a new normal?

As Marion's convalescence continued into 1911, the couple had to get used to what their 'normal' life would look like for the foreseeable future. Most patients faced a year or more to recover from the disease, separated from their family and friends - since the sanatoriums were not normally in the towns where they lived.
 
Though we don't have a diary from Marion, you can find diaries on-line from other patients in the 1920s or 1940s for an view into how hard it was on the patient. While it sounds like an extended vacation - sitting on a sundeck, riding horses, breathing in the mountain air - they were confined with little to do. No job, no housework, no traveling (and of course no TV back then) - just sitting around, reading, writing letters. For month after month. Yes, their families could visit, but those visits always ended much too soon.
 
To get her mind straight, the 1940s patient came up with personal rules to help her cope, including not wallowing in self pity (accept the disadvantages and then forget them), always be cheerful (else people will get sick of you), take interest in the outside world, learn new things, don't try to run others' lives - and don't go on an on about your illness.
 

Letters from Marion

On Valentines Day 1911, Marion wrote a poem for her husband:
 

	Marion with baby Jim

      We can see the longing in a poem she wrote the next month:
 
      "Home, Sweet Home"
           I.
The days are passing slowly, love
   Because you're far away.
But soon I'm coming home again
   With you, dear one, to stay
           II.
I want my little Jimmie, too,
   My darling little lad.
Eight long months he's been away,
   Do you wonder I am sad?
           III.
Make ready, then, our home, dear one,
   A little home for three.
What happy, happy times we'll have,
   Just you and Jim and me.

To my husband.
March 2, 1911.
Marion Gorham Armstead
 
[Note: 'Eight long months he's been away' points to the start of the troubles as roughly July 1910.]

a letter from George

In the letter that may have inspired Marion's 'Georgie Went to Lynn' poem (excerpted earlier), he also touched on his hopes and ambitions for the future:
 
Dearest Love:- Hope you got the postal O.K. and that it found you as well as I hope this does. Mrs. Linscott come up to see you tomorrow I think- no I guess it is Friday she is coming and she is taking pains to bring you some nice things...
I'll come up Saturday, dearest and hope to see you as lovely and rosy and as well as last week and hope every week to hear of continued improvement and absence of temp. and good appetite and decrease of cough which will be gradual though, love. You must expect that to go slowly.
Tonight I'm going home to wash, bathe, shampoo, shave, and sleep. There's a health program worthy of my old days...
Someday sure as preaching I'm going to write fiction. Just the s??? guess if your health continues to improve as it doubtless is and if I keep mine I'm going to try to keep in the newspaper game and write fiction as a side issue.
You [several missing words] of an editor of a newspaper I'd get my work read more easily and would attrack more kind treatment from newspapers in which my novel got notice, see?
Then it would be an unusual and a novel thing for a newspaper editor in active work to turn out fiction as well as his paper and this would create comment and that would advertise my book and all that means added success or chance of success.
You can see the advantages from being an ex-newspaperman and an active newspaper editor in writing a book and trying to market it and attract attention to it.
I haven't been to the P.O. today but have your two letters I spoke of last night and have the order for the money all O.K.
I want to write some eds and then get home so will close by sending a world of my love, which dearest, is the greatest thing, yes the only thing worth while, in my life. It is to satisfy my ambition to do something worthy of the splendid woman who is my wife that I want to write well and to become known in the world of newspapers and letters...
 
The story continues here. Here is the previous page.

References

Source material for the above

• Letters and photos handed down to James Gorham Armstead
• online diaries of sanatorium patients