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.

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.

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’.