I visited George\u2019s wife in hospital today. I hadn\u2019t seen George since I cancelled lunch with him and wondered how he was. \u201cFine,\u201d she said. And after a while: \u201c\u2026but lonely.\u201d<\/p>\n
I knew she had let other people know about this predicament of his. She thought he was alright during the daytime, doing as much riding as he could. Not at the moment, alas, because he had a lot of work. His job. The worst was, I gathered, coming back from hospital and facing the evening at home, alone. He had told me himself that this was what he dreaded. \u201cHe is used to having people around him,\u201d she went on. \u201cWe always had the house full of people, and now it\u2019s quiet.\u201d He hates being on his own in a quiet house. He doesn\u2019t like it on his own in general. He didn\u2019t enjoy walking round Paris museums. He would have liked somebody to \u201cshare his experience with\u201d, he had said. \u201cOf course you need company,\u201d he insisted, \u201cit\u2019s human.\u201d And he takes his wife out of hospital twice a week, although it\u2019s a great strain for him, he complained about it bitterly more than once.<\/p>\n
I asked his wife what she thought could be done for him. She said people should invite him to their houses. I pointed out one could do it occasionally, not as a habit. He would have to return home in the end in any case; no getting away from that.<\/p>\n
\u201cYes,\u201d she said, \u201cbut not facing a whole long evening.\u201d I told her that I felt tired in the evening, after a day\u2019s work; my husband came home from work late; I had to provide a meal for him, and by the time everything was cleared up and put away it was 8.30 p.m. She smiled sweetly saying that this was exactly the time George came home from hospital\u2026 I said I didn\u2019t feel like entertaining when I was tired.<\/p>\n
Quite a long time ago I had spent an evening with him. He had after all decided to tell his wife about it. He showed me a film I had wanted to see and was wearing a tie for the occasion. We sat in two armchairs side by side. He held my hand and kissed it from time to time. Then he noticed I had become involved with the film and left me to it. Eventually my husband came to collect me. He had some of the grapes we had left and tried to watch T.V. \u2013 we don\u2019t have it \u2013 while George was talking to him.<\/p>\n
I have whiled away time for him on a great number of occasions. I had numerous lunches in his house\u2026 His wife is by no means supposed to know about this. He talked about his problems most of the time. His schizophrenic life spent half in hospital, half out of it. The fact that his wife wanted him in hospital all the time.
\nThat he couldn\u2019t possibly accept this. Life passing without him doing anything worthwhile, a maddening idea. She had changed into a different person, a very egocentric one, under the impact of the disease, and while he was perfectly willing to look after her, he didn\u2019t want to miss real life. He didn\u2019t want to be ordered about by a sick person all the time, and yet he was bound to her. She had accepted his horse in the end, even giving him riding-tack for his birthday. However\u2026 Poor man!<\/p>\n
His wife said he wouldn\u2019t leave her now in the evening. \u201cI want to stay here,\u201d he had said to her, \u201cI don\u2019t want to go home.\u201d \u201cGood for you,\u201d I laughed. She smiled.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
I visited George\u2019s wife in hospital today. I hadn\u2019t seen George since I cancelled lunch with him and wondered how he was. \u201cFine,\u201d she said. And after a while: \u201c\u2026but lonely.\u201d I knew she had let other people know about this predicament of his. She thought he was alright during the daytime, doing as much […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-88","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reading-aloud"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.d-c-k.com\/Readingaloud1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.d-c-k.com\/Readingaloud1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.d-c-k.com\/Readingaloud1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.d-c-k.com\/Readingaloud1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.d-c-k.com\/Readingaloud1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=88"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.d-c-k.com\/Readingaloud1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/88\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.d-c-k.com\/Readingaloud1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=88"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.d-c-k.com\/Readingaloud1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=88"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.d-c-k.com\/Readingaloud1\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=88"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}