In Portugal not alone....Alone again...Coming home to myself

Portugal last week.

The first time I ever went on holiday on my own was 5 months after Robin died. Not really a holiday and it was to our time-share apartment in the Algarve which, after going there for more than 20 years is home from home really. 

I was still in the rip tide of shock, too frozen inside to treat it as a holiday.  Bleached with memories.

The second time, a year later, which included the date of his birthday, I was washed out with grieving, wretched with loss, hoping the hot landscape and sky would help. And of course it always does -  but only briefly  - all that soft and wild Atlantic beauty. 

This time I was not alone, not retreating, but in the company of a dear friend.

And in a different apartment, the one I share with my sisters when we go in the winter, in a place that has no associations of Robin, a place we never visited together.

And so this time it was nourishing and healing, easy to cry and to laugh and to remember all the goodness as well as sharing all the pain and the hurt and hopefulness of our lives then. And now.

Watching a film crew on the beach at 8am on the first morning from the balcony.

Directors chairs.

Diggers moving sand around on the beach  -  changing the whole beach skyline.

Fortunately this isn't oil but a boiling cauldron of black sludge,

being drained from the river estuary nearby.

Morning tea and glory.

On my return, 

I'm delighted to discover the weeping willow has greened even more and the primroses are spreading  -  a pale rash of confetti speckling the bank of the stream.

 You had even warmer, more settled weather here than we did in the Algarve last week which was bright and warm but also very windy -  whipping up white horses far out to sea most days.

Yesterday, while my washing dries on the line, I take a break from weeding the rose bed in the front garden, sit on the teak bench in boiling hot sunshine and make plans in my head about what to plant. I try and visualise the space without the great gash of the swimming pool and its concrete surrounds taking up the central heart of the garden, always in my view.  

Sometimes the pool, with its green canvas cover hiding the murky water below, feels like the hole of my grief....taking up the central heart of me....till the time comes to drain it.... fill it in...and plant something different there.

Meanwhile, it stays, hidden below the surface, but always there colouring my view.

I planned to finish the weeding today, but by the time I came home from the dentist with a mouth full of novacaine ( I chipped another tooth on a piece of toast while in Portugal),

the sky clouded over, and the cold wind brought in rain and hail showers. So I whizzed up a pan of chunky vegetable soup out of the freezer and ate it very carefully with a teaspoon so as not to dribble too much from the numb side of my mouth.

The sky this evening after the rain. 

I'm re-learning how to live alone again after the pleasure of being in my friend's company for a few days....keeping my usual routine ....keeping busy...but also taking moments to watch my bird visitors....to notice the sky outside my kitchen window.... to include the swimming pool in my view....and come home to myself...where ever I am.