Bye

 In 2022 the brilliant writer Hanif Kureishi collapsed unexpectedly, sustaining spinal injuries that left him tetraplegic and unable to move his limbs.^[2 He writes a blog - a brilliant and affecting one that leaves me with a great deal of serious consideration. 

The height of summer is difficult: friends and family going on holiday, disappearing for a couple of weeks to various exotic places, hanging with each other in villas and beside pools, reading and occasionally laughing.

This time of year I have strong, ever-returning memories: Isabella and I packing up the car outside her apartment in Rome, leaving the city, me in the passenger seat rolling a fat joint and in charge of the music, as we head towards Naples, and then Salerno, and ultimately the Amalfi Coast. It is a wonderful drive to her mother's little house, next to a church, overlooking the bay, where we would spend a few days, wandering and sunbathing, listening to the bells.

Later, we would visit her father in Tuscany, strolling around an old-fashioned Italian coastal resort, eating good food and looking out to sea. Her father had a little boat that we would take out. Isabella would row, and I would think about what I wanted to write next.

That's all gone, wiped out in a matter of seconds. Now, in my electric wheelchair, I circle my kitchen endlessly, wondering whether this afternoon I will go to the end of the street and take a coffee overlooking the Shepherd's Bush Road. Or, as a treat, I will go to the tea house next to the tennis courts on Brooke Green for an iced latte, where I can sit in the sun and gossip with a friend.

Even writing this, I am bored by what I have to say, and how closed it is. I am running out of complaints. I even bore myself.

I was in hospital for a year, including some months on a dementia ward, where the madness infected me. I became depressed and could barely speak. I wondered at times whether I might go mad myself. But, as my analyst said, 'You can't will yourself to go mad, and it doesn't really work as an escape.'

Since coming out of hospital, Carlo and I have done a lot of work together – writing two books – and most days we have fruitful conversations. In the afternoons, friends visit.

But I am coming apart. When it is cold and windy I don't go into the garden. I look out of the kitchen window, knowing that as winter approaches, my world will narrow further. Currently, we are trying to purchase an adapted van with a ramp, so the family can zip me about the city, and I can revisit old scenes and write about what I see.

I try not to dwell on all that I have lost, the fact that I can't even leave the house on my own. My study is just above my head, but I have no idea what it is like in there now.

Isabella and I have been talking about what I put her through, acknowledging how she suffered, having left Rome to live in a house that had become a building site, full of dust, while travelling four hours each day to visit me in hospital. It was heroic of her, and terrible for me living with the knowledge that I'd caused it.

Most days, I have an issue with my catheter, which frequently blocks, often in the middle of the night, while blood clots and other material are painfully removed by my carer with a syringe. These blockages could result in my not being able to empty my bladder, leading to a condition called autonomic dysreflexia, which means my blood pressure going up and the danger of a stroke. I live constantly in a state of dread.

On the other hand, with my three physios, I am up on my feet and walking around my front room at least twice a month on a Zimmer frame. This is incredibly difficult for me, since lifting my legs and taking a step requires enormous effort, as though I have breeze blocks attached to my feet. But I can do eight tours of my front room before having a rest, and on one occasion I did eighteen, which almost broke me, but certainly cheered me up.

I have started reading again: non-fiction, psychoanalysis, politics, history, and a good deal of fiction, mostly by women, and a lot of it I liked. It's been years since I read any fiction; I didn't think I needed it, but having watched a lot of television in the evenings with Isabella, and noticed how unsatisfying it is, lacking any intellectual depth, I can see that the modern novel is as necessary and relevant as it has ever been when it comes to conveying the weight and texture of life. I can't see that the novel could ever become irrelevant, since it is cheap to produce, unlike film or television, and novelists are freer than screenwriters, who are condemned to being given endless advice from producer idiots.

Illness is an indignity. Thankfully, the NHS affords me a full-time carer, without whom I couldn't survive, but at the same time, having a stranger living in your house, and indeed sitting at your dining table every evening is an awkward but necessary requirement – one I never thought I would have to deal with.

I am struggling against depression. Suffering is boring. There is no reason why I should be in a good mood, I guess, though I am still working and doing interesting things. This horrific thing happened to me; it's mind-blowing. I can't get used to it, I don't want to get used to it. But worse things are happening to my friends; they suffer more. Recently one of them died; others are on their way. I am, to a certain extent, the lucky one, and should savour the good things that happen every day: improved relationships, the love of my family, the support of Carlo.