Makaton, anyone?!

I am still staring down both barrels of a bug, a viral infection if you like...

On Wednesday, sitting forlorn at my desk in the office, feeling sorry for myself after a hectic day on Tuesday (more laters...), I was busy writing notes to others, saying what I wanted to say.

Reason being, after over two weeks of melancholy and a throat that feels as if a wild otter has been stocking up on dry sticks ready for the winter and stuffing spiky twigs down my throat (!), I had decided that I would aim for a day of total rest for my voice. This following a doctor's advice given to me last year when I was suffering a similar malaise.

"Rest your voice completely, Fhina. No talking!"

For Fhina, that takes some doing, I can tell yer!

(Incidentally, my husband has been smiling and singing to himself ever since I mentioned taking this temporary vow of silence...)

So, in preparation, I had hand-written (in pink ink, what else?!) my first explanatory note to colleagues, setting out why I would be signing and gesticulating today rather than speaking.

My boss, the dahlink wag, asked me if I knew any Makaton?! I didn't but I sharp Googled it, and I figure that if I want my shoes heeled by a deaf and mute cobbler any time soon, I'll be well ready!

I was trying to get on with some work on the computer, having already signalled by e-mails to my close colleagues my intention du jour to take a vow of silence, when another colleague/friend ambled by...

She gabbled away, as we do, asking for my advice on a piece of internal work we are both engaged upon. I flushed and signed apology, mouthing the words... I held up my first note, and scribbled another, words patchwork-style on plain paper, setting out - briefly - what we needed to do.

Rosie-Roo apologised profusely and backed away, sorry to have troubled me. This made me feel sad again, like I was some faded Drama Queen withdrawing from the world at large: "I vont to be alone...", she lamented.

I got on with the day's work, getting quite a bit done with so few interruptions, but still feeling rotten and pretty isolated from the usual witty repartee of others. Colleagues smiled widely and nodded kindly all about me, showing their sympathy with my plight and selective mutism.

After lunch, when I had chosen my provisions and paid for them through a self-service checkout so I didn't have to silently mouth 'please' or 'thank you' to a member of the retail team, I slithered back to my desk festooned with supplies of Vitamin C, TCP, Ibuprofen, Soluble Aspirin, and throat lozenges.

Can't tell you what I smelled like after gargling with TCP, but I have a GBF who swears by it. Needless to say, I won't be getting many romantic offers this week...

Rosie-Roo sidled up to my desk again, advising me what she had been up to viz our work task, smiling while sliding a tiny pink and lilac bouquet in cellophane over the desk to me... She thanked me quietly for some words of succour I'd offered her last Friday, and said she hoped I'd feel better soon.

I took the flowers from her, lost for words, tears pricking my eyes, wanting so to speak.

I was mouthing, how lovely of you, how sweet, how kind, how very unnecessary, given that the words I shared with Rosie were no more than I would offer anyone on any day. Heck, I might even be dropping my own worries into her listening ear very soon - It's been such a stressful time for us at work, for long months, with more to come...

I put my thoughts and thanks in writing to her, sending an e-mail full of my warm wishes for her, my belief in her great strengths and fortitude to face what lies ahead of us.

How often do we do that, mes bloggy loves?

Put our thoughts in writing, on paper, to others. We sometimes mouth platitudes in this life, don't we?

Maybe I'm wrong and, as bloggers, we write even more than I imagine, but I felt that even though I had little voice I could still say what I wanted to say in writing, even if we sometimes find we have to be more careful with what we actually put down in black and white, so it isn't misconstrued or taken in vain...

My own thoughts go to my late mother, who once told me that, when she was younger, although the doctors could find no rhyme or reason for it, she hadn't been able speak for two years. Then one day, she just began again.

I wish I had been able to ask her more about her condition, but being brought up in the Sixties and coming from protestant, strong, working-class stock, you didn't much discuss the war, the past, anxieties, mental health issues and other vulnerabilities.

Be safe, my friends. Travel well this weekend. Hold words and signs of love about you like warm, velvet stoles...

Mediation and Mental Health...

Portrait at the white rat by Anne-Julie Aubry - Beauty and the Ratty Beast...

Our solicitor, a professional litigator as it turned out, was petite, professional yet ditzy, and comfortably feisty and reassuring.

She clicked into action, examining the will and my late father's wishes.

I wept in her office. I wept there a lot.

She could have charged me water rates.

She probably did...

We went through what would happen, what could happen, what might happen, what had happened historically (viz Dombey and Son!), what was her experience of legal cases such as this... Did he have any other properties? A villa abroad. A caravan in Skegness...

My dad's wishes, as I knew them from his words to me from his sick-bed, the first time he fell ill, were for his partner to remain in their home if he pre-deceased her. But the house and his small remaining estate (his trinkets and treasures) were to be mine, my son's and my husband's.

I would then continue to pay for the upkeep of the house, while she remained there. The solicitor thought some of this to be a little odd...

So did my family given, they opined, she had property of her own.

But such were his wishes...

And I would honour them...

I began to deal with the bills that remained to be paid... I did so much while I returned to work, and then my solicitor took over. She stepped into the breach as his partner began to try to pass off utility and other bills that were really hers, not his...

...She tried to convince my dad's bank that she was his wife, his widow. She was ringing the bank the day that I went in with his details and his certificate of death in order to have the accounts frozen, as we must do... 'What right had I to be asking them for information?'

She opened a new account in the same bank there and then, while still having another account, her own, with another bank... This would make things easier, she said...

And they began to be very difficult with me...

Then, the afternoon that we were sitting in my dad's home, discussing the service to come with the, oh-so-patient, retired vicar, she started to go through the falsehood of searching for their 'mislaid' marriage certificate to give to him. It had never existed, of course...

I understand this, but found it all very trying... Exhausting...

To be called a liar, deemed troublesome, having to prove all the time that my steps were legal, and that I was executing what were my father's last wishes...

I got hold of the briefcase, in fact, one grey, distraught and distressing afternoon... I looked around the cluttered room at things that were his and I thought, maybe I'll never see those things again - I wanted to touch the last thing he touched, to handle his little black leather coin purse, to hold the silver keyring I'd given him from Christmas, where I told him with its engraving, just how much he meant to all of us...

...She went on to ring pension companies and the state, often at the same time as me. She said that she was owed his pension. 'Where was her share?' I tried to explain to her, while I was still speaking to her, and working in the government machinery myself -- She already had one widow's pension from the state after the loss of her 'first husband'.

She would not be entitled to any second pension from my father's estate. That would be illegal, unlawful... She told me I didn't know what I was talking about and that the pension department had said she was getting some of his pension... That was because she had misrepresented herself to them... I couldn't tell her thus.

She began to scream at my solicitor down the 'phone... Things became increasingly difficult for me to deal with. And it all became too much for me to bear at some stage and, at his request, I passed all the dealing with her, and her family, on to GJ, for his broad shoulders to bear...

In time, I returned to work. She would ring me on my mobile at work while I was in meetings, frantically shouting and just generally being awful... I began not to answer any of my 'phones that showed her telephone number, my old home number, on the screen...

It got to the point, where I became increasingly phobic about answering the 'phone at home...

Today, four years on, if you ring my home number, I might not even answer.

Please bear with me if that happens...

And please forgive me for going on and on, but these words and your comments are the glue that is keeping parts of me together as a whole at the moment... I love you. I hope you're having a nice break this Easter holiday... I send you all my best wishes - Mwah! x