Asunder?

Stewart has been shown how to clean my PICC line and flush it out; it's really not rocket science or cutting edge care but I suppose it marks another milestone in our relationship. If I think about the changes he has had to endure in me over the years they far outweigh the greying, growing and slight sagging that has been his metamorphosis. He must look over at me these mornings and see the same greying, growing and sagging but topped with a bald head, a body riddled in deep scars, a fat leg and now an arm with contraptions on; not to mention the ravages of four pregnancies and about three years of breast feeding.

He sees the me beyond all of this thank goodness just as I don't count the white hairs or the reductions in his thunder thighs but look for the twinkle in his eye and the twist of his humour. It's been pretty clear in this blog that it's the thought of leaving my kids that brings the quickest tear to my eye; it just does. I try to think about leaving Stewart behind but I can't formulate it in my mind. I think he will be coming with me and that is just daft. Certainly the he that is he that is us will but he will be left and shattered and forever different. But I still can't conceive of it.

There is a beautiful place near our French house called Limeuil, we go there for picnics by the river and for the annual pottery fair where we always buy something even though we have no bloody room in either house. If you walk up the hill it's one of les plus belles villages de France but the wonder of it is the river or rivers, I should say, as it's where the Vezere meets the Dordogne and they become one river. They are both massive and brown and godlike; they rumble and bicker together as they meet then merge with little flurries over rocks and banks. Just a way up from the picnic site there would be no way of separating one from the other, their weeds are each others, the fish can't tell the difference. If one were to dry up there would still be all the life from the other from before that would be impossible to disentwine. So is that like us; yes and no; no because rivers can't feel and miss and want; yes because we are one troublesome, mucky thing, sometimes out of control and sometimes deep and beautiful; but, it has proved, always feeling the pull to be together.