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Last night the stags kept me awake.  I can’t see them, way over there across the sea-loch in the darkness, but I can take myself there in my mind.  There’s an old boy, calling through ragged throat, his call raspy as sandpaper, his message clear.  This is my territory, my harem, my life on the line!  Defiance is in his tone and many years of experience and fight in his urgent delivery.  The night is as startled as I am when he lifts his head and shatters the dark.  She stops, holds till he is quiet, and moves on.  I wait for the response and here it comes – a youngster, brimming with fire and testosterone and moving in.

Yesterday I heard shots, rifle shots, big rifle shots.  I wondered, then, if tonight will come without the old stag; if his days are done, if he is bloodied and broken in a way he never saw coming.  I tell myself this way might be kinder but it still catches my breath, the thought of that sudden death.  Somehow the last fight seems more natural, although it surely would take a whole lot longer to come to a conclusion.  And the wounded, limping away of it makes me want to run up the hill with a bandage.

As I almost drifted off to sleep, I heard swans.  Now, swans at night will always bring me to my window in the vain hope that there will be a full moon, clear skies and a grand sighting of those almost silent wings of grace.  No such luck, but I still stood and watched the night and listened to that soft and gentle piping sound until it faded into someone else’s sky.  I wondered how they fly at night.  I wondered where they go and how long it will take.  I wondered many things but one thing I knew.  They communicate in ways we could all learn by and nobody ever gets left behind.  Like geese, if the lead swan tires, he will tell them and another from further back will take his place.  I have watched it happen and it smiled me for the rest of the day, that team spirit, that respect for each individual, that lack of judgement.

There are days when I wake barely able to say good morning.  There are days when I am filled with beans and good mornings.  Sometimes the weight of caring feels like a mountain on my back, my blood cooling fudge in my veins, and then there are times when I feel light as a kite with an equal sense of fun and laughter.  Some days the thought of what lies ahead, the washing and cleaning, the picking up of dropped things, the mopping of spills, or mud shuffled in twist my stomach into a reef knot.  Others, I sing my way through it all and feel no angst at all.  Cooking soft foods every single day can be a living nightmare or just cooking soft foods.  Encouraging a shower or a change of clothing can be just too much, or just too easy.  Reminding, repeating, reassuring is an irritating chore or a dance with compassion. And all of these states of mind are down to me.  I know this, but when the body is weary, so is the mind, as it appears they work together, like swans.  I can decide to choose my attitude but fail through lack of sleep.  And then guilt moves in.  I know nothing can be done to change things and that the only thing I can control is myself.  I know I need to keep myself healthy and exercised and fed well, but half the time, yes, half the time, I can’t be bothered.  That is when guilt trembles in the wings, glitter-eyed, rubbing her hands together in glee, for here it comes…….that sharp word, that unfair remark, that look, that sigh, that refusal to go here or collect that.  Now she is centre-stage and I am on my knees with remorse.

Accepting the pendulum swing of life as a carer is not easy.  I want to do this the right way, the perfect way, but there is no such thing as perfect, however much we may aspire to it.  Besides, ‘perfect’ is rigid, glossy, immovable, unbendable, finite.  Not human at all. The others in a similar role to mine tell me that I encourage them by writing my truth.  Although this will never be a private blog where all the sharps and all the messes are revealed in safety, I do believe that there is far too much whispering around dementia, too much hidden from a world that really ought to know, because dementia is racing into our lives at an alarming speed.

So I’m going to stand firm on my hillside, and roar my aging roar, whilst also flying with the swans and learning, on a daily basis, from both.

40 years ago, this very day, we moved from the flatlands to the island.  I can hardly believe I have been here most of my life, as have my children.  Arriving full of excitement and terror, with a large heavy horse, two dogs, two cats and two weans, and minus the lime spreader I had ditched about a mile from the farm, we turned into the village street.   I had never driven such a long distance before in the land rover, let alone towed anything at all.  The faith placed in me was, well, let’s just say, nothing short of ridiculous, and I knew it at the first layby.  Driving in tandem is all very well in theory, but keeping up becomes IT.  I found it very hard to focus on what I should have been focusing on, ie the road and the traffic, my neck stretched out like a goose, eyes peeled for the horsebox up ahead.

Since that day we have dug our roots and even those who no longer live here call it home.  The solitude and space, the big skies, the rain, sun and wind, all sing my song, or I sing theirs.  The rhythm of life is a slow and steady beat, a rolling in and out of the tides, the moon, the seasons.  I have little desire to visit the mainland, especially as it is now so easy to buy most things online, barring explosive materials or liquids, of which I have little need, even if it is mildly annoying not to be able to order a wee bottle of essential oil for my essentials.

We have lacked little and found everything we need.  I do remember the times of yearning amongst the children as they moved awkwardly into the teenage years, and had I been a teenager, I would have felt the same.  A dance in the village hall is so not the same as a rave.  But I guess they made their own raves for they all bounce like Tigger even now, now they have their own children, who also love an island visit.  There is something so wholesome in this island life, but don’t confuse wholesome with dull or boring.  The real islanders, those born here, their parents from here, have the most spontaneous and wicked sense of humour, an eye for the fun in pretty much everything, even the dullest of tasks.  I’ve had more fun here than I ever did in the flatlands, been laughed at and kidded on and hoodwinked; been the butt of all the anti English jokes, teased for being posh, and celebrated as a friend, and I have loved it.  How strange it is to up sticks and to move to a completely different world, and yet to find the cap fits as it did right from the start.  I had no prior experience of the West Coast or the folk who scatter themselves across the wild places, of village life, of community spirit, of real hard work, until I came here.

I wrote my book because there was, and still is, so much to say about island life.  It is not for the faint-hearted and that’s for sure.  It is inconvenient, demanding and wet.  Things don’t work, don’t arrive at all, don’t turn up on due dates, get rusty, rot, are mouse-damaged, break down, blow over or disappear completely in high winds, can’t sail, sink, fall over, lose their sump in a pothole deep enough for the vicar of Dibley and, yet, it has the heartbeat of home.  These things can go wrong in all lives, but, here, we can’t just replace the broken immediately.  We have to find a way around a whole load of problems and I am glad to have learned resourcefulness, something an easy life in a convenient place would never have taught me.  I have learned to be independent, inventive and accepting.  Oh it makes me swear when things go wrong, of course it does, but I have that inner core of can-do that only living here has taught me.

I don’t wish for another 40 years, for I would be over 100 and that doesn’t sound like much fun, but I am so thankful that, on that mad day in 1978 we decided to drive up to ‘look’ at a place for sale.  9 hours on the road, with two little ones in the back seat, and absolutely no idea that this whim would manifest itself into a shared life of fun and challenges I had never imagined existed, of learning and of learning some more; of spontaneous musical ceilidhs and of

no locked doors.  With not one jot of experience between us, no idea of how to run a hotel, a hill farm, a whale-watching business or a recording studio, we dived right in with childlike enthusiasm.  There were many pitfalls to come, many mistakes to make, many sadnesses to experience, but this is the truth of Life for anyone who has the courage to let go of what isn’t working and to take a huge risk.

I’m so glad we did.

Today it is not raining.  Yet.  We have enjoyed many days of heavy rain, enough to turn the seed in the bird feeders to a soggy mush, enough to soak dog walkers after a few steps forward, enough to flood the little roads around the village.  The river burst over the bridge and the school car park became a pond.  Luckily, for us, this island sloughs off water quicksharp and the ground can look like ground again in a mere day of dry.  Built on granite and super lumpy in parts, there are few of us living in a flood risk.  We just aren’t low enough for that.  What we face at times of big winds and stair rods of heavenly water is that the ferries don’t sail.  They sit fat and empty of life in their mainland dock.  We, they say, are going nowhere today.  Tough bananas if you don’t get your new sofa Missus, or your mail, or yourself to the dentist.

And so we remain at home, looking out at the blattered dahlias and the neighbour’s wheelie bin cavorting about the road in a macabre dance, spitting no end of interesting garbage into a field of startled sheep.  And we make soup.  That’s what we do, although I resisted the temptation, myself.  Soup is IT when things like ferries don’t sail and the weather takes control of our day.  I meet women, like me dressed up in crinkly damp jackets,  somewhere near the leeks and carrots and we just smile at each other.  Not one of is phased for long when we see the leek tray all but empty.  No matter, we say, I’ll just find an alternative.  And we do.

We need to find alternatives for our soups on regular occasions living on this island, and not just in the physical process of preparing a nourishing brew for lunch.  We must use our attitude to find alternatives in all areas of our lives.  And we are resourceful, rarely stultified, and I don’t think we even realise we are.  It’s only when speaking to a person who lives near all possible conveniences, with alternatives on tap, that we recognise our experiential brilliance.  Anyone who has faced Christmas Day in a power cut, cut just as the turkey was beginning to turn into dinner, knows what I mean.  Being without newspapers or milk or mail is not a national disaster.  There is always someone with milk enough to share and the mail will be just another bill, anyway.

I think what we depend on and learn to dance with is that we are a community, one that has known tragedy, loss, and deep potholes.  We may not love each other all of the time but we are never alone in trouble and the more widespread the trouble, the more we rally.  Those whose lives are superbly organised are easily confounded because Life, God bless her, is a proper little madam at times, and she can pull the carpet out from underfoot at a whim.  Prepared for such is not being fatalistic, but sensible.  Being aware that change boogies around our edges on a daily basis, change that can so easily stick out a tripping foot and bring us down, is showing respect for the forces of nature, of Life herself. It isn’t a gloomy attitude, for which there is no excuse, not ever.  If we can learn to live in the moment we are in, right now, and then in the next, when it comes, light on our mental feet and solution-oriented, then we have learned the secret of Life.  Many of us share the pearls of such wisdoms, quote them even, word perfect, but they are like dust in the wind if we cannot live by them.

It doesn’t mean being insistently upbeat all of the time.  That’s just an act and I can see right through it when I meet it.  But, to be open as a child, ready to jump in the flood puddles and to fall over and to laugh all the way home, to be able to make soup without leeks when necessary, well, now, that is really living.

And, in really living, whatever comes our way, whatever our past mistakes and regrets, however blattered are the dahlias, if we have eyes to see the rainbows, a pair of wellie boots and a hand to hold, this, surely is more than enough.  And, it is the only way to change the past.

By making a new one.

Well, what a lovely welcome back from those I abandoned some time ago, and who, it seems, forgive me my absence!  I really don’t know where I went.  Into myself I think, and that ‘think’ word has a whole lot to do with pretty much everything in life.  Thinking is a veritable rock at times until I find myself in a hard place, whence it may become destructive.

Being shoved onto a new path can bring about me a host, not of golden daffodils, but of shrieking wraiths and hobble trees, all out to trip me up.  If I stop to think about that, all I achieve is a greater number of shrieking wraiths and more hobble trees.  So, although I know they are there, I ignore them, keeping my eyes focussed on that sliver of light way up ahead, and there always is one out there for the seeing.

That light could be a few hours peace, sorry, minutes, in which to write uninterrupted.  It could be the thought of a really strong coffee, or some wind-battered gladioli, blood red and wonky chops that need staking.  I did a lot of staking this summer past.  Hollyhocks standing 9 ft tall and sunflowers dotted about like big yellow umbrellas.  Nobody knows who planted them and everybody knows that such triffidicae cannot possibly stand for more than 3 hours on the west coast without enough ropes and pegs to hold down a wedding marquee in a force ten.  Notwithstanding, they appeared and they grew and they dazzled all passers by, until last week when they made it clear they had done their bit, and fell over.

When life confounds, all small things take on a grandeur they mostly don’t deserve, nor warrant.  This phone call to the doctor, that prescription to collect, this carer to call, that occupational therapist to contact for another hand rail or a fancy gadget to make life safer.  The wood to unload, another to order, to split the kindling, change the bedding, fix the back light bulb in the car,  or to sort out yet another confusion on a laptop or a mobile phone.  In ordinary homes, I am guessing the daily grind is divided into blue and pink jobs, although I’m betting the pink part of the arrangement takes on a lot of the blue task list just to make certain it is completed .  The light in all this, for me, now, is that I am becoming a real whizz at blue jobs, halting only when faced with a chainsaw.  I can see me legless and without fire.  Not a good look at all.

What I have learned, too, is how resistant we unpaid carers can be in asking for help.  I think we think too much about it.  We don’t need help after all.  We have always sailed alone in this wife/mother life having got over the initial crushing disappointment, one that hit us smack in the chops just after we held out our finger for the wedding ring.  Where we were thinking White Knight, he himself was thinking Unpaid Slave, only he never said, because, as we all know, men only grunt once they have exhausted their entire vocabulary during courtship.  I wonder, even now, why on earth I am reading my granddaughters fairy tales, when I really should be reading them Tales of the Unexpected, unabridged.  We never learn……….

Laughter and light, that’s what I want and if it isn’t on offer from outside of me then I just have to conjure it up from within.  Fun and nonsense costs absolutely nothing to produce, has its own inbuilt marketing plan and requires no staff.  The most important thing is to keep moving at all times.  That way, I get through the hobble trees and outrun the shrieking wraiths, which, by the way, disappear (noisily) if you blow a great big raspberry into the place where their face should be.  If, in the blast of some accusation or criticism from the white knight, I get a fit of giggles, it all miraculously goes away.  No darkness is ever stronger than light and it takes one small candle flame to illuminate a room.  I may be one small candle flame, but I am damned if I will let any cold wind blow me out.

The other afternoon I was playing with two of my grand-daughters in the garden,  We rolled down the grassy bank and bounced on the trampoline after planting some hyacinth bulbs in a border.  Earlier I had picked up a unicorn’s horn, sparkly gold and crimson attached to a headband.  it was a bit tight, but not so tight I remembered it was there as I bounced and rolled and planted.  Some walkers came by and stopped to watch us for a moment or two.  My granddaughters are very beautiful after all and we will have made a pretty collage on a green hillside.

Hi, I called out.  You ok down there?

Yes, we are, came the reply, and still they stood, and looked.

It’s coz you’re a unicorn Gaga, said the older girl, rolling her eyes at me.

Oh yeah………

So, it’s been over a year since I last wrote anything much beyond a shopping list, my signature on an official form, or, best, one of my loony letters.  I knew it had been a while, but over a year seems like more than a while.

What have I been up to during those months and seasons?  Learning how to, that’s what.  Learning how to be a carer for dementia, how to avoid confrontation or tripping hazards; learning how to make the best of an ever-decreasing bubble within which I now live.  Oftentimes the frustration and the sadness overwhelmed me, how could it not?  Watching a person recede into fairyland, centimetre by centimetre, unable to converse in the old way or to expect sentient reaction to any of a number of daily happenings, is to live as a fool.  Learning what not to say, what not to do, how loudly to speak or how softly, how to read a mood swing and for it not to confound are all extra demands, critical demands, demands that offer no option for escape, for the person with dementia lives both in the distant past and also in the moment.  What he wants, now, will not wait, even a few minutes; what he needs help with requires instantaneous action, not, any longer, a refusal to budge, having only just sat down.  The person with dementia has only his needs in his mind.  He can do as little about that as I can, but the legacy of doing everything required is one to be most carefully addressed or I will turn into a whirling dervish and fly right off the planet.  So, in order to remain reasonably unexhausted, I must set boundaries.  Well, how dare I!!  Yes, I do dare.  That frightful statistic I read somewhere, announcing that 69% of all unpaid carers die before their time, is a red light indeed.  So, I stop and I think whilst the cross traffic passes me by.  I think of ways, clever ways, kindly ways, softly spoken firm ways to make it clear I am not an employee, nor a slave; that although I appreciate his limitations, frustrating limitations for such an active man, I am not a robot (tick this box).  It is a tricky road to walk and no mistake and I get it wrong endless number of times, when I respond sharply to another interruptive demand for something like ‘lunch’ when ‘lunch’ can easily flipping well wait a minute or two.  In creating boundaries, whilst still respecting that they easily become tripping hazards, I accept that they appear unfair, unkind and selfish.  I will need to erect them over and over again every day till the end of time because they are oft forgot. Whilst I’m busy being firm about them, I must also make them of something soft, something easy to move about, because there are times I do jump in response, not because of a disaster in the next room, but because I cannot imagine what it is to feel that urgent need and to then feel so very upset and angry when She Who Creates Boundaries refuses to leap into her pinny?  Must be awful.

As the truth sank in, the removal of a driving licence, a skipper’s licence, the ability to walk without sticks or a walker, I feared he would just sit.  Not him.  Of course, not him.  He discovered WhatsApp and friends to WhatsApp with; he involved himself with Alzheimer Scotland, with the Scottish Dementia Working Group, and with an X Box.  Yes, really.  He hasn’t played much on it yet, having a spot of bother with the tv remote and control over the working thingy that sends out warriors into futuristic landscapes, but he will, one day because his spirit is still as strong as ever.  I watch him battle with the clues and I share his delight when a riddle is solved.  It thinks me often of a spirit strong, one that loses nothing in the demise of dementia.  It is the last thing to go, as it was with my mum who died in May.  I am fond indeed, of spirit and I have one myself, one that can be confounded at times as I dump a load of self pity on its head, but it doesn’t stay down for long, minutes even, rising up with a chuckle and a terse reminder that there are folk much worse off than I.  Of the 60 odd unpaid carers on this island, I am among the youngest, at 65.  Some of these carers are in their 80s.  Now that, Dear Life, is not fair at all.  I meet them sometimes in the shop and I look into their eyes as I say hallo and how are you?  I know how tough their life is to a degree, but not completely.  We share a joke, we chuckle, we shop and we move on.  That’s spirit for you.  And, as I drive home to deal with whatever comes next, I hold their face in my mind and I smile.  Tough old bird, I whisper to the fluffy cross-eyed sheep that hangs from my rearview.

Takes one to know one, he replies.

What is Spirit?  Yes, it’s an alcoholic beverage.  Yes, it’s Caspar the ghost.  But what is my spirit and what is yours?

Unlike the above, it is invisible and, yet, at the same time, highly visible, in who I am.  I wake with it.  It carries me through my ordinary, and extraordinary days but, and here’s the rub, I must needs call it up, because if I don’t, it lies like cold porage somewhere inside me. I must spin it into life regardless of my doubts and fears and self-flagellation.

Thankfully, my spirit is way stronger than any of those enemies, like David was to Goliath.  As I rise from sleep, whatever excitements the night brought me, and, nowadays that means a dive into the oatcake tin and a barefoot wander through the quiet house, I make a choice.  Out you damn spots, because I don’t want you littering my face any more than I did as a teenager…..out I say, for there is no room for you once Spirit steps in to hold her sway.  She is magnificent, tall and strong, proud and unique and she demands the whole room.

I remember hating this unique thing.  I didn’t want to be unique.  I wanted to be like Lizzie or Jill with their only childness and beans on toast in front of the telly.  When someone flagged up my talents and gifts I wanted to bop them on the nose and run back to the crowd.  Now I get it, but with that ‘getting it’ comes responsibility.  Now I have to see who I am and actually be who I am which means I write with my own hand, say what is in my head, act according to Spirit, and then, unfortunately, to take the consequences.

T’is odd that I have spent so many years wishing I wasn’t me, especially as all that wishing made absolutely no difference.  It was just a waste of time and that is something Spirit won’t allow. The key, for me, was giving in and letting go.  Ok Spirit, I said, I’m all yours, warts and all, you win.

Surprisingly, I feel free.  It is as if holding on to the control stick did me no favours.  She swings with the wind, they said, she’s flighty and unpredictable and she talks to the trees, for goodness sake.  She hears stories in the rain, flies with the geese, lifts with the cloud animals and cooks without recipes.  She wears crazy clothes and wellies with a tutu and a fisherman’s jumper whilst weeding the garden. She makes mistakes, says the wrong thing at the wrong time, feels anger and frustration, sends an email she wish she hadn’t. But, this same woman is the one who will stand to be counted.  She will rise in defence or attack for her family and friends.  She is kind, she is strong, she is wild. This is Spirit, her spirit.

I see spirit in those I meet every day.  Rising into their eyes, evident in the way they take on whatever life throws at them, still moving on into the next day.  Invisible, yes, but not if we really look and really notice, pausing in our own rush towards death just long enough to recognise and respect another spirit strength.  And, sometimes, if I have left my spirit at home, the light of another shines bright enough to illuminate my own demons, and to send them scurrying back into the shadow dark.