Tuesday, February 16, 2016

Carry on to the Care Home

Us personas have been rather ravaged this last while. Our dear Vicky, who put up with us for over thirty years, has taken a room in the spotless surroundings of a care home. It was not really her decision, and ours rather reluctantly, but was begrudgingly the outcome of health issues we could not cope with. We are laid to waste, guilt, anxiety, depression, all giving us their undivided attention.

As luck will have it, we can walk to her new abode in twenty minutes which we do every day. It is our task, when we arrive, to keep the Martians at bay. They seem to roam the halls of such establishments, confounding the fears of the residents and confounding the staff with their trickery, always able to hide just out of sight, these little green aliens whose intent is not always that clear. We were going to bring a bazooka or a giant pea shooter, but the staff thought it best to use psychological warfare in the battle. We will have to hone up on our apocryphal skills and read up on Martian invasion strategies, it seems we may be mired in this oppugner for some time to come.

It leaves us in a vacuum here at Deathrock Apartments. We personas have all taken our turn at nurturing our dear Vicky over the last several years as her mind gained the joys of otherworldliness. When one of us became overwhelmed, another persona could take over and offer a fresh approach. Luckily, the local drunk has not been around for years and years, or things might have taken a turn. Her three cats, the orange ones, have laid the claims to her bed, although one morning as we peeked through the slightly open door after a bit of a scurcuffle they looked rather grey and later they turned black and white after which we put on our spectacles to see they were really just orange. Several of us personas think there may actually be nine cats living here, and we are attempting to scientifically set up some experiment to put an end once and for all to this mystery. Our Vicky would be smiling from ear to ear at our endeavours.

We sort of miss our Vicky, her ear always open to discussions on current affairs, the recent developments in nuclear fusion or the beaming and reassuring face of our new Prime Minister. Her broad smile at our dissertations was always confidence building even though we all knew she didn't have a clue what we were disseminating about. It seems there is a higher, some may call it spiritual, aspect to human communication beyond the legal meaning of our diction.

We are slowly teaching our bullheaded sense of humour to shut up about how we rode Betsy the cow over three foot snow banks from far out in the bush to arrive in the big city to pop out of the elevator where our Vicky sits waiting for us to pop in. We are learning to sit quietly and listen to the stories, the memories from childhood which consume her thoughts. And then she asks us if we have a story to tell her, and we relate a tidbit from our childhood and we laugh at our silliness from years and years ago, and our bond continues in a mysterious way. When we leave she comes to the elevator with us and we wave farewell as the closing doors pop us out of existence. It is with relief that we see her heading enthusiastically down the hall to some unknown adventure. She has adjusted to her new home.

All us personas decided we must pull ourselves together by our bootstraps and continue with some sort of life, and since we know no other we will continue to ravage the earth with much tomfoolery and misadventure as we attempt to deal with a slight maladjustment to capitalism, organized religion, male chauvinism, and politics to awkwardly bring justice to humanities forsaken. If we fail we fail so be it, our Vicky has a big enough smile to save us all.

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