He was just nodding off in front of the telly, can of Strongbow clutched in one hand, when his mobile rang loudly from the hallway.Like a cowboy, he slept with one eye open in case of intruders, and he would totally be the guy to stick close to in a disaster movie, or maybe Armageddon, but I didn't want to live in crisis mode all the time, I wanted to be Zen, to be at peace in the world.

He leapt up quickly, instantly alert to whatever crisis might be about to demand his attention. I half - heartedly carried on watching telly, catching the odd murmured phrase of the one - sided conversation. As he returned to the room, I noticed his face was incandescent.
  "My Mum's just had another one of her episodes. She's crying and panicking, and shesays she can't breathe. My f****ing Mum. I can't stand any more of her nonsense. I've f****ing had enough. I can't f****ing take any more !"   His eyes dart around the room, then he grabs the armchair, raises it above his head, and smashes it violently down onto the lovely new oak floor, spitting, " I've f****ing had enough. " After that, he has another squint around the room. This time, it's his phone that gets the smashing treatment, as he dashes it across the floor.
 

Before driving to his Mother's house, he said he was going to have a nervous breakdown,he would commit suicide. He couldn't take any more. I suggested he take a cab, fearing his driving would be too erratic to be safe, but he took the car anyway. When he returned from the Hospital at 4 : 00 a.m. he asked me if I was O.K. and he cuddled me. Then he hugged me again.
 

The following morning, I surveyed the damage. Big gouges in the wood floor. The poor crippled chair, and the pieces of the broken Cabriole leg. It wasn't just a small chair, it was Daddy Bear's chair. A great big Lay- Z -Boy style chair, with a reclining mechanism that could chop your leg off. Ironically it was the right leg that was damaged. The fourth in our family to injure that  particular appendage. Freaky. I wondered if there might be some meaning to be found there.
 

He quite often inflicted damage on our surroundings. He once stabbed a hole in the kitchen  sink, smashed a hoover, and destroyed several mobile phones, on separate occasions. Thus creating yet another thing that needed fixing, another thing that would have to be paid for. We joked that our marriage, like everything else in our life, was held together with
gaffer tape.