loss

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Island Blog – Emerging and Engagement

We are in a seasonal change. The mornings are cool, the light less light, less strong, the mornings darker. I love such changes, all of them because it involves me and my attitude. It also reminds me of my mother’s big ottoman on the landing, wherein she would carefully fold all summer clothes, bringing out the scratchy woolen jumpers, the thicker trousers, the warmer underpinnings. Not sure we can do that anymore, even if we do own a landing big enough for an ottoman. Nonetheless, the temperature does lower as Summer gathers up her swishy skirts and dances off to Africa. Seasons don’t stop being themselves. They just move on to do their thing on the other side of the world. I love that too and it thinks me.

I hear, oh god we all hear, the moans at the loss of Summer as if nothing will ever be right ever again, as if cool mornings heralds the end of everything. Such nonsense. We have all lived some years knowing that nothing at all lasts, that everything changes and never stops doing that change thing. I suspect that too much talk of ‘loss’ can, and probably does infect a community, a workspace, a family situation, There is nothing like a single voice of misery to bring down the most dynamic team. But this subject is on no more than a change in seasonal flow. I do understand a sense of loss, nonetheless. Those heady days of frocks and bare arms, of walking for hours beneath glorious sunshine, of taking warmth for granted, leaving doors open and not shouting about it; of dry dogs after long walks, of mud solidified enough to be just dust on boots; of standing for a conversation, of sitting on a balcony with a glass of chilled something-or-other and of trusting all of the above. I get it.

The thing I have learned is that attitude makes any change shift into opportunity. As those of us who are getting old get older, it is our essential choice. As joints stiffen and shout, as it gets harder to gauge the level of bumpy land, as the cold sneaks in knife-like, as self-doubts grow mighty and decisions flounder, we cannot help but remember how vibrantly we once swashbuckled through our complex lives. A seasonal loss? Yes, definitely yes. A different seasonal change, one of a life long lived. When we began it was Winter. Then we met someone and Spring began to flower up, cautious, yes, but little blooms pushed through the cold. Then came Summer, the crazy warm long hours of sunshine, the swing of it, the fragrance of hope filling the air, the dance of it, the wild long hours of daylight, of hope, of dreams. Then Autumn, golden, still warm, the light like a chiaroscuro, elevating what was already there, sharpening its edges, pulling the distant closer, reflections brighter, calls stronger out there in the otherness. Then Winter again, but a different one from before, before the commitment to the one, to children, to family, to decades of hard work and laughter and sharing and agony and loss and gain and goodbyes and hellos.

I like the word Emerging, not that I thought for one minute I would be still doing it, not at this age, but I am and my attitude is absolutely IT on this. I don’t like being alone. I don’t like being old. I don’t know anyone who does. Ok, so that’s the bottom line. Let’s think up. I do. I wake every morning and say thankyou to my bed. I won’t say I plan my day because, unless I have work in the Best Cafe Ever, I don’t. I just wake up and that’s damn good. I wash, dress, make-up my face, eat breakfast, clean up, look out. And whatever is going on out there, I choose to go with it, up the warmth if required, call for help if I need a big gas cylinder attached, download an audio book, hoover (boring), wave to walkers, plan supper, make hummus or something like that. I have the urge to emerge.

I can’t change the loss of me, but I can rise above everything if I choose to engage with change.

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Island Blog – Perceived Failure

Ach, well today was a bit of a trudge. It didn’t wake thus, and nor did I, jumping (I did) out of bed as the very first schist of morning framed my blackout curtains. When I wake, I’m like Alice, excited, down the stairs and into the fart of the sparrow all exuberant and ready for strong coffee. I call Alexa into Radio two and bring in the tunes and, despite the dark which will stay resolute for at least another 2.5 hours, I am there to welcome in the light. To be honest, I would like to be one of those who stravaigle into a morning, yawning, turning over, sleeping again until the last noisy minute, such as the arrival of the council bottle bin collectors, all twinkly winkly lights and big noise, arrives at my door. But I am not, and there’s a twister. My mum attributed her ability to hit the pillow asleep until morning, the actual morning, not the hour, when light beckoned breakfast and the whole world visible, ducks on the pond, all that, as an easy conscience. I did squirm at that, I confess. I think she probably said that to my dad, he who didn’t sleep, who caught me wandering all awake and in the dark of the landing and who told me stories, cooled my feet, stayed with me until I did drift away. I wonder if he did.

In the echoes of Remembrance, of those who went to war, some many times, and all who came back changed. The echoes continue, even now. How on earth does a soldier return to ordinary life, the caption of it, the captive, the superficiality, the expectation to adapt overnight? It wasn’t recognised in my dad’s day, nor before, the fallout, the agony of it, the loss of one for one, the strong bonds formed under immediate fire. the fear, the desert dark, the cold, the all of it – the refusal to tell out. It is now, I hope, although I’m guessing there is a lot of fallout, too many echoes, too many triggers, too much seen and not spoken out.

I’m shy now, once I see I have written this. My fingers do their own thing pretty much. So, I felt a trudge today, did I? I can see the judge front of me, all male and whigged. I planned to do this and didn’t. But I did sweep the floor, no, that’s a lie. I did walk, truth, I did do 100 rows on my row machine, I did check the canoes on the shore, see they’re tied right. Truth. I did walk, a bit. I did lose my specs and still haven’t located them. I didn’t attend a meeting, giving my notgoingness. I did bake a potato for supper, prep a salad, light the fire.

There is no competition. I know that. But I still compare myself against others. There is a learning there, and, as I work through this, I feel a tad less furious at my perceived failure.

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Island Blog – A Stopping

The day begins. I rise, dress, and head for a what I believe will be an ordinary day. I’m thinking about myself, the what-I-will do, my plans, my things, me, me, me. We all do it, and it takes something outside of ourselves to shock, to shake us into the outside of our fixation on self. It’s a very big world out there, a load of people, situations, circumstances, troubles we will never experience. We forget in the fuss about clothing dropped on the floor, the loo seat left up, the greasy fingerprints on furniture, the abandoned sweet wrappers, pizza boxes not emptied, not cleared, and I could go on for a whole year on that stuff. I was there, I remember it all.

And then something happens, news comes in. Suddenly we are twisted and twizzled into a spin, one that sends our eyes open wide at first, and then into a crazy spiral. As suddenly, the whole shit about clothes on floors, careless loo seat attention and abandoned wrappers become a nothing. Just like that. Because this news is so big as to automatically and perspectively diminish the things which, moments before, sent us into a snort of fury as if they were our only vision of our lives, we stop. What we were doing, or about to do, birls in our minds, and away into the mist, the rain. We cannot see them anymore.

Death is part of life, obviously. We all have to do both. It’s ok, sort of, for an old and beloved to leave the world, even though he or she leaves a big and wide grieving family. The dying in this case of a mum of many, grandmother of gazillions, was expected, and she was well into her 90’s. Still, the loss…….

This is going to sound weird, but I like to be reminded out of my own small agenda. I don’t like the news, don’t like the fallout of a big family home, one I remember, all sparkle and can-do, all fixed and sure, all young out there, naughty, finding their way, moving out, moving on, loving and loyal.

RIP Mary. I will remember your smile and those twinkles in your eyes, always.

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Island Blog – Maybe an Acceptance

I know that, when I am feeling tired, things arise that don’t bother doing so when I am not. I have learned this over many decades, not to fix on any choices, opinions, nor decisions when feeling tired, angry or hurt. It’s as if a mind, so clear and engaged with daily life falls into super-tired and then goes deeply weird. Sometimes, most times, the whatever that finds a way into the within of an already compromised state takes on the efficiency and the focus of a drone, with no empathy, no emotive colour nor depth, no ability to connect beyond its own directive. I was going to write that it feels like finding myself in a small space with a whole nest of angry wasps, but, although there is something of that, it isn’t quite the truth. It’s more as if the whole terrain changes, one I trusted, was sure of, my footing securely supported, all my thoughts lining up like good wee scouts, my inner team.

With all of that gone, the troublemakers come in like missiles, like drones, laden with regrets and recriminations. The trigger can be something someone says that swipes a person right back to childhood; could be a moment in time, long long past; could be a choice made in a different time that still troubles up in a bad dream. For me, it’s listening to an audio book today, feeling tired. Although the book is fun and engaging and brilliantly written and spoken, one of the characters has a husband with dementia. She knows it, we who listen know it, even the husband knows it, but he floats in an out of reality. Because the writer has obviously experienced this situation, even distantly, the theatre is accurate enough to take me back to so much of the real situation.

However, I have read acres of books on dementia. They do sadden me, but only at a distance. I was there and for many years. The grief for a strong and heretofore upright, impossible, infuriating, figure of importance and value as they lose their grip, their hold on reality, their control of self, begins way before death. Way, way before. We know it, all the family knows it, all friends know it, neighbours, shopkeepers, anyone and everyone. However, and here’s the bit that got me in this audio book, the man, the gentle, bright, strong and loving man who caught this awful disease, also knows it and chooses to talk to his wife about his feelings of fear, of sadness, of loss.

I never had that. That’s not a poor me thing, nor written with blame in my keyboard tapping, but I can feel, like a punch in my heart, how wonderful it could have been to cry together, to talk, to hold, to share. Perhaps, and I would say this to another who told me just this, it was just the way it was for you and him. There’s hurt in there, an unintended rejection, and maybe an acceptance.

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Island Blog – Hallo You

I’m watching high-flying gulls cant in the wind. The gusts are punching down here, pushing over open-mouthed wheelies or sending them into a scuttle down the track. Trees bow and bend, whipping around as if to protect themselves as they feint and duck as best they can. Unlike gulls, eagles, anybirds, they, like us, are somewhat pinned to the earth. It thinks me, as I look up at the majesty of soaring. Even the clouds look bonkers, scudding like ducks, splitting from cumulus into wisps of rejection, only to disappear into the white light. What thinks me is this. How strong we are. How tough, how resilient, and how we can rise from any threat to our lives. Even loss. Even bereavement. Even the darkest of times.

This is one of those times for those I know.

I know we aren’t birds, we can’t fly, we can’t lift nor dynamically rise as if not caring a jot, nor would that ever be a human thing. We are grounded, thus we care. We are rooted, thus we care. Enter confusion. Sorry….Confusion. Someone precious was just there, weren’t they? Wasn’t she? Well, hell yes, all loud and bubbling over with music and energy and fabulous clothes and a feisty mouth and the look of a pixie with mischief on her mind. And, now, she has lifted away. I doubt she is flying with gulls, although she may be, but she is definitely a flyer. Where might she be? Over forest, mountain cold, desert hot, or skimming down an ordinary street somewhere, juking, diving, canting, lifting? She leaves so much love down here, a rising warmth to lift her into the whatever. I don’t know what I believe about the next bit, but the big shut-off idea does nothing for me. I’m a hoper. And, as the sun pushes the damn wind away, for now, shining my windows into a murky embarrassment, I smile.

Hallo you, darling you.

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Island Blog – The Trigger Triggers

Sunshine and warmth spins me. I love it, long for it, especially this season, but when it comes, lifting light and freedomwild, I can suddenly feel like I’m on a swivel stick, confused emotions dinging around as if all my road signs have turned on me. I can’t explain it better. I just know there is a yearning on such days. Opportunity is out there, loud and lustrous, but my feet are fettered. I will walk, and I do, but the walk is singular, when once it was something I wanted, but rarely achieved. I tweak and dead-head and weed and clear, but it doesn’t bring me the Good Job response I seek. As the sun, warm and wonderful, captures the sky, moving from blinding light to a red resolve, I watch it. It’s as if sunshine needs sharing. Look at the way those yellow flowers rise, butter bright, see the way gulls white up, rising above the incoming tide! See those roses, their response to the sun, the tips of my too-long grass quivering in excitement. See this, see that? I want to say all this, but it’s just me here.

What shall we do tonight, he used to say on these rare sunshine days. Let’s go out for dinner, and we did, booking late, dressing up, a sunshine excitement running like fire through our bodies and minds. And we laughed as the sun visors came down, as the sunlight sparkled off flutes of fizz, anticipation electrifying. It never mattered that tomorrow a summer storm was forecast, nor that he would be out in it, searching for whales, dolphins, porpoise, safe landings. This sunshine day was all that mattered. But that was then, and it thinks me.

When we have had happy times, great experiences, we don’t forget. We will, eventually, accept their place in our past, but when a. trigger triggers, it all comes overwhelmingly back and we need to employ juxtaposition. I had this and now I don’t. I had this in spades and now I don’t. To accept this is like volunteering for extra latin classes, but it needs to be done if a person wants to move on richly, and I do. However many times sunshine days confound and upend me, I know that I did have what I had. I still don’t know how to accept the loss, perhaps because sunshine days are as rare as Kyawthuite up here in the chilly wet Western Stick Out islands. I allow myself that. If triggers comes daily, they are more sortable. The random ones less so. But I will work on this. Everyone feels loss, everyone, and, hopefully, most of the everyones out there will notice, react, consider and make changes for personal support the next time the trigger triggers.

The Pierris reds up wild. The sea-loch skin is beautifully scarred by geese families, en traverse. The ancient pines dangle red oxide cones, backlit as the sun catches them in its downward bright. Shadows lengthen, change, shift. The sun-followers begin to close their petals, and I have linguine to cook as I remember those sunshine days, the ones where I was an active and dynamic part, and I am so very thankful.

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Island Blog – The Sad

Today I wake with Sad. I do sometimes. It just happens. Sad comes in like a burglar, and nobody really wants such a bedmate, nor a daymate. Sad doesn’t take up half, or more, of the bed, nor does it bring me tea, plump my pillows, sit to tell me what fun we will have today. It is a mournful beast, so big that it fills the room, clouds me around and is unshakeable off. I can shower, whistle a merry tuneless tune, turn up the volume on Radio 2, light a candle, because. it waaaaay before dawn, all those things. But Sad stays true, true as an old friend, one I have totally gone off, and some time ago; one that takes no hint, obeys no command, one that can, if I am not very vigilant with my thinks, subsume me for the long hours of a whole day. I can swear at it, threaten appalling punishments, sing LA LA LA very loudly, but it won’t go and I know it, and there is only one way to bear its presence, and that is to turn, smile, and welcome it in. Okay, you are here again, bringing me bearings, not of gold, frankincense and myrrh (well, maybe myrrh) but of husband gone, children gone, Poppy gone, breast like a war zone.  You want me to wallow, I know your tactics. You want me to search about for a reason, the reason you are here and to dive into the muddy cold depths of that pain. It could be my parenting failures = millions; could be my bad choices=billions; might be poor decisions, awful choices, myriad regrets, endless falls from Grace, whoever she is, the snooty madam. 

But I won’t go there, so if that is the conversation you plan, then try another tactic, because I will not go there. My lips, thin now, old, a skinny bow below my nose, will not allow any responses to escape. They are sealed. 

Sad is silent now, so I continue. 

I don’t need to define nor explain you, not any more. You’ve been around for most of my life and I engaged with you at my peril, because you took me down down down into complete darkness with no proffered candle, no guiding light, and you won’t take me there again, I promise you that. My mistake, I continue, as Sad is just sitting there saying nothing, was first, to banish you, I get that. You will visit so many people, so many homes, and banishment means nothing to you. You just dissipate and reappear again and again. Do you have a To-Do calendar, names written down, days to visit? Do you discover times of loss and grief and leap into action? I suspect you do, but I am moving on now, not up, but on. I know I cannot prevent you in my morning, the way you stay all day long, and I will be polite but I will not allow the seep of you to infiltrate my new self, my lonely self, the self who, despite the cold of sadness and loss and grief, is bloody determined to smile, to give out, to laugh and to dance.

And btw, you won’t be here tomorrow when I wake. I just know it.

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Island Blog – Lightmare and My Wee Sister

I feel absent from myself. Unnerving, at best, but this is where I am, finally alone here in the placeI love best, alone and just me and that’s that on the whole alone thing. I had family, a husband, dogs, distractions, a massive to-do list and now……..nothing. Well, not nothing, because I still have me, and my kids somewhere out there busy with their busy lives, but in the day to day living of this alone thing, t’is just me. I love it and don’t like it at all, in wavy curves, an anomaly, a conundrum, an apogee, something wordy, anyway. But, and there is always one of those, life lives herself on and through me and I am glad of it, for she still wakes me, aways before Dawn even gets her pyjamas off. Life, the liver, the giver, the one who (not that/grammer, people) shiggles me into life and out into the glory of herself, no matter the utter shit of whatever is going on. And that, is a gift, even if the me of me is absent and silent, lost and alone. The wotwot of this place presents, not as breakfast in the dark alone, again, but also as a rocket up my arse. I feel it. I invite it because without that rocket I could easily fall. I have always walked on the edge of things, felt the pull of madness, of the tipping that might take me over the edge, and I did look down, I did, and was tempted, but no, t’is not for me. I know this edge, my bare toes feeling their way along the ridge, the cusp, and there’s a thrill. This place. I can see others come here, chaotic and unthinking, and I can be the thinker. I can hold and hug and comfort and stable. I can question and settle with them on a rock and tell them no, not now. Let’s go for a coffee. I know a place.

All of that might sound weird to those who never go into the depths of themselves. I know it. But I do, and I know so many others do, even if I don’t know them. We appear as chaos, and we are chaos, but in the understanding of chaos, there is a resolution. Chaos cannot sustain longterm. It will always resolve, and into something beautiful. The waves of the ocean speak volumes, they flow and crash, pull out and into something much greater, the snatch of the wild, the moon, the winds, the everything we cannot, nor will ever explain.

I watch my gnarled fingers dance the qwerty keyboard. They look wizened and yet still dance. Words still flow down my arms, the dance begins and, again, I am absent from myself. I chuckle. I have always been this way, and, even without family, husband, and now, faithful dog, I am still me, like me or not. So, in this state I drive to the harbour town for this and that. As I swift down the curve and into the downfall of one of the two downfalls, I spot a lightmare. It is just after nine am, (I refuse to say ‘in the morning’) and these multi-coloured lights are abundant and flashing. I wonder if they did this all night. I wonder about the other residents in that big block of flats. I move on, and by. And, i am thankful that, in my absolute solitude, one that trips to cusp me and often, is my home with no lightmare.

Thank you, my wee sister.

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Island Blog – Poppygon

Polygon, 3 or more sides. Hexagon, 6 sides. Octagon, 8 sides. Poppygon, multiple sides. Whilst I bother, somewhat, with all the other gons, which never got a mention, I can’t go with that thing just now. I look out at her grave, the fresh earth light and obviously from the deeps. That is where she is right now, deep and dead. My wee companion, the dog I fought not to have, became my love. She insisted on walks, her time clock set for 2pm, and, no matter that I really needed rest after her waking me at two, three, four, am for a going out that resulted in nothing more than barks at the stars, she would still dance around my hopefully sleeping form, lifting me into action. I confess, I do, that irritation was arising in me, and I hated that. So, I watched her dance, looked into her huge brown eyes that looking like a piercing, the wild in her and it would smile me. Okay, I said, let’s go, and the dance became a fiesta, her watching me rise, the excited twirling, her making sure I decant the stairs, pull on boots and jacket and then she would bounce and huff and bark with excitement until I was finally prepped. Holding out her collar and lead, I suggested, with my open palm, for her to sit. I could see her arse jig. She managed an inch above the mat, so excited, to be out there with me. I know it was walking with me, her thing, because others had invited her for a walk before, sans me, and found her resistant, looking back. She was mine, and I was hers.

Buried, she was yesterday. My friend, the vet, came softly and sweet. The ground was frozen. I’ll bury her for you, she said, and she did. I could never have done that, don’t have that strength anymore. I ordered Poppy tubers to plant above her. They’ll arrive soon. A remembergon. I see her big brown eyes and the looking of them. Her beds and rugs and food and snacks are now moved on. Needs must, on those sudden sharp jerks. But, when I walk, without her, I still look back for her, running behind me, having sniffed a gazillion things I just walked past without a care, and I say, hallo, my poppygon.

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Island Blog – Ouches

Ouches. I’m unsure there is a plural for an Ouch, but it can so feel like there is, or are, at times when one just doesn’t cut it. Well, it does ‘cut it’ but in multiple directions, like fissures. Too many esses in that word methinks. Backing to the point……

This morning he left, my big African son. He came to be with me after surgery and stayed just over two weeks of big son in doorways, that smile as wide as a continent, those big warm arms, that massive heart, that love in his eyes. We are so easy together. He worked with his coaching clients, stacked my load of wood, repaired a collapso chairo, went through the Spider Darkness of the dodgy understair cupboard, which, back in the yore of yore was a corridor, and they are always dodgy. I remember, as a little boots, on my tricycle, scooting a corridor in a big house/boy’s school and it was miles, and there were rats (yes, there were) and I was there pinging away on my bell and heading for Cook in the huge steamy kitchen with her buns and her smiles and her bosomy welcome. I pedalled like a dingblast. You never saw such footwork. It was darkling, old place, old lighting, possible rat attack, always a thingy. Parents were well into gins and fizz and nonsense and there was me, or I, on my tricycle. I was a brave one, even then, or was I just after Cook’s buns. They were spectacular, but you decide.

He left in the beginning. Morning was pushing Night away with her flaming torch, the sky flipping fire. I was in ma goonie and with coffee to hand. I am fine with this, I can do this, I can let him go off and up into his own life, I said to myself and she, as usual, did this folded arms thing and smirked. And, the daylight was light enough for me. I cleared old clothes, tidied the Spider Darkness and found a few things I had thought swallowed up by the Mouthie past. That chattering reminder of all we failed at, didn’t say, did say, wish we had done, wish we hadn’t done.

But as light concedes to dark, day to night, I miss him, our sundowners, flicking on the twinkly winkly lights, the jacking up of the wood burner, the shared tunes, the dances. And we did it all. And I am so thankful. Although there are many ouches, there is a fricken wealth of memories and I have them all, right here beside me, inside my heart. I can go there any time I feel an ouch.

As I walked today, knowing I would return to the alone of my life, I looked up at the leaves still falling from the beech trees, the caper of their float down, like dancers, a capricious play with the breeze, and I thought, there is so much pain in our broken world, and so much beauty, in loss, in struggle, in play, in dance, in moments shared, even in the ouches. We grow from all of it, even the shit of of it. Have a wonderful weekend. I will. There will be ouches. There always are.