On This Day.....and Sewing

On this day last year -  6th January 2016 -  we finally got a diagnosis for Robin's disease. 

A rare one - Multifocal Motor Neuropathy with Conduction Block. One to two people in 200,000 get it. 

In my blog of that date, One in a Million,  I wrote that 

....it's not life threatening and it's treatable.

 Turns out it wasn't either of those.

This morning, when my lovely cranio-sacral healer lays her hands on my tummy, I start to shake and quiver and leak a stream of tears. She knows about this kind of grief and says my body is still frozen with shock in deep places...and gently, gently she helps them to thaw a little.  Week by week I will return to her.....for as long as it takes.

Which could be long. Long rolling waves of time. Time is what I have now.

 It rains all day.

 I visit a dear friend for tea and sharing and more tears and exquisite listening.

This evening I discover that the lining of the inside pocket of my handbag is ripped and pens and perfume, coins and lip salve have escaped into the depths of the inner lining of the whole bag. I fish them out.

I sit on the bottom step of the stairs by the bedroom and sew up the torn seam. I 'm not a neat seamstress. Not like my mother was. Two images swim towards me as I sew.

One of her on the morning of my wedding day.....a row of pins in her mouth, a needle and thread in her hand as she alters the seams in the bodice of my dress. I sit on the edge of the bed in my dressing gown, feeling her anxiety, sorry I'm putting her through it. But excited too  - I will be a bride for this day.

The second image is of Robin sitting on the edge of our bed -  a mattress on the floor - before we were married. Before I really knew him.

 He has a needle and thread in his hand too - he is sewing up the seam of a stuffed fire brand that he's making for his fire-eating show. And I know he'll come back that night smelling of paraffin and singed chest hair.

I'm impressed he can sew. And also I'm wondering Who is this man? 

I wonder, now he is gone, how much did I know him. And maybe we can't ever really know another person. Except through the filter of our wants and expectations. 

Luckily love can overcome those.