Motorblog Tis Only He Who Wears The Shoe: Mother passed away in 1981 and Father spent the following 21 years wishing he could join her, and finally did.
Next week I have my final hour of (essential) physio after the op, yet even three weeks ago I told them there were a few of the stretches and exercises I wouldn't do as it played up my sciattica. They told me just to do what I felt capable of, yet every week one of them asks me why I don't do certain parts? I tell them and they kind of smile wanly and, much like they are dealing with people who have gone through open heart surgery every day but haven't gone through it themselves, so too can they only imagine what chronic sciattica is like.
So what has this got to do with my parents?
Well, my father mourned my mother throughout those long years, and out on his walks to the cemetary from time to time, he bumped into our (now also deceased) local gamekeeper, Arthur 'Arty' Clothier. Arty always looked something of a rag-bag fellow dressed summer and winter in Wellington boots, a shabby suit, glasses, and a flat cap pulled down to rest on them; but he was a very colourful and prophetic character. Father told him once, (Arty was also married and his kids went to school with me), about how difficult it was trying to cope with losing a wife / husband / partner and that sadly, no one would know what it was like until it unfortunately happened to them. Arty nodded at Father and said: "Tis only he who wears the shoe who knows where it do pinch."
And that is what I said to one of the physio women yesterday regarding our rehab and my sciattica; and Arty's words pretty much sum up anything we might be suffering rather aptly.