This Too Will Pass

Friday 15th April

Day 359

This morning I wake with my heart fluttering - a bird’s broken wing flapping against the cage of my light bones. Some wild terror clawed its way into my chest in the night. I carry it with me into the day - remembering yesterday and the mask of charcoal thunder etched in the skin of my husband’s face. His rage and fear like a plague in the house.

I escape to a small town by the sea with my father and my sister. We sit in the cool office of a tiny Norwegian nutritionist and gaze at a smear of my father’s blood, magnified a thousand times, on a screen in black and white. The red cells are round bubbles bumping into each other in long chains. Some are ragged edged, breaking down into the shape of stars. She says my father is iron deficient and hyperglycemic. This explains his deathly white pallor and the loss of the fire in his belly.

We leave her with the hope of rekindling his heat and eat our fish lunch on a cement bench by the sea with the seagulls and pigeons squawking round our feet, waiting in vain for batter gribbles and greasy chip fingers.

Later I walk with two dear friends and a small dog through shady woods under a glowering grey sky, perfumed with bluebells and wild garlic. Their company is like a long draught of honey nectar, nourishing my soul.

At supper - asparagus, avocado, eggs and leafy salads - my resolve to be a clear and loving space dissolves into the muddy waters of attack and my husband and I argue ourselves into the orbit of separate planets - his draft letter to his company lying on the table between us - a smoking revolver.

So, be still, my beating heart. This too will pass.