Becalmed

Saturday night...

Sunday morning....

and the drop in temperature has halted the invasion of black flies

and ladybirds ...they have been swarming against my windows for days.

We didn't have time to throw rose petals into the sea on Robin's anniversary, 

so on Sunday I stood on the little wooden  bridge over my stream

and released them into the water, which doesn't flow very fast, so they gathered

like soft papery jewels in the green corners of the banks,

waiting for a stronger current to float them onward.

More glistening jewels brightening my usual circular field  walk...

late cherries

and rowan berries( maybe?)....

and the clouds are

especially 

spectacular....

autumn dropping all around me.

I've been in indulging in  a"no plans" day

letting tasks fall off my TO DO list

 like dry leaves

catching in the wind

and 

allowing  myself 

 to meander with the 

 rose petals

stopping to 

observe my surroundings - 

the sparrows chittering on the bird table - 

my aloneness -

becalmed

in the cold air 

of my house,

resting 

my mind.

Too Much for a Heart to Hold

Flowers from the garden on the kitchen windowsill....

my view  this evening  when I'm washing up..

the moon last night ...swimming in the bird bath.

So it's true then.

Or so they tell me.

You have gone.

Forever.

No coming back.

I know it.

Because you aren't here.

So now I have to let my heart know it.

From the very beginning when 

the consultant said,

'It is Semantic Dementia'

I didn't believe it.

Not really 

not that you would  die

not soon anyway

not for a long 

undefined length of  time

only in some vague 

future. 

But we still had now

and now 

and now.

The hell of now.

Not knowing it would be 

beyond hell

 in the end.

But  that now is over.

Not vague any more.

Not just 2 years over.

Today I shock myself

did I really not believe it?

Living deep in the onslaught 

 of all those years

but not really believing it.

Too much for a heart to hold.

And still now

I live in a kind of hope

I don't know what for...

that if I still wear your ring

still  wrap myself in this illusion, 

this fantasy

that it could  be like it was,

before you were ill

even though that 

wasn't  exactly a bed of roses.

That if I still

 grieve for what we can never have now,

that somehow

  it will protect me 

from the raw

gut twisting 

truth.

You have gone 

and even if you were here 

it would not be good.

For you 

or me.

Too much to digest 

in one great eight year

 gulp.

 So like the dreaded goat's milk kefir 

which

I disguise with banana,

I can remember 

and forget 

in equal portions

till I get more accustomed 

to the taste 

of the

 final

 truth.

Holding

 Still more photos on my long walk last week....and the sky is still this blue today.

 This morning  2 lovely plumbers come to remove small hand basins  (one avocado green, the other soft peach a la 1970s chic) and related boxed-in pipework in 2 bedrooms.

They hardly make any mess - just leave pink re-plastered basin shapes in the walls and re- fitted unpainted skirting boards.

I'm too tired to put all furniture and my things back in place, so tonight I sleep without curtains. Which doesn't make much difference as the moonlight floods in through the thin fabric anyway and only owls of the night can see in though the windows.

This afternoon lovely therapist says she can  feel how my body holds on, holds tight, holds still, holds back.....holds it all together.....waiting for it to be over.

And how there was nothing holding me from the very beginning ..... the tiny me needed to be  held...and it's this holding I long for now....

to rest into angel wings at my back....which hurts so much with all the trying to stay upright ...... holding myself together. 

Broken hearts are messy enough as it is.

For my own selfish sake.

It was 2 years ago today that Robin passed. 24th October. I think I confused you by writing about it in advance 2 days ago...it was a Monday in 2016...the day he was expecting his family...but of course this year the 24th falls on a Wednesday....

 This morning  we bring bunches of flowers from our gardens, my sister and I, ...and lay 5 smooth  Budleigh pebbles on the heaping pile. 

On the way into Higher Cemetery we stop to talk to a woman walking a sweet, bouncy labrador puppy on a lead.... and watch this squirrel playing in circles, burying nuts in the grass round the pine tree next to his  grave. And we take them as signs of Robin's close presence around us. Beaming his love always.... where ever we are.

Later we drive to the churchyard near Lucerne House where he stayed in the last weeks of his life.  The churchyard where, at this time of year, the giant Arbutus 'strawberry tree' drops its huge bounty of soft, ripe, red fruits all over the gravestones below.... 

which we gather up into plastic containers to take home. My sister makes wonderful jam from them. Like she did last year on this same day.

We buy a picnic from Sainbury's-  vegetable samosas, mozzarella and tomato wraps, guacamole dip and crisps, olives and coconut water -  and sit on bench in the churchyard in the sunshine and remember all the good things about Robin and his life.

  I don't let myself think about the details of that day 2 years ago....I skim over them as if they happened in a film to someone else. Otherwise I would be curled in a soggy heap along with the squashed arbutus berries scattered on the surface of the graves.

Tonight I cry tears for him...but I realise they are really for me. I forget sometimes,  deep in the well of my loss, deep in my longing for him to still be here, that he was very ill, that the disease was eating him up, hurting him, that he couldn't have the life he wanted, that our life as we had known it was over. I can't really bear to imagine his own pain.

So in the last years even though I know it was a kind of living hell for both of us....that he was never going to get better....that he could never hold me again .... that it is beyond reason or sense...I still want him here ...on this earth.... breathing, grinning at me...loving me ....for my own selfish sake ....not for his. 

.....the past is no longer what it used to be.

More images from my 4 hour walk the other day....following the stony path through the woods.

Today I walk with Robin's family at the Killerton Estate... loving the majesty and protection and longevity of the giant trees brought there from all over the world....sharing it with them.

 And all day this Robert Holden quote has been popping in and out of my mind..... but I'm wondering how to do it.

All day I have had the past sitting on my shoulder....dreading tomorrow...if I let myself think about it even for a second I'm a lost shadow....haunted by that phone call.

So I try and remember him smiling at me instead, the smile that never left his eyes. All the love in him that he shared with us all....the love that doesn't die.

When you forgive the past you discover, all of a sudden, that the past is no longer what it used to be. 

We remembered him today.

Tarte tatin lunch ....sunset walk over the fields ....and the moon rising... in the company of Robin's sister and family today.

Poignant...it was on this Monday 2 years ago that they were due to come and visit Robin and I had to make that phone call...

We remembered him today....together .....all those times they came to visit when the children were little. And now they are nearly as tall as he was.

I wish he was here to hug them.... like they hugged me tonight....with such young tenderness.