You think about some sad stuff in hospital.
Me, I thought about people I’d visited in hospital; my mother, father and my grandmother, and Jane, and how they were all dead now.
I thought about how physical pain diminishes a human being. I thought about all the terrible suffering in the world and how little I was having to deal with, by comparison with hundreds of thousands of people in the world, especially the tsunami victims. I thought about the horrors of life before pain killers, and how ‘pain relief’ doesn’t actually mean that they get rid of the pain, just that they reduce it enough so that you stop screaming, or don’t pass out.
None of this came as news to me, by the way; but the acute experience of sharing, even to some small extent, what had happened to my mother, to Jane and to other people whose bodies have been broken, did give me some insight, just for a few days, and it was pitiful. I don’t mind admitting that I cried hot salty tears for many of the nights (only when the pain levels came down though, because real pain makes you selfish; you can’t think of anything else and you don’t care, not unless you are a saint).
I realised that the crying was a useful was to release tension, from which I suffered quite a bit, being immobilised on my back with my leg up on a support. Sometimes I even chose to listen to something that would turn on the tap. My sister-in-law Rachel lent me her iPod, complete with her own musical selection.
So here are my top tunes for inducing the night-time boo-hoos.
1. Angels (Robbie Williams)
2. Feel (Robbie Williams) Damn, that boy writes some good sentimental songs. And he met my mother. Once, when she was with the Manchester Olympic Committee, she met all the lads from Take That.
3. English Suite No2 (JS Bach) Just because it’s so beautiful; it seems you appreciate beauty more when suffering.
4. Anyone Who Has A Heart (Dionne Warwick, by Bacharach) Oh who knows why this one set me off. I was missing my baby daughter.
And to cheer you up:
1. Cosmic Girl (Jamiroquai) I was fair dancing in my bed.
2. Voi che sapete (Marriage of Figaro, Mozart) Well, anything from this opera cheered me up.
3. Any song by Celia Cruz. La Reina de la Salsa! If I could have had salsa to listen to from the beginning I would probably have healed faster! Thank goodness for my conga drums. Playing them is almost as good as dancing.