partner

I am not friendly with the new Oxford Thesaurus. The original, assembled in 1800 and something, would have been filled with delicious words, now long stuffed in the attic. Words with musical flow, words which have depth, structure, timpani and texture. I don’t mourn their loss. I do mourn their loss, but I will still find them, even though I knew nothing of the 1800s beyond the authors and constraints of the day. Today I was thinking of conjoinder, of the word for life partner, of the push and pull of any relationship. Glancing back to my own past, I saw a scatterment of brilliance, of sunlight and of storm and of unclinch. I saw the giving and the taking, of the imbalance. In the words of my old Thesaurus, battered and losing yellowed pages given half a chance, I find so many words. I was satellitic. I know I was when I fell in love. I orbited without question until I did, and then came the tumbles. I think we all know what I am saying here. Falling is wonderful and euphoric and scampatious but it doesn’t last. Looking back, glancing, I can’t say I can point a finger at the timeline when something shifted, but it did.

Relationships are a bizarreness. We contain, maintain, restrain, align, define, rejink, rethink. It’s how life is and that’s not a gloomy thing, a shadow counterpart, a darkling sepulchre. Oh no. It’s a profferance, a chance to rise. When I realised that this orbiting thing just made me dizzy and distant, I cut off all my long and thick chestnut hair with pinking shears. I was in a temper, yes. He loved my hair. I hated it. The cutting was a ferocious hack, painful and very slow. I remember walking out looking like a waif in wellies and taking pack lunches to both himself on the silage cutter and Bruce on the Something Else. I went to Bruce first. Oh, he said, his smile a bit wonky. Good luck. I nodded, handing him up big sandwiches and a drink. That walk between both tractors saw me and Lunch full focus, could have been miles. I was so visible. My first No More Orbiting illuminated, every stumble step, every mental correction, every giveaway, every risk held in my body like fizz.

He took his lunch, his face rockface, turned away. I had hours till he was home, the weather good for cutting and bailing the precious winter food. I remember the skin on my back alight as I walked home, the relief on entering the farmhouse kitchen, then the fear, the judgement I knew would come. School collection and noisy kids were a good distract. Eventually, he came back, tired, wanting what he had left at breakfast, missing that. But I had landed, no more orbiting. I had no idea where I had landed, but I had, I could feel it, the roots growing from my feet, solid and symphasistic. I didn’t feel strong at all, and even though I was banished from the marital bed, I had begun a singular journey in a conjoined duo, and I could not go back, would not.

Sine Qua Non.

It doesn’t matter how much he or she irritated the bejabers out of you at times. It doesn’t matter how many times you may have wished them away for longer so you could drown the goldfish, sleep wide in the bed, eat what you wanted or go out spontaneously and without curfew. Once they are gone, we are all lost. With my logic head as Speaker, I get it. Of course we are lost. We have been with this person of irritation/love for decades. We know them, or we think we do and they knew us as they think they did. There was a compliance, a working together, a stand-back or fight thingy. A thingy that became our normal.

When our normal is thrust into outer space, just like that, no matter the months or years of caring nor even if the separation is sudden, we are actively lost. I say ‘actively’, because it is just that. When the whole thing about living together stops dead, we just don’t know who we are anymore. Active still wants to be active. We find things to do and over-do. We still have the momentum we always had but what is lost now is purpose. Why am I still doing this, this getting dressed/ stepping out thing when I come home to nobody, not to the smile, the questioning, even the sharp remarks about how long it takes to go to the local shop?

Most of us are productive, action folk, oftentimes because that is what life needs us to be. Just think about it. I mean, who on earth sees the massive role they are suddenly required to ontake when they fall in love? Well, not one of us, that’s who; suddenly wife; suddenly husband; suddenly parents; suddenly carer. And then it stops. Dead. We were running with it all, weren’t we, and fast, just yesterday and then we meet the buffers. I don’t know if you have experienced meeting the buffers on the inside of a train with a driver who wasn’t ready. Well I have and it sent sandwiches and old ladies off piste and flying wide. Not pretty, neither of them. It is way worse in life. Way worse. Did I miss something? Was I being selfish, looking the other way?

When a partner dies, we may be relieved. I was and I am not afraid to speak it out. Although I was the primary and the (godlovethistitle) unpaid carer, not everyone goes through it and I am glad of it. Nonetheless this place is my experience and thus I cannot imagine sudden death, the shock of it rippling for ever, the inner questioning, the self doubt and the regret for all the words unsaid, the loving gifts not given. Let me tell you, those of you aforementioned, that the I feel the same sans your experience. I wish I had said this and not said that. I wish I had asked more questions, been kinder. I wish as you wish.

And the ripples go on. Think not, no matter how he or she irritated, that the ‘lost’ will dissipate soon. It won’t. And do you know why? Well, I’ll tell you. It is because you care. Even in storm conditions for years, even when you just wanted out, even for a month or a year, the human heart has a deep sense of allegiance. It is nothing to do with logic. It is who we are. So if you know loss as a wife, a husband, a father, a mother, a partner, a sibling or a friend, rest easy my lovelies. Let the ripples flow on because they will even if you build a dam. It takes time to be okay with the loss of someone and then, eventually, to find yourself, a shrimp in a desert, yet still strong enough to find the sea.