I Will Leave the Owls... Buried Treasure of Forever Love... and Just for me.

I leave this....  a  warm Portuguese southern idyll for

the   "mists and mellow fruitfulness" of  a late autumn in Devon.

And I leave Portugal with a change of heart,

mid-wifed by my lovely sisters.

I will leave the owls and the garden after all.

I have cancelled the building plans.

Trying to make them happen

has been breaking me.

I bought this house to live out a dream.

The one that Robin and I had.

 A house in a village, in the country, a vegetable garden,

The stream - a bonus.

A home for us -  for two - to build together,

to grow old in.

 As I only know how to live a married life,

I keep creating it.

Imagining that if I do, if I wait long enough,

if I build it he will come.

To let go of  the emptiness of that dream now,

to let in the truth of my solitariness,

is like a pair of giant gentle hands

lifting a boulder from my shoulders.

And mid-wifed by my lovely therapist

I come  home to something even 

lighter, deeper in myself.

 That the love Robin and I had for all those years

can never be taken away from me.

It lives in the fabric of my being.

In every cell of my body

forever while I'm here.

Eternal.

A sustenance.

They all said that - that your loved one lives on in your heart

even when they die.

And I wanted that so much 

but I could only 

feel his absence

the loss of his physical presence 

a weeping wound, 

draining the life, the smile, out of me.

And it doesn't stop me longing for him still.

On Saturday night I stood in the cold wind

in a village square

with my family

listening to a choir of carol singers.

When it came to the descant in  

'O Come All Ye Faithful'

I could only hear Robin's high alto above all the rest 

and wept for him

and for me

remembering  his arms 

wrapping me up

against  the draft of

singleness.

But now when I return to the memory of him

I don't only feel the hurt

of his absence

but something else as well,

our forever and always love

embodied in me

like buried treasure

to sift though

over and over again.

Something to feed me,

something I have been hungry for,

and up till now

didn't know was possible.

This is the sky and the frosty garden that I wake to this morning.

I have started painting my bedroom. Standing on a small step ladder, a roller loaded with Dulux Timeless White, I reach  up to the ceiling and sweep it across the cracks in the plaster above me.

It feels good to finally be here, owning the house as it is, just making a few cosmetic changes - like replacing some light fittings, insulating the loft  -  not planning to demolish walls or build new ones.

Now it's the place where I  have the time to rest, recover, let go, declutter stuff, let in the new,

And when I'm ready, maybe in the spring, I'll put it on the market and look for the right home. 

Just for me.