Ray is back home again. I went and picked him up this morning. The nurse who signed off on his respite said he had been no trouble and they had loved having him. I got her to look at the "incident report" and she said he hadn't had any falls etc. No good asking Ray as he would always say "no". But he seems okay. Of course by lunchtime he had already had one change as he didn't make it all the way to the toilet because of the walk in from the verandah which is I guess longer than he has been walking from the chair to the ensuite in his bedroom. That is possibly the only execise he has had in the past fortnight. Only time will tell if this will be our "new normal".

It was good to have last week to myslf. I didn't go to the movies or have a swim. I did sleep a little later some mornings and I actually got to sleep right through the night which is rare when Ray is home. I didn't do all I had planned with the house and garden as we did have some rainy days. I am reluctant to say it but the dust bunnies are still happy in their burrows under the bed in the spare room. I did do some thinking about life, read a couple of novels, did some extra phoning of friends and tidied out some drawers. I always think a whole week to myself will somehow translate into a sparkling immaculate house but that doesn't happen. C'est la vie!

I have been back on chat and posting again. My computer is down again, it was only a patched job anyway and so I have been using Trev's again. He has been looking for work, he did a friends carpets last week and this weekend did some welding on his old truck. He is quite a jack-of-all trades now, he can fix computers, do some mechanical work, a bit of building etc. I hope he can find a job that uses some of those skills. It is a falling job market here though. No real reason as our stock market is recovering and we are still all buying goods,eating etc. I hope this depresssion/recession, whatever it is doesn't last too long.

I sat in church yesterday and listened to the sermon, I was hearing it for the second time as it was the same as Saturday night's sermon. In the Saturday night service we renew our baptismal vows and light the "new fire". It is service with a lot of singing and yet is very prayerful too. It is the last of the reflective services. Easter Sunday service is all alleluias and bouncy music. On Saturday night with the candles burning etc it was good to just sit and relax and listen. It is not something I get to do often, just listen, as mostly I have to be aware of other things happening about the place.

The theme of the sermon was unfinished business and it was pointed out that in the Scriptures there are a lot of stories without endings. In many cases we don't know what happened, we can draw conclusions and make a guess or we can just accept that life is full of uneasy endings and events where we will have to be content not to know what happened next. We were reminded that in our own lives we have many regrets about all those things we ought to have done and didn't, all our good intentions that somehow didn't turn out the way we had planned, all the tasks we had had to walk away from before they were completed. I could relate a lot to that. How many plans I have made that I have never been able to put into action because our circumstances have changed. That is where I am a lot of the time now.

The conclusion was that as human beings we have to learn to live with the unsatisfactory endings and the unfinished business in our lives. That we have to live with our current realities and we don't live in happy-ever-after-land. It may be difficult not to be abe to control events and turn everything into a happy ending but it is part and parcel of the life we lead. I do so agree with that, I felt as if the sermon was being preached for me. One day I might even let it sink so far into my sub-conscience that I actually do see that my controlling life isn't an option here. It is again about accepting life as it is and doing the best I can within it's limitations.

I thought that in my later years I would be a little old lady who was full of wit and wisdom, who had most of life sussed out. It seems I, like everyone else, am still on a learning curve. I don't have all the answers and I have yet to hear all the questions. Ten years of caregiving has taken me down a path less travelled but it is by no means a path that leads to a quiet, safe place. It is a road full of potholes and sharp corners and steep rises and still full of unexplored dead ends that I will take and have to find my way through.

This has been a lovely quiet week and I know the ones ahead now Ray is home will not be. I know he comes back home with all the problems he went with plus some which will eventuate as we go along. If God doesn't give me more than I can handle I am okay. I can handle a lot of the problems as I go along, sometimes after a time of self-pity and a feeling of helplessness, and I often seek a "happy-ever-after" ending where I know one is not possible. But I come from tough stock and eventually work things out. Like others here I just wish from time to time that trials came less frequently and more of Ray's and my life was lived in the pleasant valleys of prosperity and peace.