Sunshine and Showers

14 August 2020

We know that on this lovely planet there are days of sunshine, of showers or a mixture of both. Occasionally we can get storms with thunder and lightning, though not everyone enjoys those as much as perhaps I do. I know of a dog in one Care Home who definitely doesn’t like them!

But come rain or shine, we get good days & nights along with some not so good ones. Over the years, first working for a large company and then running my own business, I learned that I really did need a better work/life balance. I also had to learn to slow down and realise that if I wasn’t here, the world would not end.

So a combination of age and poor health  meant that I retired. However, that retirement was not the beginning of the end, to me it was a whole new beginning! I began to learn to try and take better care of myself, so the other day after a lovely shower I was given a haircut as my hair was getting long again! The carer did a brilliant job and I felt so much better as a result. My thanks, you know who you are.

Our lives can be like putting together a jigsaw puzzle, except we don’t always know what the big picture will be until nearer the end! Some bits can be really boring at times, like fitting in bits of plain blue sky, but then the sun will appear and (literally!) shed light on the proceedings. Often we work with others, some can be a help whilst others a hindrance, insisting they know exactly how and where certain pieces should go. But that’s often to suit their big picture, not yours.

It sometimes feels like I’ve been working on several different jigsaw puzzles, but only now do I begin to realise that they are in fact all part of the same, big picture.

Now, I hope I’m not revealing any secrets here but I’ve discovered that where I am at the moment, they are looking to start a ‘Carer of the Month’ scheme. It sounds like a good idea, but I wonder what prize the winner will get! We shall see… Good luck and well done to all the staff as they do a difficult job very well here. I know the inmates (as I call them) may not all show their appreciation for what is done for them but the thanks is surely there and they would express it if they could. If not, they really ought to!

One of the reasons I say this is because downstairs in the dining room some days there are inmates calling out for a cup of tea, despite it being lunch time. Normally we get a choice of either blackcurrant juice or orange juice, but plain water is provided if asked for. However, one day an inmate tipped some of his soup into the jug of orange juice that was on his table. He thought it was funny, but naturally the staff were not amused! There are times when some of the inmates here truly are behaving like children.

Just as the days are a mixture of sunshine and showers, so must our lives be. It would surely be a boring, robotic life if every day and every thing was the same. I feel for some of the inmates here as they may not now see how things truly are, but they are alive and being well cared for. So many of us can look back on how things used to be, perhaps wish things had been different, but things happen the way they are meant to. I am a firm believer in that.

Many years ago I moved to a house near Chesterfield, even though my work was in Nottingham. This was a decent place and my fiancée approved so all was well! Later on when our marriage didn’t work out, I stayed in the house I’d bought (well my bank owned it really!) but that turned out to be a blessing in disguise, because although to begin with I was doing a good deal of travelling to and from work, most especially when work got me moved to Birmingham,  it made life easier when I got a job working back in Sheffield.

That led to me becoming a ‘trainer’, able to teach others in the firm. When work was moved, this time to Manchester, I was part of a team of trainers teaching others there all about the work they would do. Sadly some of the folk in Sheffield weren’t too happy, I think they thought I’d been brought in to assist in getting their jobs moved, but that wasn’t the case at all.

Happily a good friend told me about jobs with the same firm but in Leicester, where my training skills would be utilised. I was able to get a transfer there and later on these same skills enabled me to start up my own business, which I did for a few years.

Throughout all of this upheaval, moving to different places, coping with changes, all the time I had a mixture of good and not so good days, of sunshine and showers. In the next few days we are likely to get some thunderstorms here, but they will clear away, the rain will dry up and the sun brighten up the sky again. It will always be so, even though we may not see it that way sometimes! I have even suggested that I might try doing a ‘rain dance’, but that might not be quite so easy for me to do whilst I am holding on to a walking frame!

Sunshine and showers, grey skies and blue, life may not always be quite as we would wish it to be but we can, as I have said before, change things as necessary. I’ve had to move house, I have had to accept the things I can no longer do but I look upon these things as page turners, a new chapter each time in my own book of life. Perhaps we might all try our best to enjoy both the sunshine and the showers, as they can all be refreshing in their own way.

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