The transition from healthy child to sick child
has such suction. It pulls everyone with it;
child, sibling, parent, grand parent, friends.
It is a ruthlessly demanding thing, illness.
All those wants and needs and imperious orders.
It's rude and grabby.
We have moved now from acute to recovery,
which really means a move from allowing the illness
to dictate everyone's move to making the illness follow
our rules. You sit. You stay. You go away, and don't
come back.
This change in perspective makes us all more aware of
what we lost while the illness made the rules.
G must sit, rest, and watch things she's never needed
to be aware of before. There are things we didn't do,
things we won't do, things that are not allowed to be
done.
G will not start school with her class in September.
I will act as go-between and ferry home what work
she can do here. She'll have a tutor as well, and we'll
do what needs doing.
I suppose the day will come when I start being angry
at her illness, instead of just being glad G's here with us.
I'm not sure I'm looking forward to that tip of the scales.
I think that anger will weigh more than the on-going
relief I experience now.
Before diagnosis, G and I spent a morning walking along
a beach counting the different types of seaweed washed
up on the sand.
It was such a good morning. We knew we were going to
be entering a difficult time, but we just walked and
watched. We counted more than 30 different seaweeds
(and one sponge).