'Lost in the system that forces our hand'

I’ve cried buckets this week.

My mum thinks I’m pregnant because I can’t stop crying and keeps ranting at me that any hope of a decent wedding dress is dripping away.

I know I’m not pregnant. I know I’m just emotional because I can’t stop thinking about Gloria’s funeral. I don’t usually go to the funerals of my patients, but Claire (another patient) asked me if I would take her. She’s waiting for a place in a nursing home as she needs support to manage her cancer, and she wanted to pay a special tribute to Gloria.

Gloria had touched everyone’s lives on Eden Bay for the short period that she had been there and she had become particularly close to Claire. Gloria’s husband was living in a nursing home, but had been too frail himself to attend the funeral of his beloved wife. Claire told me that she couldn’t do anything further to help Gloria but she wanted to help her husband in any way she could.
So, she’d written a poem – and she made everyone weep.

Every time I think about it, I cry again. Claire let me have the poem after the funeral and I showed it to Matt – he cried too.
This was what Claire wrote…

‘I’m seventy now, some say old some say frail,

But please take a minute to hear my tale

I’ve not always been this bald or so grey

With hours of nothing to fill my sad day

I once was a soldier, so honoured and proud

To serve my great country and all it allowed

From peacetime to conflict, I experienced it all

And saw friends who I served with, take bullets and fall

The images are there, so fresh in my head

As I wept over graves as we buried our dead.

But don’t get me wrong, there were times of great fun

Where we drank and we laughed and laid down the big gun

For joining the force was a pleasure and joy

Where the man evolved, from the soul of the boy

Who learnt to love and live for the moment,

Not knowing the next could be filled with great torment.

And then came along the love of my life

How happy she made me, my beautiful wife

With love in our hearts we read out our vows

To love and to cherish, both then and still now

The children arrived in a blink of an eye

And bonded our lives and our love til we die

She’s gone now, my love, she left me too soon

As she drifted away to the stars and the moon

Still worried about me and wanting to care

But knowing this life we could no longer share

The girls are grown up now with girls of their own

And the days become longer, sitting alone

I’m old and I’m frail, or that’s what they say

As they prod me and poke me, so quiet I lay

For there is no point shouting, there’s no-one to hear

There’s no-one to listen, there’s only this fear

That if nobody bothers to see who I was

I’ll soon be a nobody, once loved but now lost

Lost in the system that forces our hand

To graze in a care home in this once great land

For I may be old and I may now be frail

But my heart is still strong and my feelings not pale

So, look at my life, look straight into my eyes

I’m a soldier; this body is just a disguise’ 

There wasn’t a dry eye in the church. Claire, in her magical way, had brought Gloria’s husband to the funeral – not as the frail man he is now, but as the strong soldier and the love of Gloria’s life.
It’s made such an impact on the way I’m starting to see things. I almost feel (God forbid) that I’m starting to grow up. I look at my own parents and realise that they were once young, like me, but that they might grow to be like Gloria and Eddie. To be fair, I’m sure Mum was always a dragon, just with less wrinkles and her own set of teeth!

I’m looking at Matt differently too. I don’t want us to grow old –there’s not a lot we can do about it but we can stay young at heart. I know he’s the one for me, and he tells me I’m the only girl for him, so we’ve got to start looking at life with fresh eyes, because too soon it will be over.

So, I’m thinking, I might just defy Mum and do things arse about face! I’d love a little family of my own and I know Matt would too. The naughty part of my brain thinks that I might just enjoy being a fat bride…as long as the tummy was only temporary…like 9 months kind of temporary!