The first time I saw him after his diagnosis was when I was on the door at church welcoming people to the Sunday morning meeting. He and his wife arrived and I said the standard things and then, feeling I had to say something, I started talking. 'Do you watch West Wing?'
They shook their heads.
'Well, the President in that has MS and he does fine; he manages to run the country.' I could feel my sentence shrivelling up as it came out of my mouth.They smiled weakly at me and moved on into the main hall.
The next people who arrived found me, statue-like, staring at the wall, muttering to myself, 'I didn't really say that, did I? I couldn't have; I couldn't be that stupid. Oh, I did, ohmigosh ...'
P.S. I apologised to them afterwards, and I've spoken to them lots of times since and we're fine.
xx
