Bad things come in threes, so the superstition goes.  I can name mine.  The blow from Mikaela damaging the ACL of my knee, Natalia illness and euthanasia and then on Friday, driving home from the beach, I ran into a group of three whistling ducks.  The two females were a mass of fractures and had to be put down.   The drake was bereft and kept looking for them even as I drove away.  

I wasn't drivng fast, but there was  a truck close behind, the ducks were suddenly there.  I couldn't stop.  I turned around and went back, got my wildlife carrier out of the back just as another car pulled in behind me.  She was a wildife carer she said.  A magnetic sign, Tweed Wildlife Rescue, was on the car door.  She took the bag with the two mortally wounded ducks, my details and left.  What kind of coincidence was that?  

So I hope now the three bad things have finished for awhile.  I haven't felt like writing but decided after sending a pep talk email to Tam about writing (novel writing) I'd best take my own advice.  (Just had to go and feed the lone cockatoo who has started coming here.  No mate, unusually brave around people, recently released?).  

Despite sadness like a faint but ever present ache, life goes on and so does time.  I'm not getting any younger.  There is a finite amount of time to do what is in me to do.  Richard's fate I cannot change.  It is only my own life over which I have jurisdiction.  

Like someone said, or perhaps many people have said, including me from time to time, My life is determined not by events but my reaction to them.

Richard continues to deteriorate.  I know sometimes by the wide eyed somewhat frightened look in his eyes that he doesn't know me.  He is frightened because I am familiar but he can't remember.  That expression is what greets me when I first see him each day, then as I talk and we spend time together, he relaxes, he remembers.  Yesterday he said Holly will be coming soon.  I'm Holly I answered.  Yes, I know he said and laughed to cover his confusion.  

We sit on his patio.  I give him the juice with the collagen which seems to help with joint pain.  I peel a banana and if it's ripe, cut a pear into sections.  I tell him of my day, not that there is much to say.  I don't talk about going to the beach or showy examples of my freedom to contrast with his 'incarceration'.  And I listen.  He rambles so much now it is hard to follow a thread of conversation.  His narrative is composed of dreams, of people long dead, of hallucinations (the children!), of jobs he must do for others, usually building something complete with measurements, 1800 x aluminium.  He has a grudge against one of the residents, also a staff member but when I try and find out what has caused this can get no straight answer.   I distract him with another subject when he begins to get worked up. 

He is completely wheelchair bound now.  At least once a week, despite the best efforts of Heritage, he has a fall.  This week he has had two.  Cut his hand and banged his forehead the first time.  The second time no injuries.  

How I miss the him that was.