A Goodness out of The Robin Years

I'm feeling sad writing this as it's my last blog. As trishcookingcurrie anyway. It's time to stop after nearly ten years.

Not just take a break as I have done many times and returned. 

But I have a reason. Instead of going on with it I'm going back inside it.

Up to now I haven't been able to re-read it - re-visit what I wrote and felt.. ...before Robin's diagnosis ...then living with him and his illness and the impact on us... and then afterwards ...living without him.  Of course I remember it all -  and have added guilt and regret -  but I haven't really let myself know what happened...and I've kept blogging to try and make sense of my life now.

But now I feel that until I really know what happened - and it's all there in my blog in black and white and colour -  and let it enter me  -  the truth and reality of it  - I can't move on with my life. I keep trying to ...changing my house, my home...searching for a place to rest, a person to become, but I'm still stalked by loss and trauma.

Several people, including my father, over the years have suggested that I turn the blog into a book. One which might help other people who have been or are still going through something similar to what I did - caring for Robin through the years of a terminal illness. 

I have always rejected the idea.  There is just too much of it.Thousands of words to edit. And a book? Me?  I'm just not good enough. 

But recently, and thanks to kind and supportive encouragement, I'm beginning to entertain the idea as a possibility. And without any idea about how.

Even if it doesn't get as far as that  - as publishing - I want to do it not only if it could help someone else but because it could help me. To go back deep into that time...to mourn ....to heal ...through the process of reading and editing and  re-writing ...  and to create a goodness out of The Robin Years.

And then let it be.

So I have booked flights to Portugal in March. To my timeshare apartment in the Algarve where I can retreat and immerse myself in this blog ...go back to the beginning ....

and just let myself unravel into whatever arises.

And trust in the goodness.

Blogging and Gardening and William Blake's Formula

I want to write but not sure what to say or rather feel I've lost the knack of how to say it....especially when I feel flat or sad or uninspired or tired of everything and myself...like now.

Does this count as writer's block I wonder... not really solved by eating another wedge of lovely  crusty rye bread- a gift from my my niece at the weekend -  slathered in cold butter.

I've been thinking about it on and off today...this blog...why I'm still doing it...who is it for....what needs to change if I continue...it started out in another lifetime - 10 years ago...originally inspired by my poet niece... to become better at something creative you need to practice it....even a few words a day...but not sure that's what it is  about any more.

These are my words and photos  today...for better or worse....

while I have been 

gardening and 

taking advantage of a glorious warm blue day - even hanging out the sheets on the line to dry.

I re-pot the two white hellebores I bought at Christmas, sweep up heaps of dry leaves with my hands in thick gloves, prune back the hydrangea, the lilac, the roses, weed the daffodil and allium pots, and manage to lose my secateurs. I "lose" my secateurs many times during a gardening session and I always find them again on a stone or a wall or abandoned in the foliage where I've been working.

Not this time. I'm  afraid I've thrown them away by mistake, dropped in the brown compost bin along with the dead leaves.

 A celandine for B. I found lots of them growing around the LPG tank in the front garden whereas there are none by the stream where I'd expect to see them.

And the first crocus is blooming in the front garden along with 

a wonderful display of snowdrops crowning the Devon bank which marks the border 

between my garden 

and the road. Today it was busy with tractors trundling up and down,

their trailers piled to the brim with muck for spreading on the fields.

All day I've been accompanied by the sound of the stream rushing and bubbling along,

 and the birds - the tap-tapping of a woodpecker across the field which I can't see, the calls of  buzzards and rooks,

the constant sparrows chattering 

and the rampaging starlings. 

I don't come to any conclusion about the blog while I'm gardening but I've been thinking about a quote  that I read on Robert Holden's blog from the mystic visionary and artist William Blake about his formula for living a creative life.

Think in the morning

Act in the noon.

Eat in the evening.

Sleep in the night.

It sounds ideal although I imagine he had someone to do his washing and shopping and cooking and cleaning so he had more time for creating.

I like the sleeping in the night concept and realise that's why I'm struggling with the blog. I write it late late late at night ...eating into my sleeping time. It's nearly midnight now.

Something I could change...not what to write but when to write it....which would mean changing a very ingrained habit...

One of Blake's paintings.

He also wrote,

"I'm not  ashamed, afraid or averse to tell you what Ought to be Told: that I am under the direction of Messengers from Heaven, Daily and Nightly."

I think I need help too from the angels about this one.

This is the closest I came to heaven yesterday afternoon - driving back from Tiverton along muddy country lanes - the sun breaking through the clouds... making me catch my breath and stop the car ...a moment of glorious angel light.

Untethered

The woman behind me in the checkout queue in the vegetable stall says something about the quantity of carrots and spinach and potatoes and kalettes I'm buying and stuffing into my basket.

I say,

"I have my family coming at the weekend."

 I know she imagines a son, a daughter, grandchildren.

The family coming at the weekend are my sisters' families.

I'm so grateful, lucky, blessed to have them and have only ever felt included, loved and welcomed in their lives.

 Robin  was my family, and within our wider families, that's who we were. Family within family - belonging to each other ( I know you can't belong to someone but I know what belonging feels like).

I didn't really know, not in a visceral sense, how much Robin would take with him when he died. I knew he would leave the terrible aching empty gap of himself, his presence.

But I didn't really understand how much of me, and all the fabric of us, the precious links we made as us, the roots we grew from, would disappear with him.

 And how small and diminished and weakened I feel without him 

everywhere in my life. Untethered.

I  just remembered this poem I wrote in April 1999 ( hope I haven't posted it before) called 

JUST US NOW

We lay together this morning in bed

And wondered what our children would have looked like.

"Your hair, your freckles", he said,

"and my bad back."

We dissected each other and made our children up

from bits of our bodies.

And tried to see two new people.

Two holograms emerging blurred through tear rivers.

They would be people by now, not the babies we had ached for.

Teenagers - a young man, a young woman.

Flesh and blood. Their own flesh and blood - not ours.

But we may see their  grandfather's ears

their grandmother's smile - echoes of us in these new people.

" I think they would have been lovely," I said, "our children."

"We would have made good parents," he said.

"We would have got it wrong all the time", I said.

"We'd probably be divorced by now," he said.

Even so, they would still be here,

breathing their own lives.

Two new people who would make more new people.

But we are the same two people.

There will be no new people from us.

It's just us now.

No, it's just me now.

And the best family  I could ever belong to.

Beloved Sparks

Too tired to write tonight....my flame is flickering.

So I'm posting this quote from Albert Schweitzer

 and in great gratitude to the many beloved

sparks

 who re-kindle my flame every day

 and keep me alive, and connected every day

 with their love and their care

for me.

 At times our own light goes out and is rekindled by a spark from another person.

Each of us has cause to think with deep gratitude

of those who have lighted the flame 

within us.

- Albert Schweitzer -

Apple Oak...and the hollowness there.

Yesterday morning I walked in my early-spring-in-January-confused garden with my camera  - so excited by the difference clean sunlight brings to everything  - including my mood - after endless sullen grey days.

 A  peachy male chaffinch singing high up in a tree at the end of my neighbour's garden. Without its leaves I can't remember what kind of tree it is....maybe a hazel.

Apple tree tear drops.

 I love it that the tree is still surviving even with its canker disease. It gave at least 12 apples last autumn....with that unmistakable garden aroma/flavour which you never get from a shop apple. And I still didn't eat them all before they went sappy and brown spotted in their cardboard box that I was storing them in, in the summer house.

Oak marble gall ( I think) - dripping amber tears.

 There are lots of these hard shelled balls clinging to the thin branches of the shrub oak which is sprouting out of the giant stump that was cut down long before I bought the house. I now know that they are caused by a gall wasp which lays her eggs inside a dormant leaf bud.

I have a dormant acorn in a little pot on the kitchen widow sill...not sure where to plant it when it has germinated....as I'm still in my unsettled transitory state.

However I did watch two men in my kitchen early this morning assemble my new table and chairs - oak veneer - which makes it feel like a proper, permanent, kitchen. ...instead of one with  our old garden furniture in the middle...a bit like camping....for nearly 18 months.

 Single tear drop Hellibore in a pot that I bought with me from our old house...now on the steps by the swimming pool.

Early viburnum - I think. The first  gentle pink in the garden...

and a single primula which has survived the frost ...and the first open snowdrops springing up on the bank of the stream.

 This afternoon just minutes after arriving in a cafe to meet dear friends I learn of the shocking death of the husband of a close friend of another dear friend.

My heart is sore for her...her life changed forever from now on. 

 Like mine has been.

And I'm still here ....surviving like the apple tree with its canker.... like the oak with its hard shelled galls....you can't see what is in the wood of me....and mostly I dare not look...for fear of  dying in the hollowness there...