The depths of Christmas

24 December, in the year of our Lord 2022

Up, and to my exercises, to keep in abbeyance the pain in my back, this now being added to the pattern of my days, which is thus: first, in the morning, comes the mayde to help rise my mother, then breakfast, then I by my coach to visit my father, thence home to make dinner for my mother; in the afternoon very often to the Exchange, or to wash clothes or sheets, or write letters, and at a half-past four prepare supper; then returns the mayde, and my mother to bed, or changed and we watch the magick screen. My father today did transfer with help to a chair, but it is sad to see him eat so little, and remayn so thin. I shaved him and did try to spur him to a little food, but he would not and said he was full, and that his appetite was always very small. My mother to my great content is to the contrary, for she eats a great deal, more than I ever saw her eat, for my father would prepare as small a plate for her as to take for himselfe, yet she can huver up as much as I, and share a goodly portion of a pint of wine; and when I inquire gently how is the state of everything with her, she smiles as sweet as I ever saw.

 

25 December, in the year of our Lord 2022

Christmas Day. A day like any other of these two weeks past. My father not eating, and coughing more. My mother and I shared a little duck and a flaggon of prosseco and made the best cheer we could muster, though she doubted it was Christmas.

 

26 December, in the year of our Lord 2022

My father today eat a little wheaterbicks in the morning, with some milk; then naught.

 

28 December, in the year of our Lord 2022

Up, and this morning left my coach in a different square to visit the Hospitall, for yesterday comes Wayne, an old friend of my father who is a soldier, newly returned to the City from Ireland against the Dutch who have come into the River, to visit my father, and told me of a more salubreose Q-Park than Hepworth Street, where I fear to leave my coach too long lest I return to find its wheels gone. My father’s Physician acquainted me with what had passed lately — viz., firstly, that the number of tiny particles that cause the Blood to congeal was very low, and second, they feared his heart to be failing a little, with Fluid upon the lungs, but to confirm it will put him again through the Contryvance that shines the special light into his chest. And I feel a weight of helplessness that my father go through all this, for his strength hath fallen away from him, and what remayns resolves itself upon gasping for fortified air. Through the Society of Maydes I organised a Sitter for all the afternoon tomorrow, to stay with my mother, so I may cross the City to spend a little time in my own house. This week my mother and father’s neighbours have been very troubled for them, and it contents me, as much as I can be contented in these down days between Christmas and New Year, that they have such kind people to ask after them.

 

29 December, in the year of our Lord 2022

Very tired. Today a few hours in my own home, where I have not been for two and a half weeks, and there gave a great fuss to my cat, Banjo, who is being fed by my friends, as they are able. Vexed that my coaches glass was chipped by a piece of grit that flew from the road, sent by the wheel of a coach in front of me. Much time about mundane duties, and to read correspondence and buy victuals, but all a greater burden than I had hoped, to do everything and return before the Sitter leaves my mother on her own. On the way back I stopped the coach at the roadside for my tiredness, and slept a little in it, fearing I might fall asleep at the reins.

 

30 December, in the year of our Lord 2022

This morning by the Messenger Mr. M. Jones did report very bad weather again, which left him without any form of heat in his house, for his Boyler, which is in the tiny yard behind his house, hath packed up, the burner being under under water and mud run off the sloping field behind, which is turned to a quagmyre by pigs and incompetent farming so that the rain can not soak into it. Rudy the boylerman will try to rescue the burner. At the Hospitall, in discourse again with Gareth, my father’s Physician, who confessed that last week he may have been overly optimistick. My father sleeps a lot, telling me he is very tired. Agnes, a diligent nurse from the Orient (Malayer, I think, though she once did work as a tour Guide in Iceland), helped him to eat a little soft dinner.