Reaching for a Mirage.

On Saturday I share this pizza ( it didn't need the sweet chutney dabbed on it) with a dear friend at the Toby Buckland Garden and Flower Show at Powderham Castle just outside Exeter. The field is a quagmire of mud and it's biting cold so we don't stay till the bitter end.

 As well as all the wonderful plants for sale there are local food stalls and this one

selling a forest of  

unusual, very clean looking  mushrooms.

My friend buys this stunning ten foot tall evergreen clematis - she has a big area of her garden to re-plant.

I'm very temped to stock up on plants as they are at wholesale prices but as I'm in such a limbo with the garden ..... am I moving or not....to plant or not to plant? I only buy a small pot of  fairy bell Leucojum  Snowflake called Tinkerbird.

The castle in the distance...

beyond 

the delicate perfection of

apple

blossom bursting out all over the trees in the car park.

 The trouble is that now I always associate this carpark with the time I left Robin in the car for a few minutes

while I got out to take photos of the deer in the field in front of the castle. Four days before he died. It's always like this now. There is nowhere that does not hold a memory of him. Sometimes I let it pass through me .....leaving a map of those days under my skin...sometimes it stops me in my tracks, leaves me gasping for air....reaching for mirages.

Today - finally blue sky and brief sun to warm the icy April air.  This morning I sit with two dear friends for a lovely Violet Flame meditation...and later in a warm cafe, I eat soup and a bread roll  birthday lunch with three more dear friends.....and back home I cut the daisies in the grass with my not very sharp lawn mower.....loving the sun on my neck.

Tonight on the news I watch a middle aged woman feeding a man with grey hair and glasses. He's sitting in an adapted chair. She spoons pasta into his mouth. You can see how he hates being unable to do it himself. 

 He has Motor Neurone Disease - since 2014. His life expectancy is 12 months. 

He is appealing against a decision in the High Court today to revise the law on assisted dying.

He wants to be able to end his own life with dignity before every nerve in his body stops functioning and incapacitates him totally.

 It breaks my heart to see them. Brings it all back to  me. It could have been our story. And I'm so grateful we didn't have to go down that route. We had an end of life policy in place but at least Robin didn't have to go to the bitter end ....waiting for years...getting worse. It was quick in MND terms. 

Too quick for me. Too soon. What would I give for one more hour, one more touch, one more smile, one more breath.

The hell of reaching for a mirage.

Nothing comforts me....

It rains all day.

 After the filling this morning my mouth is numb with novocaine for hours.

I crave something soft and spiced and hot for when I can eat again.

For comfort.

I read Italian, Indian, Middle Eastern recipe books

 for risottos and pilaus and pilaffs.

In the end I cook up a pan of Saffron Rice

 fragrant with star anise,  all spice, black pepper corns, clove, crushed cardamon seeds

and creamy sweet with coconut milk.

And let it cool to absorb all the flavours 

so I can have it for supper later.

With eggs and broccoli.

 A dear friend comes for tea and talk,

I watch The Good Fight on catch up on Iplayer, 

I wear my favourite old cashmere jumper 

and read my book wrapped in a blanket

on the sofa.

But nothing comforts me today.

I only want the living breathing flesh and blood 

and warmth of 

my husband's arms around me.

Nothing else will do.

So nothing is what I have.

Today

that hopeful Open Space

where anything can happen

just feels like a cold empty draught 

at my back.

To Love what Death can Touch

This afternoon in Bristol,

watching my six and a half year old great nephew and his grandma construct a home out of empty boxes with sellotape and scissors. They are making it for three 

"Stickies" -  amazing jelly like creatures which you can twist round your finger and hurl at a wall and they stick there. And then you can peel them off and they don't break. I bought them for him from a slot machine outside a supermarket.....like the ones you used to buy gobstoppers from.... with an octagonal  thrupenny piece. These were only 20p each. Total bargain.

I'm in awe of his and his grandma's creativity and dexterity and imaginations ...and the wonderful supply of craft materials kept by his mother.

 Recently she recommended me a book called "The Wild Edge of Sorrow - Rituals of Renewal and the Sacred Work of Grief" by Francis Weller.

It had arrived when I got home tonight so I've only dipped into the preface where he writes about the Five Gates of Grief. The first one being "everything we love we will lose" and he quotes this wonderful twelfth-century poem,

'Tis a fearful thing 

To love

What death can touch.

To  love, to hope, to dream,

And oh, to lose.

A thing for fools, this,

Love,

But a holy thing

To love what death can touch.

Earlier today a dear friend asked me what gives me comfort in the dark times...or at any time...and I found it hard to answer her. I thought it might be something like looking forward to something delicious to eat....or being in the company of dearly beloveds.....both true.

But reading this poem and how it reaches into my soul, and how it speaks to my condition, and how long ago it was written, and how it's a universal truth ...it does comfort me. To know I'm not alone and foolish in experiencing this 'wild edge of sorrow'.

Not Devotional....Addicted to Fat and Sugar - the Healthy Way

  Gorgeous painted wall panel by the artist Deborah Main. I visited her and her exhibition a few weeks ago on a cool wet Sunday 

when the sea mist was hanging heavy over the red cliffs of Sidmouth...

I sit with myself again this morning...but notice I'm distracted by needing to be ready for cleaner coming at 9am....and I cut it short.

I'm wondering if really I am not a devotional or contemplative sort of person....that maybe the open space I'm seeking will come obliquely...as the lovely Belinda of 'Mad Englishwoman and Dog' fame suggests ....through writing....cooking ...taking photos. I need to think more about it... Or maybe I'm just avoiding having a regular  morning practice before I slip into the busy mantle of my day.

Not so busy today.... which I like. 

I walk into town - blustery cold wind and sun -  to have my eyes tested...need new lenses...I have become more long sighted in the last 2 years. I wish that was symbolic but actually I can hardly bear to look into the future...it only feels shrouded in mist....and I'm trying to stay with all uncertainty as if it is normal and not scary.

I pick dandelion leaves in  Northernhay Gardens on my way home....wonder if  it counts as stealing...to add to the stinging nettles and kale and spinach for my green smoothie. After watching Hugh Fearnely Wittingstall's programme about fighting obesity -  a third of us in this country are overweight( apparently the new normal)  -  I feel like a miniscule minority  - just because I know what kale is and even like it. 

Some of the children in one of the more deprived areas of Newcastle where he is filming have never eaten a vegetable.

One family's salad drawer in the fridge contained only chocolate bars in wrappers. And 2 onions.

 It's easy to be superior about it but I have no idea what it's like to be poor ....to live on benefits and have no access to proper food....only takeaways and chips. I would be overweight and addicted to fat and sugar too.

 In fact I am addicted to fat and sugar - it's just that I can dress it up in a 'healthy' version to make it sound better. And actually it is. And it's not the only food I eat.

Yesterday to satisfy my sweet tooth - the same as those in Newcastle - I made chocolate date and walnut fudge halva with no sugar.

This is the recipe.

100g of tahini

100g of  dried dates

100g of dark chocolate - melted

1 teaspoon of vanilla essence

50g of walnuts chopped.

Cook the dried dates in some water till soft and blend till smooth. 

Mix together with the tahini, add the vanilla essence and chopped nuts and stir in the melted chocolate.

 Spread out on a small baking tray lined with parchment paper and put in the fridge.

Cut into squares and imagine it's a Mars Bar.... or a Twix.

'In the midst of heavy dialogue.....open space is always there"

The camellia flowers drenching the bushes in the park

are nearly over now....

turning brown at the edges...

dropping into a pink carpet on the ground below.

All flowers have an association for me... with a person, a place, a time, a memory.

Camellias .....a giant tree covered in them in Robin's aunt and uncle's garden in Dorset.

Magnolia - I knew the name even before I knew what the flower looked like....  A song of that name  by J J Cale which punctuated the nights of my student days in Cardiff.

Vinca, periwinkle - my mother. She planted it in all her gardens - and ours - such good ground cover she'd say. And it always was.

Grape Hyacinth - my father. In the front garden of their house in Honiotn springing up between the daffodils.

Pyracantha - the fire bush. Robin and our garden here. We planted it against a wall...it didn't take ...we took it to the allotment and it grew rampant like the sun.

Mahonia - Californian grape. There was a bush by the front gate in our garden in St Albans...prickly leaved and perfumed, producing mock bunches of tiny purple grapes in the autumn.

Marsh marigold - kingcup. All along the banks of a river...somewhere in the south west of France...the same day we saw a flash of kingfisher skimming the surface of the water.

Buttercup.  A memory of picknicking with Robin in a sloping field of them - up to our ankles in buttercups and daisies -  high above the sea somewhere along the Devon coastal path.

Clematis montana -  in the garden here - rambling over the fence from next door...getting intwined with our honeysuckle and Russian vine...loving its evening scent wafting through the open kitchen door in the spring.

Tulips - my brother. When he and his partner lived in Holland he used to bring me wonderful selections of unusual Dutch tulips for my birthday in October and which I planted in pots on the patio    to surprise me in the spring.

I forgot to replant the tulips I stored away in the shed this year....or at the end of last year....everything so uncertain with no appetite for spring then. So my patio pots are empty. Like me, biding my time, waiting for inspiration...or something new to emerge...or not.

This morning I make time to mediate ...at least my version of it...just sitting with my mind wandering all over the place.....but sitting all the same.  And then after some yoga, reading the Bhuddist nun Prema Chodron's " When things fall apart."

I have quoted her in this blog before. She talks about mastering the most difficult  Bhuddist practice of loving kindness towards oneself - Maitri.

" What makes Maitri such a different approach is that we are not trying to solve a problem.

We are not striving to make pain go away or become a better person.

In fact we are giving up control altogether and letting concepts and ideals fall apart.

This starts with realising that whatever occurs is neither the beginning nor the end.

It is just the same kind of normal human experience that has been happening to people since the beginning of time.

Thoughts, emotions, moods and memories come and they go. 

Basic nowness is always here.

In the midst of all the heavy dialogue with ourselves open space is always there.

I'm in love with that Open Space. And with these ideas. And at a complete loss about how to practise them. To give up control....to not try and make the pain go away...  to realise that Robin's death is not an ending...to not want to be a better person...to stop my striving ... and my heavy dialogue with myself. ...

To let myself fall apart....and come back together...again and again...."to make room for grief and for misery, for relief, for joy...to let life be a good teacher, a good friend"....what a peaceful..and challenging path that would be.

Maybe just sitting still in the mornings.... even for a little while..... but often....is where the space can open up for me.....after heavy dialogue ....peace... and still knowing that everything is always in transition..."nothing ever sums itself up in the way we like to dream about.'