Today was sludge. Some days just are, and not just for me, even as my own day takes on an immense importance. T’is disproportionate, I know, I bloody know. Nonetheless, it is so. I wake too early, about 5am which, I tell myself, roundly, is fine in the months of early light. My other self reminds me that winter is so very loooooooooong up here and those 5 ams are quite ghastly. An oxymoron, just for your information. Something is either ghastly or it isn’t. There is no ‘quite’ about it. Just saying. I trudge on through coffee, sweeping a floor, putting away drained dishes from my solitary supper the night before. I light the fire. In May,? Myself catches me by the arm. I want to swear at her. It is cold, I annunciate each word, my lips exaggerating ridiculously, just in case, overnight, she has suffered a demise of the brain or a loss of hearing. I eat breakfast, of sorts, and it is done and swallowed by 6. Now what? I wander through the rooms, looking for an answer. The carpet needs hoovering but it will do and, to be honest, I cannot find the energy to connect with my hoover. I shower, dress, come downstairs. 6.15. My mind heads off into loony land. What, I speak this out loud, is the point of my existence, hmmmm? My husband is dead, my children, and theirs, are all miles away and I am tired of everything. I can write, oh hell yes, I can write. I can sew, walk, watch nature, tidy, cook for one, clean out the fridge, even hoover the damn carpet/s. How exciting can a life become?

But, when will I pull on my fancy boots and be whisked away to dinner, one I don’t pay for? When will I look forward, in anticipation to a shared evening, a game of scrabble, the intercourse involved in the tricky process of preparing mango chutney from mangoes, or plum brandy for Christmas, the fun of discussing an evening with friends, the shall we do this-ness of real life, because being alone after so long is not real life. It is not. It. is survival. Who will dip the oil tank? Just me. Who will repair the faulty back door lock? Just me. Who will watch a fantabulous sunset and marvel? Just me. Eish , not enough, not by a long chalk, whatever that means. The rip asunder of a shared life, no matter the palaver of it all, is like a chasm and there are days I fall in, spending half of the next week climbing out, and for what?

A rant, on first looking, is like meeting a mammoth in a doorway. It is huge, inappropriate and tusked up. It is also, by its being there, blocking forward motion and also a massive startlement. It has to be named and addressed. There’s a mammoth in the doorway, you might say and those around and benigh you would immediately tell you there is no such mammoth. But there is. No, they say, kindly, a hand staying your pointing arm, there is just a clear and empty doorway, a way through, a clear passage. It is infuriating to be thus denied and fixed. When I am facing a mammoth, what I need is someone to believe me, whether they see said mammoth or no because if that did happen, and someone stood beside me, listened, heard and never said anything, I would disappear the beast all by myself. I would feel seen, heard and honoured, and the mammoth would, I just know it, look puzzled and confused. Oh, oops, wrong doorway, wrong timeline and way too warm. He/she would turn around and lumber off, soon distant, a natural departure. Instead, when I hear a trillium of flowery wonderments, covered as I am in slime and mud, cut and grazed from yet another climb out of the chasm, I feel unseen, unheard, dishonoured.

I know it is a natural desire to fix a ‘problem’ but if someone just needs to name the mammoth and you are privileged enough to be that much of a friend, just be there and say nothing. It is the quickest way to send the mammoths away.