Mavis's Melting Pot

The only thing that has not changed is my husband!

Hi everybody.

I hope to be back on site writing regularly soon. What can I say, for I have travelled a great distance in my head and in my heart since we last met.

I retired from my beloved nursing although the original dispute that I had with the National Health Service and my hospital's management I won. I had to leave for five months to tackle the task and at times I became very depressed; but that is all in the past now. I returned to work last May and changed nursing directorates. I had been an orthopaedic and trauma specialist nurse and that had taken about six years of extra training. However, I decided to have a complete change and became a ward sister of a 36 bedded medical ward with a 6 bedded acute stroke unit. It was hard work and I loved it. I was working again and with a new team of nurses and managers. I was still in the same hospital and therefore could still see my old friends and colleagus. Everything was good. Then my husband started to have some challenges at work that he did not feel he wanted at his stage of career. He was no longer enjoying his work which he had always loved.

We had both planned originally to work to at least 65 but with his family's history of developing early alzheimers disease, both his mother had and his brother has it, he decided to take early retirement at 63. Added to that his father had experienced the first of 6 heart attacks at the age of 64. This left me with a dilemma, I had taken on one of the most powerfully aggressive employers and won, now it looked as if I would have to leave. We could not afford to live in Kingston-upon-Thames if one of us was not working.

To cut a long story short, I thought things through and decided that as my husband has always supported me in everything I do or want to do, there simply was no decision to make. After 18 years of nursing I took early retirement. I left on a high with both myself and my managers and staff wanting me to stay. Things were pretty hectic then and still remain quite a challenge. We celebrated our ruby wedding in September. We returned to Spain where we had honeymooned 40 years earlier. We both retired the same day on 31st October. We sold our house in the first week,then came the frantic packing. We had things in store from our previous house and it was a time to say goodbye to a lot of favourite possessions. I am a hoarder and it was quite hard.

We have moved into a retirement complex in Northampton approximately 80 miles north of Surrey. Whatever health needs we have in the future we have made provision for the help to be available but in the meantime we plan to live life to the full.

It is a big change and I have not adjusted to not working yet. I miss my patients and my nurses and other friends and colleagues. We are still unpacking and setting up a writing room for me. I am sitting at my new desk now and the view from the window is over open fields and trees. I have a lovely view of the sky and we had our first rainbow this week. I face the dawn from this window and I hope that this fills me with inspiration.

The place feels empty at the moment no sense of past as it is a new-build but then as my new poem Hollow Echoes says it is up to me now to live the present and create tomorrow's history.

I have had many trials and tribulations with the internet and been connected and disconnected a few times, this time I hope it is to stay.

I want to thank everyone on WDC. for their kind enquiries and say that I intend to be back as a regular reader and writer soon.

Best wishes to everyone and I wish you all a fantastic year in 2008

Annticipation (Mavis)