Acceptance

I am wearing my new glasses and trying to get used to them. If I cannot manage them by the time we come back from Vence I shall contact my optometrist again and see what else can be done. We shall see.

I quite enjoyed the birthday dinner on Saturday night, although I could not eat some of the food.  It was all very nice but my appetite is shrinking.  My presents are bottles of champagne and Prosecco; I do not know when I shall drink them but I may take the bottle of Taittinger to Shanklin at Christmas if we spend the time with our friends. It is kind of them; Dan always reminds me that it is the thought that counts.

This afternoon I received another cruel and spiteful message from my son. He has finally seen the messages I sent him some months ago, not long after his sister died. I shall not let him know that his grandfather is dead. I have blocked him on Facebook and shall never unblock him. When we were at the Old Radnor Barn I told the proprietress that we had no children; our daughter had died last year. This is what I shall tell strangers in future. I desperately hoped that one day we would be reconciled but must now accept that this will never happen. He is gone. I miss Katy desperately still.

I worked at the charity shop this morning and shall do so again on Wednesday. I am having my hair cut tomorrow and shall go to the nursing home. I shall take a bottle of the Waitrose Prosecco, of which we have several bottles, to give to Sandra as a raffle prize for the summer fete. We shall be back in time for that. We used to take Katy to the fete when Bill was still fit enough to sit outside and have cups of tea and cake. Before she was ill in 2014 she used to visit the old man once a month. She would come up from Havant by train, have lunch at an eatery in the town and then walk up to the nursing home. She really was a truly good person.

Dan is playing bridge tonight and has to be up early tomorrow to take our friends to the airport. I wonder if he will be back in time to play petanque. I shall go to bed early. I am trying to take fewer strong painkillers. I have needed them recently because the eyestrain has affected my neck muscles and this has aggravated the spondylosis in the cervical vertebrae. I am taking paracetamol and ibuprofen. I don't think that the latter is agreeing with me too well.

Sick father-in-law and dilemma

My father-in-law is in hospital. Dan contacted his middle sister to ask if the old man is fit enough to travel tomorrow and she told him that he has been admitted to Southampton General with breathing problems. The hospital will run many tests; it seems his chest is "crackling". That sounds like pneumonia to me.  I shall suggest that we visit him on Monday afternoon.

I know how desperately he misses Elizabeth, his second wife and my daughter's much-loved step-grandma. They were married for twenty years and together for twenty-one. She gave him happiness and companionship and those things are so important. It was because of that marriage that Dan developed a good relationship with his father.

I have chosen the above picture because my father-in-law's name is Patrick, he is Irish and a cradle Catholic. Elizabeth was a pillar of the Church of England. I think that at one time she considered converting to Catholicism but that did not happen. My late mother-in-law was a convert. Elizabeth was one of the best people I have ever known and a sincere Christian. My mother-in-law was punctilious in the observance of her religion but made me think of Martin Luther attaining heaven by sheer monkery. By the end of her life I had given up on that relationship.

My dilemma is that I do not know what to do about my son. He railed at me in a vicious, spiteful letter that I could have let him know that Elizabeth had died and that his grandfather was ill. My last communication (and I told him it would be the last ever) pointed out that he had not let us know his new email address and had told me to stay out of his life. He had sent nasty messages on Facebook about his sister's death and funeral. I had let him know about her death in a roundabout way. He had never bothered with her; he has never bothered with his grandfather, although I asked him several times to come to Sunday lunch and see his grandfather and Elizabeth. Has he the right to know if his grandfather dies? Would he want to come to his funeral? If he did come, would he make an unpleasant scene? I simply do not know what to do. I suppose that if Paddy asks for Neil, we must contact him somehow and arrange to take him to the hospital. I wonder if his father will agree to this.

We visited the nursing home this afternoon and I gave Sandra, the head of activities, a bottle of wine that we had brought back from France. She is so good and takes pains with the old man. He ate a lot of chocolate buttons, white and milk. He has decided that he does not like doughnuts and refused the chocolate-iced one that I had got for him. He had had a cup of tea and cake before we arrived. Neil used to visit him, sometimes with me and sometimes alone. What became of my good, gentle sensitive son?

Coping and continuing to function

I am home for a few hours as I have agreed to work the afternoon in the charity shop. I went in as usual, taking the box of biscuits that I bought in Leclerc. I stayed for an hour or so and then came home via the health stores where I buy most of my breakfast cereals. I also visited some of the other charity shops in the town.

Yesterday Dan went to Alresford to play petanque as usual. I did not visit my aged uncle as my left eye is still sore. Around 5.30 Dan's cousin and his wife arrived. We had a very pleasant meal together at the local ASK Italian restaurant. Philip is a very eminent professor of astronomy. We have visited him in La Palma, off the coast of Tenerife and Cape Town, where he was leading important projects. He and Anne have twin sons. It was good to see them and catch up on their travels and activities.  Anne is a scientific programmer and they met when Philip went to NASA. She is an American from Dublin, Pennsylvania. We have an invitation to visit them in Oxford.

I had my second vitrectomy on Monday afternoon. It went well. I was not so heavily anaesthetised this time and conversed a little with the surgeon. During cataract surgery one is conscious all the time and can make conversation with the surgeon's team. I am now washing my hands more times than Lady Macbeth in order to carry out the regime of eye drops. I have antibiotics four times a day for a week and anti-inflammatory drops four times a day for four weeks. When I go out I wear dark glasses. The pupil of the left eye is still a little dilated, making the vision fuzzy.

I have some emails to which I must reply. One is from my cousin in Melbourne, one from an old school friend and the other from my friend Adele. She and I met in Kingston, NY in 1974. Our respective husbands were both assigned to the IBM plant in that little town in the foothills of the Catskill mountains. We would have got on well together however we had met and have been firm friends ever since. Adele separated from her husband in 1976 and has not  married again. She has come close to it twice but remains single. At my daughter's funeral my three oldest friends were present; one from schooldays, one from civil service days, one from IBM assignment days. I value them all.

The weather is getting warmer. It has been very cold during our absence in France. I left the warm quilt on our bed and am glad that I did. I think that I shall change it next week. Tomorrow is chores day; ironing and polishing the silver. My dining room is going to be complete sometime in the summer. I am looking for a little table for the living room and for lamps for the dining room. There remains one room, the smallest (or smaller) bedroom, that needs a new oak floor. Dan uses it as a study/ office. It still has the rather horrid carpet that was there when we bought the flat. This, too, will come to pass. Patience.