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.