Thurs 5th Dec

Dear S,

Yesterday me and M did our circuits around the park. M had her crutch but it was a lot, and I hope her pain wasn’t worse last night. But we kept getting caught up in the park community, which we’ve accidentally become part of. We know all the dogs’ names and some of their humans’. Each has a story. Dogs rescued and loved up by their people. People rescued and loved up by their dogs.

Must be nearly four months since my letter. M was post sinus-surgery and post hip-op. Still had a lot of healing work to do, but soon her face wouldn’t be in permanent agony. And the metal pins in her hip would do their work. As awful as it was on top of her baseline of M.E. and Fibromyalgia, time would at least return her to that baseline.

Except, while getting changed some weeks later, she broke her back! It was just a tiny twist of the spine that did it. So, more pain. More confinement. More medication. More insomnia as laying down became impossible, the needs of her hip fighting with the needs of her spine. More everything. I haven’t even told you the half. Did I mention more pain?

Eventually M found out she has osteoporosis. B, our other sister, found out she has it too after shattering her ankle from slipping off a kerb. And has just cracked a bone in her back (again) from coughing. As it’s genetic, I’m on the waiting list for a scan. Tho you’d think, if so, my 12 feet fall last year would’ve smashed me like a walnut. Tho breaking back, hips and pelvis was plenty, thank-you!

Anyway, now M’s been told her osteoporosis is at the top of the scale, as severe as it gets. She got referred for special new treatment but meanwhile she found out she needs root canal work that, left untreated, would return her chronic sinusitis even though she’s had surgery. Only, the dentists says the osteoporosis treatment would be detrimental to the root canal work healing. But without the bone treatment, her spine will keep compressing and crumbling. FFS!

I should’ve told you everything in real time. I’ve missed out the half of it, but, honestly, I haven’t had the heart to write it all down. This past two years has been so fucking… every piece of hope followed by a setback – sucker punch after sucker punch – till the hope almost got too unbearable to hold.

And then there’s this dark weight of a family break I can’t talk about… plus, back in Nottingham, our estranged mother went into care meaning the house of our childhood has to be sorted and sold to pay for it – so the past we had to walk away from feels like it’s right back in the present. I know there will eventually be a kind of setting free but I wished I didn’t have to think about it now.

I’ve been so overwhelmed. Frightened M would never get better. Guilty at all the sorting in Nottingham being left to our sister, B. Bereft at all that remains unmendable. Enraged by my impotence. That I can’t fix broken bones, people, relationships. Is unmendable a word?

Too much suffering. Everywhere. And injustice. That fucking abuser getting back into The Whitehouse. War criminals in Power. Putin. Netanyahu. Raging Genocide in Gaza.

I had a meltdown in the park last week. M said Look at the trees, Rachel. I could hardly bear to. But after the rage, the grief, the despair, I let myself see them again. For these trees have come to mean something to us that I never understood or felt before.

M started her osteoporosis treatment this week. Over the course of a year, her bones should regenerate a percentage. For now, she has to risk-assess every activity, every action even. No twisting, reaching, carrying. But it’s safe to walk a little every day. And I join her when I can. Every step progressed is under and among the watch of those trees.