Sunday 2 February 2020

No driver's licence

does not bother me most of the time. There are however rare occasions on which I did have one. Yesterday was one of those times.
I had to go to a meeting yesterday afternoon. In the late morning someone called me to ask if I would put in an apology. She sounded close to tears.
   "What's happened J....?" I asked.
   "I was closing the kitchen window and I felt something go snap," she told me.
Oh. The last thing J.... needs is an injury to either arm because she uses a mobility aid to walk around. She lives alone too - apart from two cats. There is nobody there to help.
We continued the conversation and came to the conclusion that, despite the pain, she probably had not broken anything. But I still said, "You need to get someone to look at it. Can you get yourself there in a taxi?"
She decided she could but of course that was the point at which I wished I could say, "I'll get someone to call in on the Senior Cat and come and take you there."
I went off to the meeting a bit later - leaving the Senior Cat at the point where he was contemplating his afternoon snooze. It wasn't a particularly pleasant meeting. There was some trouble we could all have done without. Even without that I was concerned.
As soon as I was home I called. No reply. I assumed, rightly it turned out, that she was still at the hospital. Again I thought to myself, "If I had a car I could call the hospital and..."
J....phoned much later. She was home. They had actually wanted to keep her there but there was nobody there to care for the cats. So, heavily dosed with pain killers, she had gone home to care for them.  Again I wished I could drive. I could have gone to care for the cats but J.... lives quite a distance from here. It isn't close to a train line - something I would need to get there without a car.
And where was everyone else? That's the problem. There really isn't anyone apart from a relative by marriage. He is very good to her but he isn't well either. When J...'s husband was alive they had each other but now she is alone she is isolated unless she can drive. Even that is a problem because she has to get her mobility aid in and out of her vehicle and that is not easy.
J... is usually cheerful but yesterday she was close to tears. I couldn't be there for her in the way I wanted to be. It made me want that licence to drive. Sometimes, just sometimes, I wish I could!

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