Cell by Cell

12th June 2011

We are invited to brunch by an old friend at a new friend’s house. They are both lovely and I feel a bit nervous. How will my husband be? Will he manage the conversation? Will he know who we are talking about? Will he say something inappropriate? Will he get tired? Or bored if he doesn’t understand? Will I talk too much to cover up all this silly worry?

We sit at the table with them in a beautiful, peaceful, open plan room overlooking her garden while the rain and gusting wind slash at the trees, the bushes and the flower pots and knock over the sun umbrella. I immediately feel welcomed and at ease in their company. We share our stories over delicious mushroom and asparagus tortilla, mugs of coffee and hot croissant. And then we arrive at the heart of it.

If I let you see my quaking frailty, my jealous bones, my spiteful claws, my torn sinews - then you will show me yours - your version of my mess. And then together, cell by cell, we can dismantle the wall we think divides us. And let the light shine in.

I didn’t need to worry about my husband. He was himself as he is now. Just perfect.

What Price Freedom?

11th June 2011 Saturday

I wake up early in a thudding spin cycle of grief and terror. Why did think I could manage this hell, survive it, grow into a better person because of it? All yesterday’s hopefulness and lightness forgotten in a heartbeat.

I leave my husband snoozing in bed, go downstairs and start chopping onions and parsley for the rice salad I’m making to take to a big extended family gathering in a church hall in Bristol. I was looking forward to this annual occasion meeting up with all my cousins and their children and grandchildren. I have recently told them about my husband’s brain disease. But now I feel anxious and jittery. I make bad decisions - leave behind the lemon cake I made for the lunch. I feel dull in my is-it-hot-or-cold? dress and trousers.

En route we take my father to visit his first great grandson. He has bought smart new clothes in shades of cream and coffee for this longed-for occasion. He laughs and cries at the same time while he jiggles this tiny peaceful baby in his arms and says he’s afraid he’ll drop him. He says he wishes my mother could be here to hold him too. My sister says how radiant they all look - the glowing new parents and their beautiful son. She shines too, when she cradles him.

When we arrive at the church hall it’s buzzing with the voices of the family and the squeals and laughing of their toddlers and babies. It’s two years since I’ve seen some of them. Over lunch all my cousins and their partners find a way to come and talk to me and they are generous and warm in their sympathy and understanding. My husband remembers them but not always their names.

Later I talk to the daughter and also the husband of my cousin who has Alzheimer’s, who is only a few years older than me. I’m deeply touched by his courage and openness, living with the daily reminder of his loss of her as she was - and creating another kind of life together.

But I didn’t feel brave today - just bogged down in feeling sorry for myself. And ashamed that I couldn’t or wouldn’t shake it off.

We stay up late and watch The Shawshank Redemption. As I usually do, I close my eyes in the violent bits, and stuff my fingers in my ears. But they filter through - the sickening thuds - and this time I think that the price they paid to finally escape to the world beyond the prison walls was too high. I wonder what price is my freedom.

Matching Socks

11th June 2011 On Saturday - about Friday

Yesterday I felt the whisper of courage in my ear. I shared lunch with two gorgeous women - a bright and fresh Greek salad platter on a wooden board, and a huge chocolate brownie to follow. Our talking took us deep into our lives and I didn’t notice the rain falling on the lavender bushes outside till it was time to go. It was their listening that fed my heart.

Nearly home and a shower of hail stones clattered on the bonnet of the car bouncing up onto the windscreen. Ice balls zinging from the sky in June - as unexpected as a disease biting into the cells of my husband’s brain.

I just had time to put the kettle on and wipe the smears from the glass topped table in the sitting room before my councellor friend arrived. She reminded me that in our last session I was exhausted by trying to keep everyone alive - my father, my husband and the cat.

I said ,‘Well, my father is better, the pussy cat is better and I am trying not to rescue my husband from his fear and loss. Trying not to come up with solutions - to make me feel better at least.’

The other morning I was sorting socks in the bedroom. He came in and said,

‘I’ve made the one phone call I had to and now I have nothing to do.’

I noticed the familiar clutch in my stomach, a spurt of anger and hopelessness. I could think of a dozen things he could do.

I said instead,

‘That must be tough’.

‘It is,’ he said, ‘ is this what it’s going to be like from now on?’

‘I don’t know,’ I said and carried on matching the different coloured toes of his socks into pairs.

He went back upstairs and a little later I heard him talking on the phone.

Iridescent Eyes

9th June 2011 Thursday

We leave the house at 7.30 this morning in car convoy - my husband following me to the garage of the lovely mechanic who fixed my brakes last time my car needed some TLC. I can’t remember the exact address and we wander around the industrial estate for a while till it all comes back to me. We leave my husband’s car and instead of going straight home I say, let’s have breakfast in town and go to the farmers’ market.

Some of the stall holders are still unpacking their wares. We bump into a dear friend who I always look out for as she’s usually there behind a table laden with gorgeous breads and cakes. At the plant stall she shows us an exquisite lily - white, pink trimmed and waxy and I’m drawn to a rose bush with one one opening bud - deep cherry red in the centre, the petals fading from blush to white at their edges.

We buy eggs and broccoli and radishes. But the scent of the rose bush stays in my mind. We walk past the stall again.

‘I’ll buy it for you,’ says my husband.

I want to know its name.

‘It’s called Nostalgia,’ says the woman who owns the stall. ‘It’s a hybrid tea rose. The grower sprays it with “Roseclear”, the only thing that works, because in the South West roses are prone to black spot, mildew and aphids.’

My husband carries it back to the car and I think about where to plant it in the garden. I wonder if it will survive if I don’t spray it - which I don’t want to do as we never use chemicals on our plants. I ponder on the price of beauty while we share breakfast - coffee and a warm cheese straw for me and a raspberry and white chocolate muffin for him.

Much, much later at the end of my day, we sit in a big circle of fifteen lovely people in the house of dear friends where the air always resonates with love. I let their blessings and the haunting sound of sitar and Indian voices stream through me. Just before we leave I sit with our friend from the market this morning. She says, ‘I have something for you,‘ and she gives me a small peacock feather, shimmering lime green fronds, iridescent turquoise eye. I know she has been reading my blog. She says I remind her of the colours of a peacock and my writing is beautiful.

She also says, ‘I don’t know why you have been given this circumstance. Maybe all you can do is to enjoy and accept the bright moments, the iridescent beauty of them.’

This is one of those dawning moments. So many people have said such astonishingly wonderful and encouraging words to me about this blog that because of them and their loving hearts I am beginning to write myself into view. Without spraying away the mildew.

How can I not reflect back all their love when I have so many iridescent eyes in the shining fan of my open peacock tail - which is also theirs?

Entranced

8th June 2011 Wednesday

We have seen him in the photos - our six day old great nephew - and he looks beautiful. But I wasn’t prepared for the tiny perfection of him, the lightness of him, the miniatureness of him - his fingernails, his nose, his ears all there all in the right place, dainty as a pixie. My nephew who is newly radiant, puts him in my arms - Hold his head - he says. His eyes are closed, he just makes little wrinkles with his nose and mouth, lifts one elfin hand to his silk cheek and continues his sleep. There is a palpable peacefulness about him. I am entranced.

When I hand him back to his mother for a moment I feel bereft, empty handed.

“ How can you bear to let him go?” I ask her.

‘I can’t’, she says.‘Everything has changed now. I have all I want.’

Driving home my husband says, ‘They are a family now.’

We didn’t do that - make our own family. So I’ll never know what’s that’s like. Maybe I have something else to give birth to now. Maybe it’s me.

Magic Meals

7th June 2011 - Tuesday

When I ask my nephew what they’d like us to bring when we come and visit the baby tomorrow he says,

Eco disposable nappies, shower gel, flapjack and meals for the freezer.

When I tell my friend I bought nappies today she looks at me in horror and wonders if it’s me or my husband who has become incontinent overnight.

No, it’s for the baby, I say, and we double up laughing.

I start cooking in the afternoon and it reminds me of the kind of food I used to make when I had my own business selling frozen vegetarian meals in foil containers which I delivered all over London in my powder blue VW beetle in the 1980s. I called myself Magic Meals then. Today I soak pearl barley and split lentils, grate parmesan cheese, chop veggies and cup up bacon and haddock and stir my bubbling pots on the stove, conjuring savoury aromas.

By 8pm the garden is in shade but the kitchen is ablaze with late sunshine pouring in through the windows and the open doors and the plastic roof, showing up smeary marks on the glass and grubby cabinet doors. No time to clean now. I still have to wash up and filter the second batch of elderflower cordial - made with the right sugar this time - into bottles, and de-cant the contents of the pans into containers to cool before I can freeze them.

When my husband comes home - I thought he was at Gi-gong but he said he didn’t feel like it, he dropped in to say a prayer at the Cathedral and went for a drive instead - we sit on the sofa and eat bowls of wild mushroom risotto for supper. There is still plenty left to take to the parents of our great nephew tomorrow. He won’t be ready to eat coconut lentil dahl or Provencal fish stew or bacon and barley bake for a while yet.

I was so busy today I didn't remember the kingfisher very often - just caught a glimpse of him flashing through the garden and gave my husband an extra long hug.

The Wolves, The Pigeons The Candle and the Kingfisher

6th June 201

My friend, who is also my councellor and midwife - birthing me on my journey out of my narrow canal of darkness into the light - says,

Close your eyes. Take a breath and what do you see?

I see a small candle, a flickering flame. I see wolves. In the dark. A pack of them. On a hill. Yapping, pacing, teeth-bared. Frightening.

I wait. I see now they are howling at the moon, a terrible throat ripping sound. Female wolves crying for their lost babies. Like me - only my loss is my husband and his lost words, tearing at me. I enter the circle of wolves, nudge close to their soft coats and I howl at the moon too. I see their grieving open wounds from throat to belly, their blood draining to the earth. I feel the blood from my wound, like theirs, seeping, pouring, down and deep into the ground below me, unceasing. Irretrievable.

The male wolves lie low in the night. Tails straight. Keeping watch at the base of the hill. Waiting.

What now? says my midwife. What do you need?

I need some light. A fire in the darkness. Bigger than a candle. A fire to burn on and on into the dawn, into the daylight. To dry me out.

And what do you feel?

I feel my heart fluttering in my chest. Something trapped there. A pigeon. No, a flock of pigeons - hundreds of pigeons taking flight - soaring. And the last one - not a pigeon - but a tiny kingfisher. Speeding away, flashing in sunlight, skimming the surface of the river - turquoise and burnt amber orange - joy riding the sky.

And what does the kingfisher mean to you?

Beauty. Freedom. Lightness of being. The possibility of happiness.

And what is the candle like now?

It’s burning with a strong flame. No flickering.

If you put that candle in your heart, what part of you would it be?

It would be the part that remembers to shine. All of me. Kingfisher bright.

It would be Love.

I have two cards of kingfishers on my desk from my father, who knows about love and how to share it. Who showed me the kingfisher in my heart. Ready to fly now.