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...

Little Women

Brief sun and blue sky this morning

lighting up the daffodils on my kitchen window sill

Followed this afternoon by

black clouds, hail and freezing sleet.

Short blog as I've just got back from a late showing of Little Women...Meg and Jo and Amy and Beth.....and their men. Worth seeing.....I can't remember all the details of the book I read as a teenager so don't know if the film is faithful to it....but I enjoyed it.

This quote from Robert Holden would apply to Jo....but it would be much harder for women to live it in the 1870s.

You didn't come here to be normal.

You came here to be you.

'Within Sorrow is Grace'.

February 2011

Walking with my father. Budleigh beach. After throwing rose petals into the estuary in honour of my cousin who died. ...too young...watching them float out to the big sea.

Today in my therapy session I walked beside my ancestors....tapping into something in their essence ...beliefs which have somehow become part of my essence...unquestioned....informing my way of being....maybe time to try on another skin.

Their hearts were good and loving....their beliefs rooted in duty and sacrifice...self denial in the name of being instruments of God's will....and always in service to others.

I have walked a tightrope between 

"Don't blow your own trumpet"

and

"Don't hide your light under a bushel."

Hard to get that one right.

And now I'm exploring how to serve without hurting/losing/denying myself.

 New water to swim in....how to live my true nature.

Within sorrow is grace. 

When we come close to those things that break us down,

 we touch those things that also break us open.

 And in that breaking open, we uncover our true nature.
- Wayne Muller -

The Weight of a Chopping Board

A dear friend sent me this  lovely message....

Giving myself time....trying not to make it finite...if I think that I may only have for example 20 years left, it sounds so little and makes me panic...I can't imagine it anyway.

So I'm giving  myself time NOT do stuff...like make big decisions.

Today I made a little decision.  In TKMAX I bought a new wooden chopping board to replace the one I have used nearly every day for 33 years which was a wedding present. It is still a good solid board, but it wobbles and  it's very heavy to lift now. The new one is made of bamboo.

I never imagined that getting older might mean that the weight of a chopping board would become something to consider. 

 Or that when we got married there would be a finite number of years for us.

In this day 24th January 2014  - New Zealand - walking in beautiful gardens in Auckland.

Four years into Robin's illness - 2 years and 9 months left. 

I'm glad we didn't know the date then.

And I'm glad I don't know mine.

I'm going to another funeral tomorrow...maybe that's why I'm thinking about it. 

Just feeling sad tonight. 

And remembering my lovely man.

Rest and Reading as well as Hot Soup

Today, after dear friends come for coffee bringing the lovely gifts of  themselves as well as bunches of furled daffodils and a beautiful hand made ceramic flower vase, I rest and read.

 I finish my novel,

Olive Kitteridge by Elizabeth Strout. A wonderful American writer I haven't read before

I always feel bereft and empty when I've finished a book I've enjoyed, like the end of a holiday.

But this time I can continue the pleasure as I found another of her novels in the second hand bookshop next to the cafe at Killerton House.

I'm letting myself read and rest and eat at the moment to break my habit of filling the emptiness that is stretching ahead of me now with busy plans for the next thing. I don't have a clear plan for my future but I still need a vague structure for my every day.

And that includes more soul nourishment as well as doing the washing and buying groceries and writing emails....feeding myself with rest and reading as well as deep bowls of hot spicy soup.

These Sparkling Genes

"We must learn to regard people less in the light of what they do or omit to do and more in the light of what they suffer"

- Dietrich Bonhoeffer - 

 My father was a great admirer of Dietrich Bonhoeffer's work. He was a German theologian...an anti Nazi dissident. I remember his name being mentioned throughout my childhood/adolescence. These words have stayed with me ever since I read them yesterday helping me  go deeper into my current forgiveness journey.

Today I held the hand of my father's last remaining cousin , who must be in her nineties, at the funeral of her partner who died on 4th January aged 100.

He was part German and deeply affected by the rise of Nazism in pre-war Germany ....was a member of CND and a great peace campaigner all his life.

 I only knew him briefly in his later years but I found it so moving to be in the presence of this branch of my father's family...his mother's side ...his cousin spoke about my grandmother  - her Aunty Ruth. They all have the same blue-grey, bright eyes -  twinkling, humorous. It was like my father was in the room with me and my sisters... and one of our cousins ....and the daughter of another.....these sparkling genes still embedded in us and the generations to come.