Wordsley, Stourbridge, England: 5 degrees, sunny, overcast and rainy-everything imaginable and always cold.
A Sunday full of surprises!
Yesterday, I arranged with the head nurse at the hospital that before my mother is sent home by ambulance, someone would call me to inform me and to help me prepare for her arrival.
It is midday and I haven’t received any call yet. As it is very cold, drizzly and terrible, shitty weather I thought that probably it would be postponed for tomorrow for my mother to come back home. I was also set on buying an electric hair trimmer, as I have already been to a barbershop in England twice now, and I don’t like paying a barber.
If I am going to stay in England for a while, I don’t want to spend £10 every two weeks on a Barber. I have also tried this time to stay a while without cutting my hair and letting it grow, but I don’t feel right; I hate it, it makes me feel uncomfortable. I’ve got used to having short hair for too long.
It’s a little strange that I don’t like paying for a barber because my mother’s father, the grandfather that I never knew, who died two or three years before I was born, was a barber, but for me, paying money to a barber is just throwing money down the drain.
I also think that a middle-aged to elderly man with long curly hair is not a traditional male role; it should be short and tidy, just that. A man who spends so much money on a perfect haircut that in two weeks will be like any other haircut is just too vain for me.
On the second day of arriving in England, my mother took me to Sainsbury’s, a famous supermarket chain in England, which has a branch in Withymoor, just a 5-minute drive from where my mother lives. There I saw a whole shelf of different models, styles and prices for hair shears or trimmers.
As I left home, it began to drizzle slightly. I decided to give up and go to the local precinct, the square on the green. As I was returning, the rain had stopped, so I decided to walk to the supermarket, using Google Maps for directions. My route took me along the canal and through some fields. After about three miles and almost an hour of walking, I finally arrived at the supermarket.
The supermarket was full, and luckily, the same models of hair shears were still there. After a couple of minutes’ thought, I chose one that was neither the cheapest nor the most expensive but offered the best value for the money.
As I walked back, I found it strange that no one had called me about my mother returning home, which meant I would have one more day alone. Little did I know that when I arrived home, to my surprise, my mother was already there, installed and settled in her armchair in the back living room. She seemed a little tired and confused, but she was OK.
So now the work begins!
She has had a knee replacement operation that, for the first two weeks post-surgery, will be very painful. Any surgery is excruciating for its invasive nature, and immediately after it is the worst time, obviously, but in theory, every day after should get better, easier and less painful.
Once I watched a film with the actress Greena Davis, where she played a hit woman, a contract killer. During the film, her colleague was shot and wounded. She told her colleague to accept the pain; she said that when you accept the pain, it becomes easier and you suffer less. For me, this is true for everything, including life.
Instead of complaining or victimising the situation, it’s better to get your act together and live in the moment. Even though it’s painful or you’re suffering because of it, you learn that if you’re intelligent, eventually things will improve, and the pain will subside.
I’m trying to show my mother that each day will get better with less pain. There’s not much difference between knee surgery and life itself, and it’s not that I am being insensitive to my mother’s pain; it’s just the reality.
Many times in my life, when alone in Brazil and facing a complicated situation, I would always think to myself that it would get better, no matter what. If it weren’t better today, it would be better tomorrow. If it’s not better tomorrow, it will be better the day after, until it gets better, and that’s the reality of life.
I cooked dinner, my mother said that she liked it, and nobody died!
In bed by 11 p.m.
Thank you.
Thanks for reading this blog post. Please explore my other posts and share your thoughts in the comments section.
Richard
