last

Listening to a singer songwriter, Irish, a beautiful voice, I remember singing her songs way back when I had confidence, long chestnut hair and strong limbs. They said I sounded like her, this beautiful Irish singer, and, at times, I could hear that. Just a glimpse, but a glimpse, nonetheless. I knew how to get lost in the words, the music, the glory of good musicians backing me, and a pub full of folk listening. I am so glad I knew those days, the arriving, setting up of mikes and baffles and wotwot. Walking down from Tapselteerie House, once my kids were (almost) in bed and all the dishes were washed, there I was, just me, wild and excited, nervous and alone. Each week we gathered, played Irish, Scottish, Gaelic, blue grass, anything that just came in the moment, no script. Then I would make the walk home down the unlit village street, on and up onto the dark track for well over a mile, high on music and laughter and strong and wild. I do remember arriving (quietly) through the kitchen door, shushing the dogs, grabbing water and going to bed wherein I could not sleep till almost dawn and HALLO wee ones, and Hallo guests expecting the full Scottish. I didn’t mind one bit, had the energy for all of it, just for that buzz, that wonderful buzz of music, song and just me away from the domestic demands for an evening.

A past now, but a last too, for I can still feel the thrill. I can smile at the remembering, and I can let it ribbon into my past. However, I may still bring back the light of those days should one of my children, or their children ask me to tell about me, not the facts, but the feelings. My own do this, but is that because I ask them to hear what my life was like at their age, no matter what they think they saw and understood? Perhaps. I know I have sat at the ancient feet of someone decades older than I and asked a question, that led to another question, that lit something in that old body and faltering mind, and I have heard stories way wilder than mine. I am glad of it. To imagine this shaky set of bones living a bonkers life, full of fun and mischief and crazy is, for me, a truth. Of course they did. They lived through two wars, real threats, real deprivation, not just two years of Covid lockdown, not that I want to minimise that, but I’m just inviting a perspective shakeup.

What I have learned of said fun, mischief and crazy from those old bones has laughed me into hope. They may be falling apart in a way that is overly ghastly, but they did really live. They were wild, once, crazy, full of fun and mischief and, ok, not all of them, but oh so many. They have stories they seriously believe no young person would ever want to hear. Ask them. Because I did, I learned coping mechanisms I would never have learned otherwise, domestic survival tactics, the way to keep bloody going when every sinew said I’m Done.

We can put an Elastoplast on our past, hoping it might heal. It won’t. Our past is what it was. Although I love and celebrate the current culture within which all those in dire mental pain, survivors of everything shocking and horribly wrong finally have a voice, I really hope that family, support and intelligent healers are ready to help a move beyond. I have no experience of such, thus, no voice in this space. From my fortunate place, I would fight for all freedoms, all areas, all colours, all sexuality, all of it. The past of us is not just my personal past, where I had bacon and eggs on Sundays, and cleaned the car on Wednesday afternoons. We have blasted way beyond this. I might get the terminology wrong as we all move, bumpily into a future, with all the wrong words, and wonky limbs and the mischief always at the ready.

I remember coming home at the ten o’clock curfew, my Dad (bless him) would not sleep till I was safely home. I waited some beats, heard the phew of silence and then escaped through the sitting room window, had a ball, and arrived home on the 5 am milk float. Who knew this? Well, you do now. It was my past and is my lasting memory, oh so many of them and mostly out of hours, on the dance floor, out there, out there, the vast of what was. And I was colourful, I was psychedelic, although I never took drugs, and then the comes in as it always does. See the stories?

I met someone today, a woman I respect and love, and she has dementia, and I saw it. Ask the stories now, right now, let the grandchildren ask, encourage it. This woman, that man, they really lived. Once. They walked back from the pub after a session, a song, a lift for a few hours from the dire of their lives. They all had, have a voice, have stories that will make your perspective shake into a whole new shape. Trust me.

Two days to go. Then it will be a whole year since himself breathed his last. It is hard to believe and yet easy. I cast back to the days between then and now and cannot remember a lot of it. Many days were just a slog, a pointless slog and many other days were full of skips and puddle jumping. I notice more now that Time is my ‘bidey-in.’ I notice puddles, their shape and size and the way they grow, claiming more ground as that primary element argues with another one. I notice the way Spring comes shyly, nervous of pushing out too soon, just like me. I notice petals, watch them fall and wonder how they choose that very moment to do so. I see the turning of the beech leaves and just have to stand beneath them. I hear sounds more clearly, some sharp-slash ear offences, some soft and landing like, well, petals. I am aware of what I touch and how it feels to my fingertips. I notice a founder in those same fingers when I attempt to unpackaged packaging, or lift a heavy pot to the hob. I hear the sound of water coming to the boil in a pasta pan even from the next room. The tic, tic, tic of a clock is Time telling me she is here, as if I didn’t already know that. I can taste the snap-smell of his plaid shirts, the only things I haven’t yet moved on. They no longer smell of him and how could they? Everything was washed and double washed many months ago. I think I might make a patchwork soft mat from cuts of these shirts. They were so his ‘fashion’, a hanging on to the days of being a lumberjack in Canada so many years ago.

Years ago. His life by many stories was a long one. A wonderful one, he said, and often. Funny how we are never satisfied, never able to agree with ‘enough’ when it involves waving a final farewell. I know he didn’t want to live on. Who does in the late throws of dementia? I wouldn’t, for sure. He went happy and peaceful. That’s it. End of. Well, maybe it was for him. But now I feel like a pioneer facing a wilderness. The land endless before me goes right up to where my eyes meet the skyline and I have no map. I am not afraid, not lost, not in despair, no way. But this is so new to me that I confess to a bit of circling and a lot of hiding behind rocks. I go out, I keep a clean and tidy house, I feed myself well, I love music, I write, sew, dance (occasionally), walk every day and, as far as I can tell, house a lively brain. I have humour, mischief, a sense of fun and many good friends.

All this does not minimise the wilderness, that vast maw of sand, rocks, emptiness and maplessness. A load of ‘esses’ for sure. The way it alters, changes my language, my thoughts, my beliefs, my faith. I have faith, I have belief in something for me even if I don’t know what the hellikins that means and I have fun learning a new language. This, in itself, is perusable. Although I am, I confess, a lover of good strong language, words can escape me. I am thankful for Roget, a bible for writers. My battered copy is always beside me so that when I cannot find the right word, the one that accurately describes what I want to say instead of just ‘trending on twitter’ jumps out at me like a sudden-ness and that is okay. I am allowed, I tell myself, to lose the words I once found so easy to lift into the light because most of what I found so easy to lift into the light has been cut away, just like that, in a single not-breath.

I was reminded by my lovely daughter-in-law just yesterday of the final breath moment. She loved her father-in-law and he loved her. Her eyes lit up and her face lifted as she told me something I had forgotten. Remember, she said, as you all sat beside him watching his faltering breaths? Go on, I tell her, trying to find my way back to that moment. Well, she says, he took a big gasp breath and then everything went still. You looked at each other and began to move. This is it. The big man is gone. Suddenly, he breathed again, a big draw of earthly air and you all laughed, turning back to him. The next breath was his last, but that moment, he, the one who always had to be the centre of attention, claimed his right to it one more time.

‘The sharper the knife, the less you cry.’ So they say.