Futureproof

Benedict Ambrose and I have decided on a bathroom-refurb company, and the tub is doomed. Good-bye, bathtub. Originally I wasn't going to give our business to any of the salesmen who used the neologism "futureproof", but this company came up with a great design and plentiful choice among good materials. It will add to, not detract from, the resale value of the flat. 

I disliked the word "futureproof" not only because it meant turning the whole bathroom into a waterproof tank at great expense but because it suggested B.A. would get worse, not better. If you are swapping a bath for a walk-in shower (or roll-in shower room) because you are 75, well, chances are your mobility will get worse. However, if you are bidding farewell to the bath because your merely middle-aged husband has spinal damage, your great hope is that he will get better. 

Unfortunately, my husband is not currently getting better. His love affair with the rollator is coming to an end; he wants the freedom and security an electric wheelchair will provide. He's afraid of falling down, and no wonder. He fell down trying to take his seat in the doctor's office this week, and he fell down this morning, dropping his cup of tea on the carpet. 

This became a slapstick incident. When he fell, I jumped up from the sofa, only to place my stockinged foot in a puddle of blazing-hot tea. There was then much hopping about as I tried to soak up the tea with towels and then limped to the bathroom to stick my foot under the doomed bathtub cold tap. While I was sitting on the edge of the tub, there was another commotion in the sitting-room. I rushed in to find that B.A. had dropped his bowl of cereal and milk. So I got a soapy sponge and wiped all that up before returning to the tub. I am now wearing slippers.   

When the ultimately successful bathroom salesman last mentioned futureproofing to me, he acknowledged that if B.A. were confined to a wheelchair he wouldn't be able to get up and down our outdoor staircase, and so we would sell the flat. Therefore, there was no point to a tanked room. Such money-saving discussions are my idea of futureproofing. 

Meanwhile, it is perhaps a lucky thing B.A. stumbled at the doctor's office. He has a Stoic (but not always helpful) habit of minimizing how sick or weak he is feeling, and it didn't occur to him to call up the oncologist and tell her his mobility was much worse. But now she knows and is apparently swinging into action, applying on B.A.'s behalf for an NHS-supplied electric wheelchair, disability allowance, a bus pass, and chemotherapy. She and her assistant gave B.A. a very minor scolding. 

Child of the 1980s, I was once terrified by the word chemotherapy, but this kind doesn't involve an I.V. and hair loss but a lot of pills to be taken at home five days a month. I am very grateful to all the people so interested in science (and so determined to cure cancer) that they dedicated their lives to improving cancer treatments. 

Because I wrote for so long for Singles about being Single, I often want to caution the wistful that marriage is not a solution to all ills but merely another stage of life, one that has its own ills. These ills are not directly caused by marriage, I hasten to add. They are just more likely because you are more directly affected by things that happen to somebody else. 

It is impossible to futureproof your life perfectly, especially when that life is shared by another person or--if you have children--other people. However, you can do your best by making sure you marry someone with a good character, someone you respect, not just someone whose appearance accords with your idea of beauty. 

I've never been able to forget a co-worker at Statistics Canada (and we had a thoroughly miserable job) telling me about her husband, a man she met on the beaches of her Caribbean birthplace. She was a lovely person--black and buxom and good-humoured. She met the beauty standard of her curve-loving island, and her handsome husband had considered himself very fortunate---until she got him back to Canada and his new colleagues in the building trade bantered him about her weight. His ardour cooled, he spent too much time away from home, and he wasn't contributing much to the household income. 

"I thought getting married would make my life easier," sighed my colleague--and God only knows how many women throughout the ages have said that. 

Arguably, what getting married does is give your life more meaning (as well as a slightly higher status in your community, if that's how your community rolls). And, in fact, your life becomes even more meaningful if your spouse gets sick because he really, really, needs you to stay alive and, ideally, healthy, strong, cheerful and employed.