The Cleaver

Kate Cleaver

Well, I am stepping further from the life I had with my husband. I love him and probably will my whole life, but I have started to try and shape the life I live now to be what I want for the future.

I’m not saying that it is like the dream I had with Roland, that future I have with R has very much gone.

I am not sure I will ever feel safe and comfortable enough to travel alone around Wales and England in a camper van.

I think the future I see now will involve more books and an oversized armchair.

Plans are afoot though. I think that in the new house I am going to design a library and music room.

I may even get a piano, I can’t play but it has always been on my bucket list to learn. And one thing R has taught me is that there is no use waiting because that tomorrow may never roll around.

The only thing that gives me comfort is that R and I were very vocal about our love. I know he loved me because he told me moments before he lost the ability to speak, and I know he was happy because we had said hours before as we relaxed on the sofa after an excellent Christmas dinner.

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Food

The odd thing now is that my life has always revolved around food. I mean I am a bit of an over-eater but also, I have always loved to bake and cook.

Most people don’t realise but I held a catering license before I met Roland. I had planned on starting a small bakery in Tregaron, just little stuff, bread and a few cakes. I was trying to work out logistics when R walked into a pub and took my breath away. You know, I don’t think I ever told him.

It was something I simply put to one side. After that the only baking I did was for him and the family.

Those breads and cakes became my love language, I guess.

Something R would complain about as his waist expanded. Although I used to maintain that he shouldn't be able to fit into trousers he had worn as a very young man when he was hitting late middle age.

And I always gave him the option to not have me bake.

“Cherry cake or salad?” I would ask.

“Or a fruit smoothie?”

He always went for the cherry cake or better yet, coffee cake with loads of butter icing. He loved butter icing.

Then he died.

And I sat in shock for months.

When I finally started to take notice of my surroundings I was not in the best of health and in substantially more pain. And I had lost that spark.

The bit of me that wanted to combine eggs, flour and sugar to create a cake, or to knead a dough to make it rise and give a soft beautiful loaf. It was all missing.

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Bread maker

Then last week I got out the bread maker. I would love to say that the first loaf I baked was brilliant, but it turns out that the four-year-old bread maker I have put away was not a happy piece of equipment.

Why in those machines do they make the cogs that turn the kneading blade out of plastic?

Anyway, I was working on a cross stitch when I realised that the bread maker sounded off. It sounded sick. Having a look, I found it had not mixed at all.

I had a pan of ingredients, warm ingredients with activated yeast, but not a dough. I mixed it and tipped it out of the pan. I kneaded it as much as I could but the days of me kneading for half an hour have long gone.

My elbows have a bit of overgrown bone which cause my arms to be less strong. The result was a very poor knead and, although mixed, the bread was a bit brick-like.

It wasn’t bad but not a lovely fluffy loaf. The next day a new bread maker was on the way. One that proclaims that you can make jam as well.

Did you know that Roland was an avid jam maker? I don’t think anyone did. I have just been clearing out the freezer and in the bottom, I found a mass of strawberries. Probably the last batch that Roland froze so he could make a batch of strawberry jam.

If you have ever gotten a jam from R and I, then it was Roland’s jam, even if I wrote the label. And I only did that because R had writing that looked like a spider had stumbled into a pot of ink, sprained an ankle and limped across the page. I don’t suppose I will use the jam setting on the bread maker, but I am planning on giving the cake setting a go.

PIP

I wondered about making this post political. I wondered about telling you how worried I am about PIP. About the fact it pays for my carers. And that I am starting the process to shop for a mobility aid referred to as ‘wheels’, be that a scooter or chair.

It is all scary, including my slow pace towards a decline in mobility.

What will I do?

Count my blessings that it hasn’t happened yet and adapt, research and plan. It is how I have handled my life after Roland, and it is how I handle pretty much everything.

I make plans to stay on the straight path by working with changes, although the last few months have been exceptionally scary. Some will see that me getting a bread maker, baking and not using the machine to make jam, as a way of burying my head in the sand.

What they don’t see is me watching and waiting.

The PIP changes are problematic and if I carry on the way I have, I can guarantee I will do what happened last time, answer a question wrong, and they will remove the money.

That will remove my care, and I will be in trouble. So, I have decided that I need help. I can do a lot of my own. I can renovate houses, live independently and make my own decisions, but put me in an ‘exam’ type situation and I will fail. I never could do exams.

So, once I move, I will be getting advice and reapplying to PIP as there has been enough change for me to be able to. I will use a charity or citizen’s advice to answer everything right. Because I can’t do it all.

I do fail.

It isn’t that the failure is an issue -- it is whether I learn from it. If I accept the help and go onto staying independent and buy that piano, or create a new room, then the failure will only have been one half step on my journey.

All I need to do is say 'help, I can’t do everything myself'.