“Leave it Twinkle, I’ll get that. You put it down now luv”. I gently bent over and took Twinkle’s mug from her hand, placin' it on't wooden table by her side. She's a tough cookie my Twinkle is. Her hands were shakin' like mad but she still insisted on holdin’ her teacup and wheelin’ herself round the house. As far back as I can remember she’d always been like that, even before MS took 'old. She loved ridin’ she did. She used to drag me on walks for hours, leadin' the way with her map and compass in 'and. Very independent she was.
Nowadays she’ll still try t' get up, but her legs don’t share the same strength as her upper body, and she sinks back down in't her blue wheelchair with a tired and frustrated sigh. It breaks my heart to see her like that.
I call her Twinkle 'cos when we first met I said to her she was “the twinkle in my eye”, and she still is. I’ve been carin' for her for 10 years now and sometimes she gets tired and irritable, and sometimes she looks sad or afraid, but she’s still the love of m' life.
Always will be.
Sometimes I watch Twinkle when telly's on in front room. She don't notice mind. Her little grey head starts to slant diagonally downwards sometimes, and she’ll sleep - only a few minutes - before stirring again. Her head slowly rises back into position like the sun gradually moving up in't the sky. She’s relentless Twinkle is. Never wants to show me she's tired.
I can see it in her eyes though. There's no gettin' past me.
In the evenings they start to redden a little, and her eyelids become 'eavy. That don’t stop her talkin’ though. My God, Twinkle talks for hours. She still loves politics and 'orses and she loves to talk about her childhood. Her voice is so soothing, sometimes I feel like she’s healin' me without even knowin it.
Oh but it's the sun. From time to time the sun catches her hair through the window, and her face is framed by it and I'm reminded how beautiful she is, how her eyes sparkle. Twinkling in their sockets. Sometimes she’ll laugh at somethin’ on telly and her lovely smile. It’s still so radiant, like the day I met her.
It’s hard seein' the woman you love deteriorate, like Twinkle. I wish it weren’t that way, but there’s nout ya can do to stop it. I used to be angry with it, with MS, with life, but now I understand that God’s way is God’s way, and there ain’t no changin' that.
People ask me if I’m ever lonely, caring for Twinkle that is. When she’s not doin’ so well, or she feels sick from her medication, I do wish to God that her pain would end. But I wouldn’t want him to take her away. Not yet. I’m not ready for Twinkle to go. Only then, without her, would I be lonely.
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