CAN'T SLEEP - WON'T SLEEP

Another night lying awake til almost dawn, when my body usually gives up and falls into a restless slumber, with my mind still racing to catch up with it as it tries to shut down, my brain almost hallucinating with this internal struggle.

Evening after wretched evening I sit at my desk staring at the lap-top, hoping for inspiration to write something worthwhile, which will strike a chord with someone other than my self-indulgent alter-ego. By day I am a reasonably sane grandmother and educationalist; doing my work and looking after my family, ranging in age from 1 to 91, as best I can and as many of my generation do. But as night threatens, and my ageing body tries hard to tell me it needs rest, I become some sort of dement, and find myself ensuring that its pleas fall on deaf ears (well one deaf ear anyway, now my right-hand one has given up the ghost).

But so often inspiration will not come; the creative, amusing and positive ideas I crave appear fleetingly at the back of my mind, just out of reach, and leave a huge gap in my consciousness big enough to allow admittance to those thoughts which I am trying to keep at bay. In they seep and fill my head, forcing me to face the cares and sadnesses I am trying to ignore.

Eleven o’clock: my husband, now in what should have been the first year of retirement, is facing his own fears and dread of the next day when he must again go off to a hateful job which has doubled in size and halved in pay over the last few months, and has already gone to bed worn out. He calls out wearily as he mounts the stairs ‘Night, see you later’, but he knows he will have fallen into an exhausted sleep before I join him in the marital bed.

Twelve o’clock: Mother’s Day has ended as midnight strikes on Radio 4 and my page is still blank; I try a little surfing, looking at my erstwhile passionate interests – genealogy, history, poetry – anything to take my mind off what I should be dealing with. But to no avail. My enthusiasm has waned with the daylight, and in rush those thoughts and worries, reminding me of the practicalities I should be taking care of rather than indulging in self pity and trying to live in a fantasy world. How useless I feel. I do indeed have much to deal with at present : but no more than many, and certainly less than friends and relations who also have debilitating illnesses to cope with on a daily basis. How selfish I am. So why can’t I cope any more?

One o’clock. I re-read what I, or someone that used to be me, has apparently just written. Who is this woman, and why is she like this?

Two o’clock. Still staring at the words bobbing on the moon-bright face of the screen in front of me. Then suddenly I know. I know why I cannot sleep.

I can’t sleep because I do not want to wake. I do not want to wake and have to face once again the things left undone, and the things I really must do tomorrow, or the tomorrow after if I can put them off yet again. Two months ago I did not want to face the decision to admit my beloved frail Father to the Nursing Home he should really have been in for at least a year. Now I have taken that terrible step, I do not want to have to face the clearing out of his home, where he lived with my late mother for almost 60 years, and where I grew up. I do not want to face my husbands despair at his outrageous treatment at work, the bills to pay and the helplessness he feels as his own mother’s health fails; but most of all I do no want to face the reality of my child and her beloved family choosing to leave this godforsaken country to start a new life in America.

If I go to sleep that day will come all the sooner. It is a totally irrational thought. Am I going mad or what? The decision is made, visas stamped, house sold. There is nothing I can do but try to smile and be supportive. Will this realisation help? I think not. Mother’s Day is over. It is so hard.

Three o’clock. I mount the stairs, knowing I should at least try to give my spouse some comfort, for in my selfish sorrow I overlook the fact that this is his grief too – being a man he tries to rationalise everything and point out why this is in fact the right decision for our daughter’s family. Being a woman I already know it is right in one way, but I cannot accept it is right overall.

Three-thirty. I lay at my partner’s side as he stirs and groans in his sleep.

I can’t sleep. I won’t sleep.