Do you ever get to a point in a day when you just can't decide in which direction to go? Well this evening is one of those evenings for me.
I played croquet this morning. It was a doubles match with my club partner. We won the first game easily but lost the next two. I'm very fortunate that I am playing well at the moment. I'm on form and I have been having quite a lot of practice. A far cry from the start of the season. However my partner seems to be in a reverse situation with other aspects of her life taking over. She has achieved more than any other player I have known in the time she has been playing and I am sure that she could go on to represent New Zealand if she put her mind to it. But she seems to have lost both the will and the form. And in a month we will be playing in the championship doubles in the Nationals with the top players. Not a place for being either off form nor lacking in will. A show of lack of interest in front of the selectors will not do her future any favours.
So I left croquet this morning feeling very dispirited. Not for me. I'm happy where I am. But for my partner. to lose such an opportunity would be such a waste of talent.
I had lunch with Wendy and the children in the sun at the Café Ahuriri. That was really good.
But this evening I am really in the doldrums and I have no particular idea why. I suspect that it may be a combination of events.
Yesterday late afternoon I met, for the first time for well over a year, a friend of Wendy's who is just recovering from very severe and invasive chemotherapy. She was radiant. Having spent so much time in a cancer hospital I am used to chemo-caused hair loss. So I wasn't phased by her lack of hair. But the cruelty of the loss of a fabulous and abundant head of glorious red hair must have hit hard. It brought home to me the seen consequence of the illness. For we rarely see the nausea and horrendous feelings cancer causes.
So when I woke in the middle of the night because my UK mobile phone had sounded an incoming text I was expecting the worst news of a friend in Scotland who has just had an operation (his third) to remove a brain tumor. In actual fact the phone had not gone off. It was a dream. As I was returning to sleep it went off - for real this time - and the news wasn't good. He has meningitis and has lost his hearing.
And so this evening as I try and work out what to eat I cannot even get my mind to concentrate on that.
Later. I ate bread, cheese, tomato and banana. Somehow it just arrived on the plate and I ate it.
And now I shall try and pull myself together. In circumstances like this feeling sorrow does no good either to me or to those for whom I feel that sorrow. I have a dear friend for whom I think positive thoughts every day. I promised I would and I do. I know that she has the genuine faith that those thoughts help. But a devout friend said to me recently that she knew I didn't believe but she had to go to a particular Mass for the sick (the name of which I do not know). She felt that it may not do any good but it helped her.
I know how I feel. It's just come to me. I feel so totally useless and unable to help those whom I love. I don't like that.
