widow

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Island Blog – Etymology and Widowology

My Thesaurus is tired. I can feel it as I lift it from the table, the pages all autumn now and threatening a fall from the Binding tree. Undoubtedly there will be a new and upgraded version by now, because words are being daily introduced into the world of etymology. I don’t know when I bought it, yonks ago. Being a wordographer, a lexicographer since I was about five and very full of myself and my ability to show-off my newest words, ones that never got past my dad, but flew completely over the head of everyone else, including my ma, home life was a bumpy road. Just imagine that, being that mother with this upstart of a child. Must have been difficult. My voice was too pure, my confidence too out there. Being encouraged, as I was, by good teachers left me in a lonely world because at home I was just too out there, too sure, too much of a show-off. I get it now, but it still leaves the stain of spilled childhood on the garments of my adulthood, and, of course, as a result, I grew less confident, more absorbed in self-doubt, the inner questioning about whether or not (probably not) I would ever ‘fit in’ and it all grew loud enough to confound. I had clear memories. No, ‘they’ said, just remembles, the false memories of something. In came the mubblefuddles, the anticipation of something, everything, going wrong. I remember the falter, the doubts, the strong feeling that, no matter how well I showed off, I was, actually, invisible. Teenage years were ghastly, although I do know there were times of fun and inclusion and I can hear, if I really listen, myself laughing, really laughing without having to look around a group for any judgement.

So much tacenda, so many things to be passed over in silence; as if in acceptance, which it wasn’t in the main. I remember embarrassment, humiliation, rejection, judgement. And, bless me for this, those voices still ring. This is learning, I tell myself. I am not my past, I tell myself. I am not the girl/woman they saw, no. She is mine. I see her. I like her, love her with all her wordingness, her need to be seen, loving her chance to ‘show off’ but never to put another down, never that. Just me being me. I don’t need to hold the floor over others, don’t need to be better than another, don’t need to win at games, to be the best. It just isn’t in me. I just want, always did, to be the weirdo wordo that I am and to be allowed.

Many years ago, whilst living in Glasgow, when I wasn’t just me, we went to a well-known fish restaurant in Leith. On the river and well-established, this place was always booked up. We sat for a pre-dinner drink at the bar. The waiting staff were young and beautiful and very professional. the lights twinkled inside and out there, shining up the river in twinkles as the dark came down. An older woman walked in, my age now, but not then. I watched her, sassy at 70 and colourful, not hiding her wrinkles, not trying to be anything but herself. ‘Usual table?’ one delicious young waiter asked, smiling wide and proffering his arm. She dipped her head, yes thank you. He waltzed her to a small round and elevated table still in the bar and with a lovely view of the twinkly river and all who wandered by. She was so collected, so herself. I noticed, on her olding finger, a golden wedding ring, loose but there. She ordered a large glass of red and some water. Her clothes were cloth and colour, long and swirling. She seemed to have no problem being alone, but I did pick up a something lonely. Couldn’t explain it at the time, know it now. We were called through to the restaurant after that and I didn’t see her again, nor ask about her, but I do remember thinking this. If I ever get to that place of aloneness, I want to be like her, with welcomes and flirtatiously beautiful waiting staff who recognise and welcome, with a small table to yourself and with a view of others walking by and with the twinkles of uplit water just over there.

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Island Blog – Blue Tit and Game On

I drive the wee dog to Heather, for a groom. I encourage her to remain on her soft mat in the passenger footwell, the dog, not Heather, a new thing for her since the old man died. He had her on his knee, on the back shelf or jumping from front to back and all before we’d got through the village. Sent me crazy. I didn’t know, half the time, if I was changing gear on the car or the dog. But no amount of words altered his mind. His way was THE way and if I had a problem with it, well, tough shit. They say you can’t teach an old dog new tricks, but you can and I did. She trusts me and sits quite joco on the mat, trembling like a leaf for a few hundred yards and then lying down for the journey. Heather is wonderful with her, patient and professional in her dog grooming anti-hair pinafore. I leave to visit a dear friend for coffee and a catchup. She will ask about my situation, the whole hoo-ha since June 27th, a hoo-ha that tried to get me, and failed. We talk about life, about the island, about our visitors, about adventures, about addictions and choices and being alone without ever being asked if we’re okay with the whole ‘alone’ thing. She, like me, is a widow. I think ‘weeds’. What are widow’s weeds anyway? Her man fell off a mountain, too young, too sudden. Mine took years to dwindle away, but we have the aloneness in common. She is feisty and fun, bright and lively, intelligent and wise. Perhaps I am too.

All too soon it is time for me to collect my manicured dog. Cathy and I agree to meet again, for lunch somewhere, for longer. We never naturally get to the end of our flyabout conversations, those that dart from people to places, through memories and learnings, into new understandings and a new acceptance, the acceptance of being alone and then, from that point, of finding the feet to walk it into a new sassy light. The weather is balmy, unusual for this time of year on the island. The wind is from the Serengeti, I swear it, and a stout walk feels like a bad idea, but a walk is needed. I watch bout 20 snow geese fly up the sea-loch, and marvel at their beauty. Soon the Tundra, or Trumpeter, or Bewick swans will fly in from the arctic on their way south in search of food. I hope I am watching when they come by, to hear the melody of their wingflight, to hear their soft murmurings of encouragement to each other. In the starry starry nights, in the absolute darkness of the island darkness, their sound wakes me, no matter its softness. Flying way up into the ice skyfields , I cannot see them, but I can hear and I can wish them safe passage. I am connected to the creatures of flight, know their sounds, hear them like music, like a call to find my own wings, my own feathers.

Flight. Feathers. Connection. It thinks me, and it may sound daft, for I am utterly as glued to the ground as you are, but I have an integral belief in connection, to others and to otherness. Laughed at as a child for this ‘knowing’, I am freed of that now, mostly because, my dear, I don’t give a damn what anyone else thinks of me and my connection to otherness. In this time of waiting, for a decision on surgery, for the next tests next week, for the wotwot to come, I think of flight. All my many tattoos show flight. Dragonflies, musical notes, a feather, a butterfly, pegasus. Then, thanks to my son, I consider breast art after cancer. The pictures I google are many. It is, it seems, an art, and I like that. To lose a breast, or even to be altered by a lumpectomy can be a shocking shock. I will know one day for myself. To look the same as before, tempting, essential, perhaps for some, but not for me. I have had two breasts for 70 years, albeit the pair of them a tad wonkychops, one bigger than the other, but I had them and I am not a young woman any more. Had this happened when I was 30 or 40, well, I might have felt differently. I may still retain these breasts, but they may be even more wonkychops than before. For now, this is a mystery. However, and there is always one of those, I am planning a tattoo.

Robin Redbreast? I suggest to my African son. He nods, waggles his head. Better, he says, Blue Tit.

Game on.

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Island Blog – Mind over Matter

I have a wood thing going on here. Well, not just me, it seems, but everyone who burns wood for heat on the whole of the West Coast. Blimey! That is a whole load (no pun intended) of not-woodness. I’m not sure any of us saw this coming, or, it might just be me who never saw it coming, what with my focussed presence in the present and with no reading of news or paying much attention at all to the slivers and shivers of doom talk in the village. Notwithstanding, there is no wood. It wonders me. What about the old and cold folk? I hope they have heaters, that’s what I hope, although it is a backside hope considering the sudden rise in utility bills. I can, at least, stand, walk, split big logs. What of those who cannot, and, what if this continues all the way up to winter? Let’s not go there, spiralling into that cold flapdoodle. Let us remain in the present moment, something my counsellor advises me to do, a place it is best to be because if I step out into the stratosphere of chaos and imaginary collapse, I just might never return. No, that isn’t me. I will always return because I have the gift of good health, strong limbs, (ish) no medication, no condition beyond widowness, which, for your information, isn’t even a word.

My wood box is empty. It’s a big old box and I am never happier than when it is full. It used to be so easy. I call, I order, the split and seasoned wood arrives with a cheery smile. I stack, and grin, the abundance thing always grins me.. My log box smiles back. I think about the trees, the felled trunks, the gift they give, these felled giants and the warmth they bring to my bones. A merry fire, merries. Another not word. However, I have some old pine woodland out back and the trees, over 130 years old now, are beginning to die. Can you begin to die? I suspect, yes. Felled by an expert feller, stacked in the woods, some, and a few of the bigger rounds brought down to my garage. These rounds are ready for splitting. Hmmm. The biggest waist girth a much bigger woman than I, but, I encourage myself, they are light, seasoned, ready for the axe. I apply stout boots and go to lift the first. I can do this. The other rounds snigger, I hear it and shoot them a fierce look. They quieten. Now, I do know about splitting wood, how to avoid the knots, where to place the axe, or, in this case, the wedge. I grab the mell and almost fall over. It is way heavier than I remember. Bracing, my stomach muscles ready, I place the wedge and swing the damn mell. I connect and the groan from this huge round tells me I picked the very spot. With a great deal of puffing, missing, and foot darting as the whole thing leaps off the block, I chop enough for one evening. One Evening? Yes, I am afraid so, just the one.

One morning I decide to attack a twisty one. It is ready for this as am I, or so I thought. I whack the mell and whack the mell, the right groans coming from this part of a lovely old tree, and whack and so on and so forth and fifth and even sixth until the wedge is deep inside the determined roundness of the round which remains, well, round. Rats! Now I have my only wedge wedged and completely buried. I hear a chuckle and raise my hand like a schoolmarm. I step back to assess. I will not call my neighbour, a weak 70 year old pathetic woman, I will not. My brilliant brain kicks into life. Observing the stuckness of things, what can I do to free this wedge sans man help? What I need is a pole with a point, that’s what I need. I have one, surely? I do. I place it beside the sniggering wedge. It is too high for me to whack with a mell which is weighty as a ton of lead. I think again. Elevation, that’s it, for me. I heft the stuck wedge and the pole and big round of ancient pine onto the concrete floor, stepping onto the block. Perfect. I whack and whack and so on. Suddenly, the pole achieves my aim (thank you pole) and the wood breaks apart. I am exhausted but so chuffed with my body and brain power. I am not done. I may be alone with these alone things, I may be 70 but I am not done.

And tomorrow? Well, I go again……..

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Island Blog – Some Days and a Dragon

Some days lift without me doing a thing about said lift-ness. Rising with the early light, everything flows in perfect synergy with everything else and there is no chaos within or without. My body feels lithe and supple, the music, Satie’s Gymnopedies, swims through the dawn, my home and me. Birds flit between the feeders, goldfinch, siskin, blackbird, sparrow, woodpecker, dunnock, chaffinch. No neighbourly cat yet to explode them into the sky, no sparrowhawk to bring them down, just soft reverence to Life herself. I dress, make coffee and wonder how everyone else feels about this morning. Across the sea-loch, mist ghosts the hills below what might just be a blue sky. I haven’t seen one of those for weeks and it’s a welcome sight, one not to be taken for granted as we don’t get ‘spells’ of weather on this island. One day may be all we can ask for, one day of dry, a gift and not one to be ignored but instead to be celebrated actively, mindfully, each minute thoroughly lived because tomorrow, that day that never comes, may well open grey and wet, the sky closed once again.

During these widow days I have known many mornings, many hours of self-doubt and fear, of loneliness and sometimes, despair. Although I know that I must, absolutely must, animate my inner poltroon, start believing and continue to believe that I am more than able to live not only a solo life but one which can still really live even with a missing part. It will always be thus because 50 years of marriage is a very big chunk of any life and to be left behind inside that life now empty of all that was familiar is discombobulating at best. It is almost 2 years now, no, more, because dementia eats a person up little by little and ten years of watching that monster nibble away changed us both. But still, the familiar remained. I knew him and he knew me and no matter the ancient battles fought, neither of us ever won. Now I am just me and sometimes I feel very small indeed. I can spend all night awake freaking out about absolutely nothing real, such as what I will do when my oil tank leaks gallons of oil into the garden, or a huge pine crashes through my roof opening me to the sky in the midst of a hooligan gale when it’s snowing and my neighbours are away in Tenerife? Now, however, a bit further along the road un-travelled I find myself wandering through interspace, a sort of misty corridor of in-between. I am moving, learning how to create a new familiar. Ignoring the clamjamfrie of panics, I sit with myself and we chat. What can you do within this situation, she asks. I close my eyes and let said situation settle into some sort of shape. Nothing about the being alone thing, I begin. She nods. Nothing about the gale. Ah, but I can ask a tree man to check the pines and I can call the oil tank man to check that. Good, she says. Get on with it.

There is nobody in this world, no matter how rich, how well-organised, how balanced who can avoid the big things. Things like gales, oil leaks, death. Nobody. So that means that all of us can learn new ways, a new familiar, but only having gone through the dark times, the rain days, the storms both inside and out. Courage in the face of ‘disaster’ has legs, a brain, strength and power. Fears flit like birds all the time but I can explode them into the sky if I think ‘cat.’ Imagining disaster is normal but not liveable with for long. This state demands action, not helpless panic. To ask, What can I do about any of this? is the question, followed by action and fuelled with courage, even if it feels as though courage seems to have gone off to India to find itself. The human spirit is unbreakable unless that human turns his or her face to the wall and I am not doing that, no matter what.

I was reading about Koi the other day, those beautiful Japanese fish (originally from China) we might see in lakes and ponds far far away from this place. Koi represent courage, the overcoming of difficulties, challenges, big horrible threatening life-changing things. It is said that Koi can swim upstream against any current. It can fight its way to the top of a waterfall and when it arrives at the top, will transform into a powerful dragon, not a destructive one but one re-shaped by all that life has thrown at it, all that it has learned on its journey. I like the idea of that. The thought lifts me, encourages me to face my challenges, make friends with my loneliness, and more, to keep on keeping on whilst engaging completely with it all, even the fearty times. I might become that dragon one day. What larks, Pip!

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Island Blog – I hold the balance

I watch the rain. A constant, a steadying. I am not overly fond of endless rain but there is little I can do about that. There is also little I can do about long evening darkness, one that holds on like a black fist for way too long, well into what laughingly is called My Morning. Sleep is a friend, yes, but fickle. She soothes me for a few short hours but she allows in dreams, nightmares, startlements that shock me into waking and leave me still shocked even as the dream evaporates. I am not good at ‘still shocked’, won’t stand for it, get up, go downstairs to watch the darkness, try to love it at 4 am. I remember trying to love something when it defies the rules and it was never easy, my skin prickling, my mouth empty of words, my body longing to run, but if I could do it once, I can do it again. Let it be.

But. When someone who has no idea about widowness, my widowness, says something that doesn’t even come close to the depth of my feelings, I snort. I hear all the advice, the platitudinal fiction that spills from lips and eyes and I want to roar like Aslan. I don’t, naturally, but that roar held in my small body is wild and dangerous. I smile and thank them, the grief counsellors, the Facebook lovers, the ‘friends’ who write another supportive line pinched from a book they’ve read, but the within of me belies the without. Thank God for skin and good manners! Deep down I am grateful for kindness, nonetheless and all those words of uplift and encouragement come from good warm hearts. I know this and it thinks me into a questioning.

What is it that bothers me when I hear or read words that are just birds around my head? I consider the question and it comes to me as a flash of light. It is my inner speke that needs my attention, not the words I hear, the intention behind them. Oh dear, that can feel so impossible at times when I am busy doubting and fearing and self punishing, even as I know the truth of mind control. I decide to step into my own head and there they are, standing like sentry guards at the door. We can’t let any positive stuff in, they tell me as I confront them, not when you are busy nourishing us in our negative space. I sit down to consider the situation. Ah, so it is up to me to select my thinks? They nod. Are you telling me, I continue, that I am not at the mercy of negativity, regardless of my loneliness, my fears around Covid, my lack of confidence without my husband around to confidence me up? Again they nod. So, I fake it, pretend, kid myself on? Yes, they say. You keep feeding the uplifting words, the light bright beautiful birds. You receive all of them both from outside and those of your own making and you catch every one, lifting them gently into your mind and your heart. They are all light and flight. They lift your spirits into a positive orbit. They are all true and they are so much stronger than the loneliness, the fears and the self doubt. They are your true power, and we are tired of sentry duty. It’s time to change the guard.

I begin with ‘I am strong, happy, powerful and all light.’ I hold back the guffaw and the candle burns bright. The sentries fall, one by one and the door opens wide. Welcome holds out her hands, pulling me into a warm, light room, one I recognise. What on earth made me walk away from this! Well, says Welcome, life is not a straight path. The path winds every which way and everyone can get lost from time to time. I make a list so that every time the negative looms, I can hold it back with my own light. I might feel I am at the mercy of negative thoughts but it takes just one candle to illuminate a darkened room. Just one. It doesn’t matter that the doubts are there, the fears and the regrets. They are there to guide me, I know that.

But it is I who hold the balance.

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Island Blog – Quietation

I could write this. ‘As the leaves abandon their mother ship, as the track is littered with jewels of gold, red, green and brown, as the cold snips at my bare legs, still bare-legged for as long as possible, I don’t mind.’ But I do mind these widow days. I pretend I don’t for everyone to see and to hear. That’s what I do, what I learned from other widows, from my granny, from my mother, from his mother. The widow lot is barely a patch of earth, not enough to grow a new house, a new home. No. We, who are suddenly alone when alone is not what we ever wanted, not for one minute even as we longed for alone just once or twice when the significant other was driving us daisy crazy, are now alone. With hours, mornings, breakfasts, afternoons, god bless the length of those feckers and with the rest of our lives.

So what is the rest of the whole nonsense? Is it padding about in slippers till midday? Is it frocking up for nobody to see, no matter how many frocks and how cautious the layering? Is it cooking for one when every mortal thing in the shop caters for two? Is it knowing that nobody will ever ask a widow to join them for supper and a load of wine because then they, the nobodies, will have the added trouble of making sure that the widow gets home without battering a fence or ending up in a ditch, her with her car and its slant towards the eastern sky no matter how canny she may or may not be with the wheel for steering?

I laugh at myself. I know, I know, that all the young folk, all those snatching at the skin of their ‘other’ have no idea how lucky they are. To have that argument once again, that nonsense that only ever arises from two, one of which who thinks they are ‘one’ and the other who is certain they are not and will never be, would be grand.

I quiet. There is a lot of quiet now. I will find my way but even as I write this I know I will ding up like a firework in the morning, just to make everyone else feel good.

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Island Blog – Slow Day in a Big Life

Sometimes a day begins as if someone has a finger on the pendulum, slowing it down. I know about pendulums. I have been working with an old stable clock, a beauty, for the past ten days tweaking said pendulum up a bit, down a bit as the minutes either raced away, leaving the morning behind like it never happened or slowed down so that the morning was still the morning at 3pm. I think this day me and the pendulum might just be in sync. It is extremely exciticating, as if I have found a new friend and wonderful synergy. I swear that clock is grinning with an all-the-credit smile from high up on the kitchen wall. I remember the stories about it, the way it told accurate (hmm) time in my father-in-law’s stud in Yorkshire so that the time for exercising the horses worked with the grooms, the stable hands and the master. Quite a feat. In my shared life with this lovely clock, its tick and its tock kept the beat in our farmhouse kitchen and its old yellowed face with Roman numerals was my go-to when children needed to get to school or it was time to scoot out and open the veg shop. This clock was our time keeper. This clock has hung in complete silence for 2 years, since I could not be bothered negotiating with truculence, too busy with the demands of caring. Nowadays it is a rare thing to encounter a pendulum clock because, perhaps, it is just too much trouble to work with pendulum time. And I get that. People want instant and digital which, in my view, takes a lot away from the understanding of time and says a great deal about how impatient we have all become, even though I was there myself not so long ago.

So, back to this morning. Yawn, wake sharp. Tell you why. Right in front of my face was a woodpecker intent on wood pecking. It scared me. I could see in its eyes that it was certain I was a dead tree and was preparing to hammer a hole. I am most thankful I woke up. Lord nose what state my face might have been in had I not. It was 4 am and light and the garden birds were dinging about in a singalong sort of way which definitely helped the getting out of bed process. On mornings when most other folk are sleeping deeply and I am fighting off woodpeckers, it is a given that the day will be a slow one. Anyone who breakfasts at 05.30 will know what I mean. I will be ready for lunch by 10.30 and so on. But this morning was not just about waking t’wirly. I sometimes find the business of widowness a tricky one. It isn’t that I miss the man overly, even as I do, and it isn’t that I am depressed or miserable or any of that stuff that doesn’t come into my mind. Actually, I don’t know what it is. There is, quite simply, a sense of whatwhat?. What shall I do. What shall I think. What matters now and what doesn’t. What should I cook for dinner. What is the point of all of the aforesaid whats. Answer comes there none. So, Hallo Slow Day.

I read a bit, wandered a bit, swept a bit, chopped wood a bit, walked a bit, watched a bit of tv. A bit day and a slow one but there is, from my experience, only one way to tick and tock my way through the hours and that is to keep moving. I am sure there are many who know such days. I watch walkers, drivers, birds go by, all purposeful and planned up and I feel a twinge of envy. They know where they are going and what they doing and when dinner will be and what time it is and I do not. However, I am no fool. That thinking is delusive. So I auto correct many times in a slow day. It is just a day. Be open, be curious, be mindful, just be. So I just be for many hours, longing for the slow change from day to evening whence I can finally decide that it is now acceptable not to invite Henry out for an excursion around the downstairs carpets. Such a relief. I have heard him knocking all the day long. Tomorrow I tell him, and I just know he is rolling his eyes in the dark because I told him tomorrow, yesterday. Tomorrow never comes I say and the poor chap is confounded. I can tell from the ensuing silence. I feel a bit bad. Hoovers are not really intelligent enough to understand such a concept. They are more play school intelligence.

As the evening sun shines, warm against the sharp cold of this morning, an elevation of attitude, I feel a softening, an acceptance. It was always there, the sun, but not prepared to shine. I was this jumper, no, the warmer one, no, a cardy too and a fire and now I am stripped of all of the above and ready to remember something I think I might have forgot. This slow day was just a slow day. I look back over the months, over the past year, and I remind myself of how far I have come. Try it. I see the way I have come through woodpeckers, pendulums, time constraints, self doubts, slow days and loads of time and times and I smile. Well done warrior. Well flipping done. In a Big Life, there will be slow days. Accept that and keep on keeping on.

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Island Blog – The Widow’s Might

Having admitted to the existence of this ghost, named it to you all, I now need to reel it in. Not literally, of course, for who can say he or she has ever reeled in something so insubstantial and yet so powerful? Grief can bring it in, guilt too, fear, of course, and with regret not far behind. But acknowledgement of such an invisible source of anxiety must surely be the springboard from which I may dive into the water. I hated high diving as a girl, all that empty space between me and my arrival into elemental change. But this is the only way. I know it. So many of us wander into the evening of our lives carrying the weight of ghost denial. I want clarity of vision. I want to know where my feet are taking me. I want a clear mind and as healthy a body as possible. But the deconstruction of this anxious state must begin with the admission that it is there in the first place. I may look like I am always cheerful, impish, strong and in control but that is my walking lie. And it isn’t just me who lies. We all do.

Facing down my innermost fears is not to deny they exist and nor is it to spew them out to anyone who would stand long enough to listen. It is an intensely private palaver, one that requires consistent and focussed attention, practice and the daily revival of faith in what can be, what will be as the work progresses. Pretending is out the window, as is denial and hoodwink.

I am alone now. A deal of that is very good. I have freedom to do what I please. I have only myself to think about on a moment by moment basis. I have time to think things through without being on constant duty. There is no more caring to be done. My children are grown. They live their own lives their own way. We are all still grieving, although for different men. Some have lost a father; some a grandfather; me a husband. All the same man and yet not the same at all even if we did share a big chunk of history. Our responses to this loss manifest in a million ways and the time it takes for healing will be different for each one of us. Nonetheless we are joined on this path and thus able to support each other even if we don’t necessarily relate to each other’s process. What we do share in common is the legacy the ‘lost’ man has bequeathed us. There is genuine sadness that he is here no more; there is anger at unfinished business; there is frustration at the imperfections of our relationship with him whilst he lived; there is confusion at the void into which we all now walk, and there is fear as we stare into the open maw of it.

So, what’s to do? Well, we can do nowt about the way ahead, for it is simply that and there is no other choice. There is no map for this journey, no chance to stop and recalibrate the satnav. We are less one in our family, one who controlled us, decided for us, and who genuinely believed his way was the right way. This could have been a conversation but it never was. A man of his time indeed. In his certainty he knew a woman’s place was inferior to that of a man. He knew that children needed strong discipline. He knew that he was the man of the house and that his word was IT, and that strength of mind kept us safely contained for all of his life and a deal of our own.

The ghost flits through me. Being free is both exhilarating and scary. The well-built structure of life is crumbling. It needs to come down now for it is compromised and the rain is getting in, the render cracking and the beams rotting. All of this is just as it should be for there is a new structure to be designed and built for each one of us. What we all need is the courage to move towards it, to step into the maw, to dive off the high board; to keep faith close by and to work with the ghost on our lacks and fears. And this widow is stronger than she thinks. She will relocate herself, the one she left behind 49 years ago, and she will look back on this time with pride and a smile, the widow’s might in her hands.

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Island Blog – The Missing

I’ve been thinking about the Missing. A lot. Like all day long and deep into the nights, nights that no longer call me from my bed about 4 times to give assistance to a dying man. In conversations with my kids and through old and resurrected conversations with my late mum (she was never late btw) I can see how the rose-tinted specs get pushed on to a widowed face.

Who would want to remember the bad times? That’s where I got to. There were plenty. Aren’t there always, in a long marriage, or even a short one, come to think of it? During the years of demise, 10 in my case, when dementia (no capital D for it) slam dunks a wild and living soul, I remembered the bad times too often. I was never sure if the behaviour was what it had always been, or was, now, compromised into something I was required to allow. I still don’t know. What we are as young, we become more so, as old. I have heard that, read it and believed it as I watched my dad demise, my mum and my granny who smiled her lovely smile as her last breath left her body.

However, notwithstanding and by the way, my husband who had been a grumpy so-and-so, at times, over the years, mellowed into the man I first met. Now, I know, perfectly well, that once the prize melts into strong arms, she is both cherished and compromised. Her own identity struggles to breathe at times and I was no different. However, at first I was IT, the Golden Girl, the Answer to All Problems, the Filler of the Black Hole in him and, latterly, I walked with that crown upon my white head. Oh, there you are, I told him, and he smiled like he knew what I was talking about. And, maybe he did.

Over time, life trashes us, or does her best to do so. The world and all her demands, chips away at our ideals and our dreams. We are lost, confused and angry and the one person who gets the gut punch is the one closest. I was always the closest. It is, was, puzzling. In a perfect scenario, that person would be unpunched for decades, but this is not how it works.

Notice that I give both Life and the World the ‘she’. I don’t do that by mistake. She’s can be manipulators, dividers, hoodwinkers. I know I was and it was survival, although I am not overly proud of such a tactic. Women come from a place of caring, of protecting, of surviving in a world that is still (for goodness sake) a man’s world. Men forage, hunt, grunt and fight for their space, oft clumsily, oft without the depth of human understanding that their women have. I have no idea who thought this was a good plan. If you believe that God made Eve from Adam’s rib, then she is already sunk, like for over 2000 years for she can never really be herself, joined as she is by history and an idealistic plan.

So, the remembering and the missing. I choose to focus on all the wonderfulness of my life with this exhausting pioneer, as did my mum. I know who he was. I have the scars. But without him, I would have been a nothing in particular and thus I am proud and glad to have known him. In the last days, when he came down for breakfast, me having washed and dressed him and scooted down ahead of his extremely slow chair lift, my arms full of bed sheets and so on, he would always coracle through in his wheelchair, all rosy-cheeked and looking like a little boy, and say Good Morning, with all the enthusiasm of one who loved every single day of his long life.

And that is the Missing.