On friendship and helpfulness

MARIE: Once upon a time, I was very bad at asking for help. I used to get all embarrassed - I guess I felt that I was somehow inadequate if I couldn't manage everything on my own, and I felt it was an unreasonable imposition on friends and family to ask them to step in where I failed. I had no problem with offering help or being asked for it, though. Not very logical.

As Jon has got worse, I have had to learn to ask for help. In a somewhat roundabout manner, I had been urging other carers to ask for help, but took a while to realise that I might do well to take my own advice. Lots of people want to help, but may not know how to. And if we (I) don't tell them what we need, how can they know how to help us? The first time I asked for serious help, I had to really pull myself together, but it's getting much easier - and it helps that I am still waiting for that first rejection.

We get some assistance from the local council, of course, like the night nurses and the transport service to Jon's day centre, but I don't really count that as help, more as necessary support that we've been saving up for through years of tax paying.

Personal help is different. I believe in "paying it forward" and have tried in my own small ways to practice that. Now that we're firmly on the receiving end, I'm realizing the true value of friendship and helpfulness.

We get lots of practical help. My parents garden for us, my nephews fetch and carry, a neighbour keeps an eye on things whenever I'm away, my cousin's coming round to chop wood, my sister has helped with medical advice and supplies, etc. etc. etc. I count us very lucky to have such generous people around us. But there are two forms of help that go way beyond normal generosity.

The first is Jon's best and oldest friend, who has quite simply moved in with us to help me care for Jon until we are offered a nursing home place. He has been with us for a month and a half now and is showing no signs of being fed up yet. His presence and his practical help (which extends beyond care to lawn mowing and home repairs) makes an enormous difference to our quality of life.

The other is Jon's first wife, who again last week vacated her flat to let us stay there while visiting Jon's daughter and her family. No. 1 wife then takes over the tiny guest room in Jon's daughter's house, which has just proven impossible for us to fit into. Yes, we could go to a hotel instead, but a visit is many times more enjoyable when we can stay in a flat with separate bedrooms and space for Jon to walk off his restlessness in the night.

Aren't people like that just amazing?