Month: July 2023

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Island Blog – About Packing

I’m packing, unpacking, packing, unpacking. What is this insecurity when it comes to packing? I know #sensiblehead that I always travel light, cannot be lugging a heavy suitcase, just will not. All I need for this trip are the basics, but which of the basics should I take? What ‘frock’ mood will I be in? Will I feel chilly away from home pre hospital consultation, thus requiring a warm jumper, and which warm jumper? Needless to say this is a ridiculous load of valdaree. My sister will lend. I am away for a few days, not for months. The space between consultation, and whatever surgery is agreed upon, is likely to be weeks, if not months. I can borrow a warm jumper. It thinks me. When I pack for Africa, I barely bother about what to take. This, I decide, is because I am going to a wonderful hot place and for a holiday. Perhaps that’s it, the nail hit on the head. My insecurity may well be more related to the reason for this island parting than it is to the articles of clothing I eventually decide to put into my small suitcase. I decide to walk.

Nature has a way about her, a sort of head clearing re-jig into perspective. She laughs at me, or the trees do as they sway and dance in this big wind. It’s from the South East, I think, and yet warm. The heavy rains of the morning have lowered the boughs and I need to duck my way along the narrow track. I listen to the swish of movement, tut as I notice some fool has hacked off a living branch that bows overhead. Not, obviously, over their head. Hack it off! Why? Just bend your knees and do your body a big favour instead. That’s what I say. The whole shape of this beautiful beech tree is now out of shape, those flowing limbs, the skirt of her frock, perfectly formed like a brilliant green ball gown, now damaged. I harrumph. She, however, still dances on to the melody of the wind and it thinks me, again.

The fairy woods are quiet in between the showers, and the woodland floor, a carpet of needles and fallen leaves, is almost dry, such is the protection of the canopy. Three oak seedlings nestle at the foot of a huge fir tree, over two hundred years of huge fir tree, its girth one I am happy not to have myself. I doubt the oaks will grow much, not in that shade, not without some life-giving light. I look up through the boughs to see speckles of sky, a bit of blue, yes, but mostly careening clouds that don’t stay long enough to give me their shape. The oaks will have passed through a Jay. I didn’t know that until I did. A Jay will bury an acorn in a safe place, aka, in the lap of a huge fir tree, and inside the fairy woods, and then forget where it hid said acorn. Thus, the acorn grows in quite the wrong place. I decide that I am allowing the insecurity in me to grow in quite the wrong place. I move it to the light on the other side of the woods and watch it whipped away by the wind.

All the trees are waving, shedding leaves already, for Autumn begins early on the island. I crush sycamore leaves underfoot and think of seasons, how they keep coming, and going, allowing each other to take the stage, sometimes after strong resistance. Winter is the best at resistance, the grumpy sh*t, holding tight with an icy grip, thwacking us with the blast of a wind that obviously got expelled for bad behaviour and which now sells its strength to the highest bidder, like a vigilante. But we are not there yet and Winter is asleep so don’t make a noise in case you stir it from slumber. For now, it is tempest and calm, suddenly hot and suddenly cold, soaking wet or burning dry, an island usual. And there is something so real about it, the changes we humans need to adapt to, and quickquick, because our world is changing faster than many of us are prepared to accept. Turbulence is to be expected.

Makes me feel a whole lot better about packing.

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Island Blog – Walking On

I was supposed to have my shingles jag today, but the nurse said I was too run down. I know it. So tired all the time. Part recovery from being nearly dead and the long climb back up from the mud and sludge of that Old Gripper, part fear of what may lie ahead. This is a time I could wish, as I did way back in school, for a less brilliant and inventive imagination. ‘Judith (cringe) has too much imagination’. Quote from a school report. And it wasn’t just once. It seemed to me that an imagination was something to be deeply ashamed of, something, perhaps, that might require surgery or therapy long term, at the very least. It got me into no end of scrapes, and, I might add, out of them too. An imagination is, by its very nature, flexi-intelligent, dynamic, able to work both ways on most things and in most situations, and two faced. There is the light side, the fun side and there is the dark side, the backside, the backslide. However, I am in control, mostly, of this imagination of mine, even though right now it is showing way too much sass. I suspect this is because it is also an opportunist and in the face of my looking smaller, aka, run down, it is rising above it’s pay grade. Well Hoo and Ha to that! We need to work together, I tell it, not against each other. When you show me dark, let the fear of wotwot court a dalliance with said dark, I go off you. We have worked together for decades, you and I, much as in a long term and bumpy marriage, agreed, but we did find a synergy of sorts and it benefitted us both. I got to keep the mischief and the inventive thinking and you got to keep me. Actually, I think you owe me. Without me, you would be foof in the wind.

Although I didn’t have the jag, I had the nurse, the one who flagged up a few weeks ago that I was looking like the nearly dead. She told the doctor and I had the chance to thank her, the nurse. She, Cara, has bright eyes, a beautiful and unlined face and looks about 16. She isn’t. Then I got to see the doctor to thank her for her quick and intelligent decision to send me off to hospital. She, Dr Jackie, is a lovely woman. I thanked her and we hugged. The new doctors on the island, this end of it, are a warm and welcoming couple and we are so very lucky to have them now. Actually the whole staff are so friendly, efficient and intelligent, I wonder how we islanders came to be that lucky. I am only thankful.

I came home with the damn imagination. I need distractions. Radio Four Extra is a wonderful discovery. I am knitting something. For now it is a long line of knit-ness. It entertains my fingers which is enough in small doses. I walk the wee dog but oh my, how wearily i walk, how weak I feel! I can do little and often. It’s the same with gardening jobs. A wee bit of weeding, a little pruning of the currant bush which isn’t/ wasn’t a bush but more a blanking out of the sky. It looks a bit weedy now, but I encouraged it to stop whining and to get back its mojo for next Spring, as I intend to do. I gave it a backward glance, having hefted huge long branches into the neighbours garden (she won’t notice). Stop focussing on what’s gone, I said. Look at the opportunity. I swear she quipped ‘Right back at you, lady’. Maybe I imagined that.

I feed the birds. We have swarms of sparrows here, unlike many other places, Englandshire in particular, and I have masterminded my feeders beyond the dive of our prolific sparrowhawk population. There’s a fence in the way, three wheelies and a mini. It seems to work. I watch the tidal dance, listen to the gulls screeching at the sea-eagles and hear their yipping response. It floats across the sea-loch as something unseen yet believed. I know the sea-eagles are there. I cannot see them. That doesn’t mean they aren’t there. A lesson in that, for the learning.

I fanny about with what to take when I leave this beloved home on Monday and head into the unknown. A couple of frocks, a jumper, cardy, (tweezers this time), nighties, leggings, a jacket, my purse, phone, laptop, chargers, underpinnings. How long will I be away? Will the consultation lead straight into surgery, or will there be weeks of waiting? Will I come home or stay away with my very limited clothing options? What surgery do I face? Lumpectomy (day job) or a single or double mastectomy? I don’t know yet but my imagination is already having a field day, whatever that means. Because I am high risk, many in my family having had breast cancer and with my great grandmother coming from Orkney, I may opt for those breasts to go. They fed five children and not many can say that. I thank them. Sometimes I look at them, old now, paps really, and marvel at the work they have done, the lives they have sustained. I can let them go, if that is what I and the consultant decide. To think I may leave with breasts and return with none is quite a thought. Some might say, Don’t talk that one up! I ask Why Not? I am a realist, a woman of age, a strong and vital life force and honest and open to a fault. (why is is called a fault? Does it refer to a fault line or is it a somebody’s ‘fault’? It thinks me)

I will keep writing. I will keep blogging although my arms might feel a bit dodge for a while after surgery. But we are not at that point yet. This is just the beginning. Rather exciting when you look at it that way, don’t you think? A world I have never walked in before, a newbie, wide eyed, scared, yes, but walking on. Always walking on.

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Island Blog – I Still Am

Well, who would have thought this? Not me. How can one day feel like a funeral march and the next as a beautiful thing, a day awakening after a long sleep. Nothing has changed, the circumstances are just the same, the day just another dawning. I still face surgery, a lumpectomy, a full mastectomy, I don’t know. And, yet, not the same at all.

I woke once in the night, ignored the dog bounce, chances are, at my peril, and re-awoke at 6.45. A lie in for me. And the day just kept her colour, her bright shining. I just flowed free, happy, light and full of ideas. I will knit. Who said that? Not me. I have wools, I have paints and texture ideas for a canvas. I have wires for stringing beads, I have the wisdom of a textural artist. Well, I did, ten years ago. I looked around me. The birds, the sparrows, flutter like gorgeous all around my feeders. They have learned, even with their fat beaks, to grab nuts from the feeder, and I do help them a bit with seed in a carefully placed place, limiting (no offence) the dives of sparrowhawk and goshawk. I just want to watch them, not offer them as prey. It has taken me years to work out the best location for feeders.

I wander through my day. I found Radio 4 Extra, plays and series. I listen as I knit nothing, just knit. I watch the New Moon finally give way to the Ordinary, that space between Tricksy New and then the even more so Full Moon, when the tides are slow to lift, slow to rise, kind of flat a lot. The big ass full is coming, but we, up here, the fishermen, the island women, and some of the men, enjoy a reprieve in that ‘slow’. I walk my small four legs twice around the short loop. We have ‘The loop’ one most people walk without thought. I used to do that. The weakness from being nearly dead has changed that for me. I know my footing here. I love it, the every step of it. I never thought about my steps before. Now I do, so I walk the short, twice a day. I am not afraid.

When i leave my beloved home, dog, island, on Monday to go to Edinburgh and then to the Western General for my consultation, for the decisions on surgery, on the next bit, I feel some fear, of course I do, but the NHS up here is fantastic and the things they have learned and perfected over just the last ten years is so encouraging. i don’t have the mind that knows everything about everything, nor about anything much, but I know I am supported by those who do, family included.

I remember a day in Barcelona, my tiny granddaughter fearful because her mum left her to go for a pee. She clung to me. She is now ten and quite the thing. But I remember that moment and how valuable I was in the moment.

And still am.

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Island Blog – Hallo and Thank you

Today I woke too early, my head full of monsters. Will I have major or minor surgery? Will I be strong enough to deal with it all? What will be the treatment after? Will I forget my headphones? (locate my headphones), or miss the ferry because the milk lorry has capsized in the Glen? Will I arrive, as I did for the Nearly Dead hospital visit, with one nightie, no cardy and no tweezers? Tweezers? Seriously? Will my little beloved dog fall ill when I’m away, and how long will I be away? Will the chimney sweep come, will the garden go to riot because I’m not watching it? Okay, you get the monsters. They all say YES, to all of the above, of course they do, the negative bastards.

Right, you lot, I said, startling the small dog into barks and a leap from her bed. Right! No, Wrong! You is NOT getting me in a right fankle at 04.30 whilst still inside my nightie (take 3, maybe four, do I have four?) and with my eyes barely focussed, you is not. We all rose from the tangle of duvet and I did try to leave them upstairs but they had a different plan. We watched the early birds, the light spreading over the sea-loch, over my garden, over the land, like a new story. Heretofore, this has given me a new vision, a new day, a new dawn, but this morning, no. The damn monsters of fear and anxiety, of a still resident exhaustion in my battle to be undead, kept up their clatter-chatter. It is a longtime since I had to fight them in this way. I tell myself, it is okay to feel these feelings, but it isn’t okay at all because they give me indigestion and backache and a squiffy head and no inner peace. I tell myself that anyone else would feel this way, but that doesn’t help either.

Do I not appreciate the support and love from my family, friends and blog readers? Yes, I do very much. So, why isn’t that enough? It thinks me, a lot and those thinks lead me to the (possible) conclusion that, no matter how many are around us, surround us, we ultimately sail alone. We need to manage our own craft across all sorts of dodgy oceans. In the knowing of that, I managed the hours of today, just. I rested a lot, read a whole book, walked into Tapselteerie and met not one soul, something that would normally delight me, but not today. Today I wished for an encounter, just a wee hallo and a passing chat. I went to the shop for a few bits now that my ‘recovery’ and ‘preparation’ demands a whole load of dark green vegetables, pulses, seeds and probiotics. I didn’t even know what that meant before now. I just cooked and ate.

I have decided that this living alone thing is not much fun, not when you want a Resident Familiar to proffer balance in the face of inner monsters. That smile, that joke, that ‘come on, let’s go out for coffee’, or to the beach, or something. Although my Resident Familiar left the relationship a long time ago when dementia arrived to take up residence, he was still here, a sometimes warm, living Familiar. I don’t want him back, but that is not the point. When a girl is swept off her feet at just 18 when she still has no idea about life beyond the parental home, she can be forgiven for feeling somewhat lost after 50 bonkers years of marriage to a dominant male and on the adventure of a lifetime. Being alone means I have to instigate everything and others, who have a Resident Familiar, are, well, busy until next Tuesday. I get that. I was always busy till next Tuesday, and for decades. But, on the other side of that, being alone is marvellous, so freeing, so uplifting, so damn new. How bizarre.

I am not moaning. Tomorrow will come and will proffer a new set of ideas, new feelings. Today is just today. So why do I write a blog? Should I not, instead, keep all of this to myself so as to spare whoever reads these words? Possibly, but I have been a polite girl/woman for a very long time and right now I feel raw and bloody and honest and congruent. I don’t want phone chats, don’t want visitors, don’t want anything at all, in truth, other than for these feelings to melt away. I am effortlessly positive as a rule because that is how I see this gift of a life. Perhaps, then, I am simply in a place I do not recognise, one that upskittles me, tries to trip me right over. Yes, that’s it. I don’t know this terrain and it is hostile. Simples. And it really helps to write and to post. Really, it does. In writing out my feelings about whatever is going on, and to send it into the ether, whatever that is, my spirits lift into a reassurance, that no face to face contact can give me. I think of you all, in Canada, In the States, in Englandshire, in Scotland, on islands across the world, and I reach out, saying, through my own stories, Hallo and Thank you for being there, for clicking on the ‘follow’ link to my blog, for reading my words. I also imagine your lives, tough at times, maybe many many times, easy here and there, the infuriations, the lifts, the shocks, the abundance and the lack. The bones of a life, the flesh and the guts of an ordinary/extraordinary time on this goodly earth. Life, I love you. I truly do.

See? I feel better now, just writing this. Hallo you all. And Thankyou.

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Island Blog – Thanks to a Horsefly

I’m here, back home and in the wealth of warmth. Well, warm, eventually, as the mornings can be sharp and bitey, requiring jumpers and leg coverings and a very good attitude to the shivers that challenge a mug of hot coffee. The afternoons sprawl wealthy on the bed of confidence, no leg coverings required, in fact, bring on the fans please. T’is weird and the way it is. By noon, I am overly clad and fighting my morning garb for the sudden, and somewhat desperate freedom from all that morning hoo-ha, which I abandon on the stairs. Jumper, leg cladding, even wrist warmers for the day is in pieces up here. Where once, we knew how the day would be, might be, the wise cautionaries telling us to keep our semets (vests with buttons and much restriction) on for months to come, now there is disarray and not only in the vest, leg cladding, jumper department. Weather steers moods. Cold rain, warm rain, just rain. Promise of sun, hope of sun, arrival of sun. It all guides us from pissed off to delighted, from a confirmed ‘there’s no hope’ to the one who is alert and watching the cloud shift, is accepting climate change, is actually the one in the game. And the game is more than weather. The game is one we play together and alone. Many of us have been assaulted by massive loss, like a sudden death. I almost cannot follow that sentence. It is too catastrophic. Too alone.

I find this next bit quite hard to say, as if I feel that what is going on with me palls by comparison to the catastrophic and sudden loss, one I have been close to this last week, and a timeline I can never be a part of, beyond the paltry can give.

But I am saying it. My time in hospital, whilst I fought to be not dead, has thrown up something important. With Cellulitis, there is a lot of swelling and one lymph gland remaind high despite the massive doses of antibiotics that saved my life, and after which, my consultant, Isobel, God bless her, sent me for a mammogram and biopsy and ultra sound. She was right. I have breast cancer, an unusual one, called Invasive Lobular Cancer. She, the cancer, is quiet, not necessarily presenting in lumps, although they did, eventually find one, the half size of a frozen pea. She appears in the right breast for the first time, as I have had at least five no problem lumps in the left.

What I feel is scared, unsure, and thankful for a horsefly bite. Beyond all those intitial feelings I am unsure about being in the garden. Thankyou friend Winnie for guiding me to big ass protection. Thank you to my ex breast cancer sisters who guide me to probiotics and dark green veg. I will leave island in a week for consultation and biopsy and mammogram and MRI and a whole load of questions and decisions. I don’t know whether it will be a lumpectomy or a complete wheech off of breasts. But what I do know is the strength of my family, my siblings.

I am suddenly cautious coming downstairs, cautious about walking out without a kick ass protection slathered over me. I am aware of my age, and that seemed to come overnight. Slower to move, all of that shit. But, for now I am watching eider duck on the sealoch, divers, geese, and the sun is creating diamonds on the salty surface.

And I am eternally grateful to a horsefly.

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Island Blog – There is no Silence

I walk after the rain and into the silence. But it isn’t silent at all, not once I move further in, because, although the pitter and the patter has stopped, there is an aftermath and that is where I am, me and my wee dog on an empty track, which also isn’t empty. How strange it is to discover a new depth of understanding, new ears for listening, new eyes for seeing, but only when a curious person moves deeper into an experience. At first sight, on first hearing, something is an absolute. It has stopped raining. There is quiet out there. The track is empty of people, there is just me here. Then the absolute begins to dissolve, to reshape, to sharpen my wits and my awareness, becoming something unending, evolving and wide open to change. Within this dissolving absolute, I move on, wide-eyed, open eared, listening, looking, feeling, using all my senses. I am not powerful here, not the only ‘It’ in the situation, just a small part of something magical.

A drip falls on my head, a fat drip, one that has gathered other drips into its belly whilst hanging from a leaf, one I didn’t notice at all, what with that massive canopy above me. It is heavy, a kerplunk of a thing. It lands like timpani on the sound box of my skull, a beat, just one. I feel it break, travel down my neck, a tiny river, down and down until the small of my back tingles and I shudder. It is warm now, courtesy of my faithful skin cover, and it disappears into the cotton of my knickers and is no more. But I felt it, I noticed it and we, for just a moment or two, were together on this wander. The rain has left rivulets along the track, tiny lifted ridges awaiting a squash from heavy boots. Beetles wander, indigo blue and quite unable to remain upright, it seems. I right a few. Puddles reflect the lowering sky, the complication of clouds, stratus, cumulous, thisicus and. thatitcus, the nauties not visible and I long to see the nauties. High, they fly, way way up there, but this sky, this fluff of cloud mates are busy taking the stage for now. The sun peeks through in a spreadlight, slices of glare, pushing through the skinny fluff, determined to shine, much like me.

The floor of the fairy woods are dry, the ground bouncy beneath my feet. Mosses, wild green, almost luminous, abound in the dark which isn’t dark once you walk into it, and I do. I pause and look around. How many people over hundreds of years have paused here, right here, with a story to tell, a heart full of joy or pain, a thousand questions unasked, unanswered? How many decision made and what was the aftermath, how wide the ripples? What trysts were sealed, what lives begun or ended on this beautiful Tapselteerie land? I will never know, nor does it matter. T’is enough to wonder.

Lont-tailed tits work the trees way above me. A heron flaps lazily overhead and a sea-eagle yips from far across the loch, yelling abuse at an irritation of gulls. Wild grasses tip into seed, no less beautiful in their dying. A single hind across the sealoch mounts a rock in order to browse the leaves of a tree whilst her faun curls snugly inside a bed of bracken. The wind is soft on my skin, the cloud-sun warming to my bones, the birdsong elevated after the rain. There is no silence in nature, only a shapeshift, for one who is alert and aware. And, in the melee of a human life with its troubles and wotwots, nature keeps a conversation going, one soft voiced, uplifting and always ready for whatever comes.

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Island Blog – We are Life

Today, a week after leaving hospital, I head for the island, not without apprehension, for any transition brings her followers. For this whole week I have had to think of nothing at all, nothing domestic, nothing practical, nothing beyond rest, the dive into yet another book, (four this week) wherein I become an observer of another’s story. The books I chose from my son-in-law’s vast library of excellent reads all take place beside, or on, bodies of water. Rivermen, Sailors, Explorers, and all told out in a state of transition, be it banishment to Australia or simply a change of river. From flooded quarries to garden ponds, from vast lakes to ice fields, from floods to severe drought, all of them awash with water, salt, brackish or fresh from a mountain spring. It wonders me and yet it does not. I am a pisces, I am a woman who must be close to water in order to breathe freely. I consider this, in my new state, my revival, no, my re-birth into life, as if I am a part of some yearly cycle, a young elver facing that huge journey back to the sea, a sea I need as the life blood in my veins, not that there is much of that left!!

I am nothing but thankful. For this week of non-thinking, the freedom as a child has. Dinner is ready; the fridge is stocked, the fruit bowl full. The dog is walked, the rubbish taken out to the bins, the kettle sings on the hob. I have rested as never before, not even after birthing, cherished and nurtured and safe. And now it is time to return home to my wee dog, my new support programme, my home a welcome as she always is. So, how do I feel on the edge of this transition? Apprehensive, yes, a little, although I will be driven all the way by my eldest son and into the arms of a dear friend, one who stepped in over 3 weeks ago to look after all that I suddenly had to leave behind. I know there are plans for me not to be alone for a while yet, me with my slightly cloudy eyes, my extra caution when rising from a seat or when descending the stairs, as if I was a toddler just learning to walk. The world, or the bit of it I can see, the one I inhabit, seems new and different. I am always curious about pretty much everything, the questions, what, where, how, why, always in my mind, tumbling into my mouth and oftentimes spilling out in a right jumble, but this time I am slightly at odds with myself. My body is one I know well, and yet I don’t know it at all. I am old and yet I am new. I look at my hands, the canula bruises fading now, my feet, taken for granted as my steadying and dependable stands, and I feel, not a disconnection but a re-connection with old friends. Everything still works as it did, but as in a cautionary tale, my new tale, my new story.

I walk the shoreline and into the fairy woods, all green with a dozen different mosses, the great old trees laden with leave cover, delicately fingering the breeze and blocking out the sky. Along the shore, Thrift and Scurvy appear like surprises between the basalt and granite, opportunists all. Seabirds cut the sky. My eyes follow them as they head inland, for what, and why? What is their plan? I have no answer and it matters not one jot. Seaweed humps cover the high tide mark, gold, copper, a luminous green, awaiting the next lift off. Where will you end up, I wonder, as I breathe in the salty tang? On someone’s potato patch, on another shore, another island, your story still for the telling? The sky is soft with cloud, this wide sky, this canopy of colours so delicate, so deep, so alive. Like me. The tide ebbs, the tide flows, an endless cycle. Life flows in, life flows out again, no matter what goes on in the world, and just to watch it, to marvel at the power of it, is enough. Ask me no questions, it says, just notice, observe and live in the moment, every moment, for you are part of me and I of you. We are life.

We are life.

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Island Blog – Forward into Life

It feels like ages since I last wrote a blog, and it is, ages. So where have I been? Into a strange world, one I have never visited before, one I cannot locate on a map, a whole new country.

Perhaps I should start at the beginning.

Two, or more, weeks ago, I felt weary and lethargic, two feelings alien to me, two that begged investigation and not by me alone. I was aching and sore, my arms unable to reach for anything without a wince of pain. I was un-hungry and found it hard to get comfortable in bed. A friend drove me to my doctor’s appointment and within minutes she called the local hospital to admit me. As a thankfully healthy woman with little experience of hospitals beyond the birthing of babies, I was surprised but acquiescent, feeling as unwell as I did. Once there, the doctor checked me out, focussing on an insect bite on my back, around which was a raised pink swelling. Two days later I was moved to the mainland, to a bigger hospital.

Over the next 4 hours the red spread and I was pretty much out of it. Pumped full of super strong antibiotics, drip fed, and trying to get comfortable, the days and nights passed in a blur, interrupted only by regular checks on my state of health and the nightly delivery of other souls into a hospital bed. These women, frightened, most of whom had fallen, all who lived alone, were quieted eventually by the excellent and compassionate nursing team.

After five days, I came back to life, having no idea how seriously ill I had been. Everything escalated so fast, too fast for me to comprehend but not beyond the understanding and medical intelligence of the doctors in charge. I remember walking to the window to see the pretty garden beneath, the trees, the flowering shrubs, the wheel and scatter of swifts and house martins cutting the sky in half as the bugs rose from hiding and becoming lunch. I remember feeling upright and not so sore, the joy of it, the thankfulness rising in me, a mother hug. I remember hot porridge for breakfast, the excellent meals served daily. I remember the cleaners, their smiles as they washed down the ward eveery day. I remember the can-do attitude of the nurses (lordy what a job!) and the bright light laughter from each nursing shift that skittered along the corridors, spilling into each ward to make the vulnerable smile. I remember talking to other inmates, hearing their stories, holding hands that had held so many other hands over so many years. I remember the sadness and joy of visitors around beds, the muffled conversations, the concern etched on family faces. I remember quiet conversations with a night nurse, waking me yet again for a health check, the administration of yet another drip. I remember the smiles, the reasurrances, the gentle touch of a confident hand on my own wobbly one. All will be well, the hand said, in the end. Keep fighting. Gradually, I became mobile again, walking around the hospital carpark, up to the helipad, seeing goldfinches feeding on grass seeds, their unique chatter like champagne bubbles in my ears. Everything felt new, as if I was a newborn and seeing all this life for the first time. I suspect anyone who has faced down death will know what I mean, even though I couldn’t, and still can’t, really believe it to be true for me. Severe cellulitis is dangerous. And all, it seems, from an insect bite on my back. That tiny creature, that random bite nearly did for me. And, yet, I thank it. How else could I know what it is to be newborn at 70? T’is a rare and beautiful gift indeed.

Now, as I recuperate with family, resting, building new strength into momentarily wasted muscles, while I move around the sun dappled garden, watching the dogs play and hearing the laughter of happy girls on holiday, all I feel is a daily upwelling of gratitude, for life herself, for the medical care and affection, for my family’s support and love. When I am home again among the beloved hills of the island, watching the tidal dance, hearing the sea-birds call as the fish rush in, I will remember this time, all of it, all the tiny details of such a strange journey. From nearly dead to very much alive, a moving forward into life, a new one, a gift, a second chance.

It will take me sometime to process and a forever to forget.