Less of a man
Over the past year I’ve lost 20% of me, 12% in the last three months. I’m substantially less of a man than I was.
As I’m quite tall, people tend to think of me as relatively slim. I hide my weight well. I’m embarrassed to admit that this time last year I weighed 99 kg, which is one of the main reasons why I slipped into diabetes. Today I weigh 77 kg.
The question that’s troubling me is where has it gone ? Where’s the missing part of me? Little bits of me have been lost: my tumour, a wisdom tooth (extracted), my wedding ring (more of that later) and my diabetes. But, together, they don’t amount to 22 kg. So what else is missing and where has it gone?
I’ve lost my youthfulness, but that’s been happening over quite a few years and so doesn’t explain the sudden loss over the last 12 months. Unless, maybe, I tipped into old age overnight.
My toothache went with my wisdom tooth, but that was just a bit of sensitivity rather than anything too heavy.
I’ve lost my sense of smell. My consultant told me this is the tumour’s fault. (Presumably my sense of smell took one look at the tumour and decided to get the hell out of my head, never to return.)
(As an aside, Ros and I went to a wine tasting course last year. They gave us a glass of Rosé and a glass of white wine. First, they asked us to look at the difference in colour. My colour blindness meant they looked identical. Then they asked us to nose them. I couldn’t smell a thing. Then they asked us to sip them. Could I detect the notes of strawberry and citrus? Not a chance.)
Being in remission from diabetes is a weight off my mind, as is the removal of my tumour, and I’m certainly feeling the lightness of being (which isn’t at all unbearable). Could that be what I’ve lost? The unbearable heaviness of being. I think that could be it. This could well be the missing 20%.
The lost wedding ring is a consequence rather than a cause of my diminution. My fingers have become thinner and my wedding ring had become looser. I was about to get it resized, but then one day, it wasn’t there. It was our wedding anniversary recently. I’d worn my wedding ring for 33 years and then one day it just dropped off.
What am I supposed to read into that? That I’m no longer the man my wife married