I've Started Watching 'Brideshead Revisited' Again

... the 1981 British TV series.  I bought the boxed set months ago, after Andrew and I saw the 2008 movie on TV. We enjoyed that very much, thought it well done, and it made us want to watch the TV show again. We each saw that before we knew each other and remembered that it was wonderful, and that it had time to develop the story with more leisure than the movie could do.

But we never did watch it together. When I began the other day, I cut and removed the cellophane wrapping. We hadn't even got that far.

He got very tired towards the end of his life, and the pain he was in and the medications he had to take made him more so. I also suspected at times that he was somewhat depressed. Why wouldn't he be? There was the pain, and there was the increasing inability to do the things he wanted to, from simply walking a short distance unaided to operating his computer. He knew he had Alzheimer's, though I am not sure he realised how confused he sometimes was. But it was obvious to everyone that sometimes he was concentrating hard to keep up with a conversation. He must have known he didn't have much longer to live, and there were projects he had not completed, which weighed on him. The wonder is that he did not appear more depressed more often.

For whatever reasons, he slept a lot and we didn't watch Brideshead or many other DVDs I bought with the idea that he'd enjoy them. It became too difficult for him to cope with cinema-going, so I borrowed the latest movies from the DVD shop, and bought a number of old favourites when I saw them going cheap. We caught up with very few of those, but did manage On Golden Pond, Out of Africa, and Lawrence of Arabia. He knew he''d seen them before but didn't remember the stories. 

One of his in-home respite carers showed him Gifted Hands starring Cuba Gooding. He loved it so much, he insisted I buy a copy; he wanted to share it with all our friends. She also brought him The King's  Speech, and I had to buy that too. Not that I minded. I was only too glad to do whatever might make him happy. And it did. He had no recollection of ever having seen it previously — which he did, with me, when it first came out. He fell in love with it and watched it repeatedly. He wanted me to organise to show it in all the local schools! I got out of that by saying it would be against copyright regulations. Anyway, he wasn't much interested in watching anything else. There are others too with the cellophane still intact.

So it's time to do what gives ME pleasure. For the most part we liked the same things, so seeing them with him would have given me pleasure too, but now that option is past and it's only myself I need to consider. I'm sorry he missed out on revisiting Brideshead, but I dare say that's not important to him now. Myself, I'm loving it.