How had it come to this? he thought to himself as he sat staring out of the window as the rain bounced up from the patio. The lawn was sodden with puddles of grey water forming around the scattered bike, the small ride on fire engine and the football goal. These things were a huge reminder of what he had become, a failure and an acute reminder of who he had so badly let down, his family.
They slept peacefully upstairs , the two boys blissfully innocent and unaware of the upheaval that was to come. His wife. His wonderful caring wife slept, and all he could think of were those promises he made when they were young, planning their future together. He would he promised always look after her, he had told her Dad , now passed , that he would never put her through anything to hurt her or make her worry.
That cold shiver of failure and shame once again ran over him just like an icy wind and he felt his cheeks flush red as the blood in his body once again exposed his shame.
Their house wasn’t special. It was the average three bedroomed semidetached 1970s house. They had built an extension in recent years from the money his wife’s Dad had left her, his brother had built that extension, the dining room, the shower room and the utility , it wasn’t a palace but it was special .it was theirs.
They were bringing their two boys up , close to where he had lived as a boy, close to their schools and their family. He had started to look out for his community, he was becoming who he wanted to be. They had worked hard on the garden, they were happy.
It was five am and he moved his gaze from that wet lawn and those toys to the bottle of oramorph and box of painkillers that was on the table before him. He had started using them about seven or eight years ago.
It had started he recalled on a warm sunny summer’s morning. He woke up and the sun was streaming through the curtains. His wife had obviously got up and gone to work and with him being on the late shift in the factory he worked, he had slept passed her rising. He went to turn over and felt a sharp pain in his neck and shoulder. It was he thought to himself a “bloody cricked neck” and he slowly and gingerly got up for the day.
That day he will never forget. It was the start of it all.
At first it was the odd day off work , then a week , then a month. Then it was X-rays and MRI scans and then it was three operations on his spine , all in in his neck , and all aimed at stopping the most horrendous and debilitating pain he had ever known. Bouts of paralysis , excruciating pain down his arms and an inability to move let alone drive or work had meant he had had to leave his well-paid factory job and take a lesser paid job doing support for elderly people. It was all he could physically do as his vertebrae squished and squashed and trapped nerves and threatened his spinal cord.
The last operation had been a success. He had lost some movement and feeling in his fingers. His sporting efforts had to stop, and he could no longer do a physical job but at least he was pain free. Physically pain free anyway.
They had muddled through when he was off work, his sick time running out, and then on a much lower wage. They had paid for Christmas with a credit card , knowing they’d pay it back when things got better. He had even started taking payday loans out when his lower wages didn’t quite last the month.
They had missed some mortgage payments; they simply didn’t have the money. He and his wife didn’t buy clothes, they went without meals and tried to save money whenever they could. He even tried to cut lawns to make a few pounds for shopping on a weekend, but his physical ability just wasn’t up to it.
And all the time, no one would have known. He was still the funny fella, the chap with a joke. He was helping the community in their big battles and his wife was the lady she had always been.
No one even suspected that it was all going wrong. That tomorrow they would have to move out of their house as he had sold it to a company that could do a quick deal , they could do this because they were paying fifty percent of its value.
He and his wife were letting these parasites buy their home because their mortgage company were going to evict them. The missed payments were bad enough. The owed money on credit cards, on energy bills, on payday loans and catalogues but their fixed rate mortgage was coming to an end. The percentage rise to a variable rate was such that it was nearly doubling their mortgage payment overnight, he had begged the building society to keep them on the old rate, but they wouldn’t. He had tried to change the mortgage to another company, but their credit rating was such that no one would even speak to them.
He and his wife had tried to hide this from everyone and tried to deal with it all alone. He was ashamed , he didn’t want people to know he had failed his family. Moving in with his wife’s Mum because he was a useless failure, No one could help, no one .
So, he looked at those items on the table and considered. The morphine had allowed him to sleep when he was in such pain. Would it give him relief from this pain? Would the tablets make things easier, take away the shame , allow him to have peace ?
I would like to tell you how this story turned out , but it hasn’t finished yet and hopefully wont for a long time.
I didn’t take those tablets; I didn’t open the morphine .We did lose our home, but we stayed together and are stronger than ever. We have rebuilt, we now live in a rented house and our boys are growing up. Things are better. We are far from rich, but we have a good life.
I do look back and think if only Id reached out sooner, if only Id been less proud and more realistic. I shouldn’t have been so ashamed. Its no bad thing and no slight to have to ask for help , to need someone to give you a hand.
Sometimes circumstances line up and cause the biggest earthquakes in your life. The cost-of-living crisis will for many be such an earthquake and will affect people who have never had such issues and concerns.
The reason for me writing this , is just to show that sometimes many of us need to reach out. There's no shame , there’s no stigma. Difficulties can affect anyone and there is help out there. I was a Councillor.
If your affected by the financial crisis, don’t leave it, don’t ignore it, don’t be too proud to ask for help.
We really must all be in this together and however we get through it , we will do it as a community.
Look on the Forest of Dean Councils web page for links to the helps that’s available. The biggest step is the first.
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