It's a Sunday thing. Being reflective, waxing philosophical, whatever you like to call it. It has been an odd week. I have had interaction with people this week I haven't seen for a while. For that reason I have been explaining where Ray is up to and updating people on his progress or regress on certain fronts.

There was a topic some time back that raised the issue of having to explain a stroke, from a survivors point of view and I often take things said here quite seriously, so I try not to talk about Ray in terms I know he wouldn't use, not make myself the centre of the universe and not to overload my listener with unnecessary information. That said I do try to be realistic about how he is and what is happening to us right now.

Sometimes the answers to what I say are bizarre. Even seven years after Ray's strokes people still want him to get better, expect us as a couple to be doing all the usual close to retirement things and ask when I will be going back to work. They tell me the usual stories about a bloke they knew who had a stroke and went back to work, about new treatments for diabetes, the new pills that will mean no-one will have to give up work because of having a stroke. I know I am talking to people here who have listened to these same stories themselves.

And I do try to keep an open mind. I try to listen and look interested. I try not to point out that I have heard this before, that circumstances alter cases, that there are different intensities of strokes and it depends on who is hit where, to what degree and how many other health issues are already in play. Ray has had five strokes, some more severe than others, has diabetes, high BP, etc. The damage his brain has sustained is not going to "heal". From the last stroke he has not recovered much more movement despite rehab and exercise. We do all we can to alleviate the conditions he has, but what else we could do? I don't know. I have hope for the future treatment but fear it is too late for Ray to benefit.

I still wonder if I am being open to all the good news. A friend I visited this afternoon is into faith healing and she thinks I should at least take Ray over to the "Healing rooms" at her church and see if he can benefit from what they do there. We already have a lot of people praying for us week by week and boy do we need it. Sometimes more than others. We have friends to whom our welfare means a great deal and all of the good, kind folk who make up this site and pray for us or send us kind thoughts or whatever. I don't think a visit to a particular site where prayers are said is going to make much difference.

And yet for some reason while I was thinking about all this this afternoon the "Canterbury Tales" came into my mind. Not the actual bawdy, earthy stories from the Chaucer works but the idea of making a journey to work off a penance and find a new look on life. Maybe there is still some journeying ahead for Ray and I? Maybe my faith has got bogged down in a rut and my natural cynicism is dominant over my trust and faith? I will put some thought into this as it seems an idea that could use a little more working through.

I told you it was a Sunday kind of thing, didn't I?