funded by the government so I suppose it is true that he who pays the piper calls the tune. 
It is really difficult when you live in another country to stop yourself making comparisons. Have I turned into one of those people who just gripes about things being better at home?
It is hard to know if I am just influenced by a love of the familiar or if I am really making a detached comparison.  Perhaps the answer is to have two televisions and for me to just enjoy watching what I want without apology?  And then I could enjoy the Catalan and Spanish programmes too.
I try to straddle two worlds trying to feel at home in both yet sometimes ending up comfortable in neither.
After thought
Perhaps I would find it easier if the ‘other’ language wasn’t Catalan. It is so easy to feel sensitive about silencing this language, even if only by switching the TV to satellite and the BBC.