Staying connected as best we can

My brother Peter recently emailed a photo of his grandson Tom Porter, a handsome young man whom my grandchildren have never met. Our family is like many others in Canada, a migratory family starting a new 'dynasty' in this country. In many ways the scattering of genes widely about the world is a good thing, biologically, socially, culturally; but it's sad that it necessarily means many of those born into the next generation don't know and may never even meet their close kin who are the offspring of the siblings who stayed in the land of their birth. That's a cumbersome, clumsy way to put it; to make it more personal, my three grandchildren have never met their close relations in Australia and New Zealand, and unless they travel or their second cousins down under travel overseas, they never will meet. It's not harmed them or their peace of mind but it saddens me a little and I think it saddens my brother too.

Lately we have had several emails, letters and phone calls from relatives and friends, commenting on things I've posted on this blog. The blog, of course, started as a way to stay in touch with many who are close to us by blood ties or long-standing friendships, and with whom our present circumstances make it difficult to stay in close personal touch by letters, emails or phone calls. Wendy isn't able any longer to maintain the vigorous flow of letters to her family members and many friends as she has done as long as I've known her. Letters between us bound us together, and both she and I have always loved writing and receiving letters. Nowadays that custom of writing letters has begun to die out, replaced by emails, or interrupted by the death of the person at one end of the correspondence. It's just about impossible for me to find the time to write 'personal' emails now that I spend so much time caring for Wendy, so it's comforting to have confirmation that at least some of the most important former recipients of our letters have been reading the posts on this blog.

In the past few days I have in fact found time to send personal emails to a few family members and close friends with updates on Janet Wendy's condition. I mention it infrequently in these blog posts because there's not much to report. We have a personal support worker who comes in at present four days a week (not on Fridays because I help her get up early, one of her friends collects her at 9.30, and drives her to her Scrabble game). On the other week days the support worker has taken over my task of helping her to get up, accompanying her for her daily dip in our swimming pool, and dressed for the day; the support worker, a delightful, cheerful Canadian born lass of Jamaican origin, also administers one or two of the daily ritual of fully inflating her lungs with a resuscitation bag. She is slowly getting weaker and more stooped as her spinal muscles waste away, her speech is more often hard to understand, especially when she is tired; and she sleeps more and more of each day, unless there is some compelling reason for her to remain awake, as there was last weekend when Wendy and Ivon Hurst were visiting. We also have regular visits from the community nurse, the occupational therapist, and Louise Coulombe, our palliative care physician, intermittent visits, emails or phone calls from a nice lady who works for the ALS Society, and we visit the ALS clinic about every other month, or when they ask us to come for a special assessment, as they have for instance in a couple of weeks to try her on a machine to assist her breathing. She remains adamantly opposed to any assistive devices like a feeding tube, and as her ability to swallow food and fluids is becoming more precarious, this travail that she is cheerfully enduring may not be very long-lasting. The most important thing is that most of the time she is in good spirits, cheerful, engaged with the world around her; and she has no pain or distress. We can't ask for much more than that.

Now for something completely different. There's a bizarre criminal case unfolding in Canada. The commander of the largest military air base in Canada was arrested a few months ago. He was charged with murdering two young women, and with two counts of break and enter. Today he was charged with 82 additional break and enter offences and it was disclosed that the charges relate specifically to stealing women's underwear -- an act that was called "snow-dropping" in Australia when I was a boy (I suppose the etymology or provenance of the term comes from the usual colour of women's underwear in those days). It all has to be proved in court of course, and if it is it will emerge that this formerly senior military officer is afflicted with a rather obscure underwear fetish that went badly wrong for the two unfortunate women who died. It's very sad, especially for the two young women who died. No doubt the sordid details will keep Canadian tongues wagging for a while to come.