Billy

Billy Joel was 43 when he graduated from his high school, having submitted the requisite essays to the school’s examinations board, in lieu of an English exam he missed as a teenager. I wonder why he wrote those essays? He was by then, and still is, one of the best-selling singer-songwriters of all time. He had a raft of hit albums to his name, along with multiple music awards and, just for good measure, the first of several honorary doctorates. Perhaps he needed to fill a bit of spare wallspace, or headspace, or lifespace, or perhaps he just has a cracking sense of humour. I’d like to think it’s the latter.

A few months afterwards, Billy (can I call him Billy? – I feel like he might be OK with that) released his twelfth (twelfth!) solo album, River of Dreams. The album’s first single, of the same title, is probably my favourite earworm ever. It pops into my head every time I’m awake in the middle of the night (guess why?!). And now it’s probably bouncing along cheerily in your head too.

Here I am, again, awake, in the middle of the night. I’m in pain, but tonight it’s the right type and amount of pain – just enough to keep me alert; but not so much that I am incapacitated. This is a useful kind of pain. I should perhaps put my alertness to better use – goodness knows, there are plenty of productive things I could be doing. Then again, there are many worse things I could be doing than indulging in a bit of introspection.

Pain, like introspection, is by nature both unique and commonplace. Every human being experiences pain. As patients, we experience and express pain subjectively; yet nurses and doctors must try to assess it objectively. Talk about performing the impossible, on a daily basis. Sadly, infinite variations in the way pain is expressed and assessed are a major obstacle to successful diagnosis and treatment. On top of that, with endometriosis (as well as a panoply of other ‘invisible’ illnesses), factor in the difficulty or near impossibility of detecting physical symptoms, and you’re left with a task that’s akin to threading a needle with an angry hippopotamus. 

Inevitably, diagnosis and treatment (even if you are lucky enough to get them) rarely equate to a cure. You are patched up and you move on. You learn, you adjust, you adapt. Like scenes from an Italian restaurant (I know, I’m over-Billying), your life continues to play out in a sequence of human highs and lows. I wonder if, as the cliché goes, I will one day get to watch it all flash past me, one last time?

If that is the case, I’d like to rewatch a scene from yesterday. I am sitting in a hospital waiting room with Mum, waiting for one of her regular consultant reviews. After many years, we have got these trips down to a fine art. We are enjoying coffee and shortbread in the sunshine by the window, and half-watching one of those daytime TV shows about fixing up houses, which in this episode are located in the English county of Shropshire. Mum, who has recently been losing a wee bit more ground in her brave struggle with Parkinson’s and its associated dementia, is continually repeating her PIN to me, a strategy she employs as part of her ongoing effort to maintain that aspect of her independence. To distract and constructively occupy her mind, I ask her about Shropshire and the surrounding counties. We’re on much stronger ground now; she knows the area very well. The conversation turns to history, including the castle at Ludlow which, she tells me, is the capital of Shropshire. That may or may not be the case, I think – she’s always been miles better on these topics than me. True to form, she’s doing very well; so, I decide to challenge her a little. I interrupt her, looking bemused, and tell her that I thought the capital of Shropshire was Shrop. That makes her stop and think; but, not for long, as she lifts her clever gaze to me, sees right through my ruse, and sternly tells me that there is no such place as Shrop. We laugh, and I am proud of her. I can’t hug her enough.

Let’s return to Billy, just once more. We all end in the ocean, he wrote. We all start in the streams. We’re all carried along by the river of dreams. Regardless of where you think you will (or will not) be in the end, you depart as you arrived; in other words, with nothing. Nothing that flows to you, or from you, during your lifetime goes with you; not riches, not illness, not your creations, not your possessions, not your clothes, not your body, not even your pain. One day, all that will exist of you is the memories you have left behind, the parts of your soul that you have gifted to other human beings. So, build on the strong foundations laid by others before you (I’m thinking of you, Mum). Be brave. Be compassionate. Tread softly. Laugh.