Women

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Island Blog – Adventurers

When an adventurer decides she, or he, is fed up of unadventuring, there’s a thing, a stop, a catch a fear, a big kick-ass scary one. Can I do this? Who am I to think I can? What if I fail. let down, feel stupid, fail, fail, fail? The ‘thing’ brings restless nights and all clothing feels too tight, too awkward in all places where shift and motion was, heretofore, simple. It is as if a new dynamic has infiltrated my boring, and bored self, a sort of dancer, a fluidity promised but without a manual for the new moves. I sort of rush in, awkward, over keen, in the wrong shoes, my body still on its way to here, the here which is now my absolute here. I want to be altogether with myself, to be completely present, even though I know that not just my body but my mind are still both on their way along that winding strip of single-track.

Well dammit!. I had a strong conversation with them on departing the mother ship. Ready? I asked. Steady? Shall we? It doesn’t seem to work that way and not just because this old adventurer is arriving in the right tee-shirt and on time. None of us here really know how we will work together. We have never been squished into a cannon of lunch blast, folk arriving hungry, asking for vegan, asking about allergies, about takeaways. Asking for 6 soups with sourdough, for quiche with bits, for two cheese scones with extra cheese, for fruit scones with jam and cream and for many more combinations. I watch the new owners work with kindness and can-do. I watch my co-workers welcome old and young, dogs and babies, serving with smiles and spectacular baking. I am proud to be one of the team. Very proud.

Back to the adventurer. She, me, has been very spiralled, very tired. This is not my point. Of course she is. She is old and has sat on her skinny butt for, what, almost four years since the only himself she will ever want, decided to die. I talked to his photo today. I do often. He believed in me. You can do anything, he said, and more than once, and I could and I did, I did, I did. Still am, mate.

Right now I have strawberry jam a-boiling for the Calgary Cafe – so worth a visit, and a mushroom risotto. I’m also prepping a Pasta Puttanesca. I love the story in that dish. All those women, the adventurers, who chose to work on the streets, had to, to feed the ones they loved, and then, in the rejection and cold of the night streets, the kindness and respect they found.

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Island Blog – A Feral Susurration

Talking with a friend today over lunch, many subjects, a deal of which covered my favourite subject, the emancipation of women and I left with many thinks, as, I suspect, did she. I turned my car one way, she the other, as we moved back into our own home lives, own agendas, own to-do lists, and we waved, a strong and confident wave of connection and support, a knowing across the divide, a real something. She is younger than I by many miles, but there is a wild in both of us and a shared commitment to our own freedom to be who we really truly are, although I doubt she has to fight for it quite as much as I did. The culture of my way was so very definite, so finite, so limiting. Women came second. End of. Women should never attempt to rise above men, particularly the ones to whom they were legally connected, particularly them. Because why? Well, for starters, that woman would be, at best, laughed at, mocked as ‘butch’ or deemed hysterical, illogical or ignorant, and, at worst, kept at home, away from her ‘influences’ and threatened.

I was not one of those women, but I had seen too much among my mother’s friends, the older women with whom I worked on the farm, the Pauline in the local shop with her black eye, the Sarah in the surgery who, if I spoke with her in this public and mostly silent place, cowed and bowed and, I could see, wished she was invisible. I was a young mother then, younger than they in all ways, in experience, in lifestyle. I had privelege, opportunity, freedom. What did they think of my reach for friendship, I wonder now? Middle class, protected, safe. What did I know of them? Nonetheless, they responded, and I loved that they let me in, talked to me, trusted me. I knew right then that, whatever life sent my way, my passion would be my voice for women, all women, whenever I could, wherever I could. I was, probably, about 23. It thinks me. When searching for ‘what-to-do-with-my-life, as so many do, and particularly now when there are thousands more young for a few hundred opportunities, it could be so easy to feel like a failure. Someone else got that job, that apprenticeship, that flat, that adventure, so what am I doing wrong? I have talent. I can paint, draw, sing, write, I know it. Or I thought I did………….

And then, at some point, I wanted to climb the ladder, the one that had been handed to me, and one that scared me. I had hidden it in my understair cupboard. I don’t do Climb, I said. My daughterhood was built on a foundation of polite conversation, appropriate behaviour, appearances (never mind the truth of a thing) and susurration. It was the way of the time, our situation, the culture all around us, the bubble. I know that. However, that doesn’t mean it continues. Perhaps, all the while, I was learning, and where in the hellikins did that come from? To know you are feral whilst contained is not in the least comfortable and leads to all sorts of impolite, inappropriate behavioural choices, a sort of wild that creates fire, an out of control fire, an all consuming fire. A pointless and destructive fire.

So, this ladder. When I eventually wheeched it out through the blackened cobwebs, throwded in historical (or is it hysterical?) dust, and leaned it up against the clouds, and began to climb, I met limitations. It surprised me, and didn’t at all. I realised that the feral in me had been attractive until it gained empowerment. Now, that was a confrontation and, thus, uncomfortable at best. But I never wanted to have power over anyone but myself. I had head the susurration, the tidal chatter the upstart of arguing winds beneath my feet, within my heart, for so very long, and finally, I remembered the ladder. So I climbed; poked my head above the clouds visible, saw the possible, the impossible. I know now, that those who are feral hear a call in whispers, a rustling, a discomfort underfoot, a veritable challenge to the ground beneath their feet. There is more, there is more……a feral susurration.

And they are right, you are right. Listen, and find your ladder.

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Island Blog – Levitas, Obeisance, a Foundling

I’m about to challenge all those words, although I will, for this sentence, acknowledge their dictionnary confines. Since the whole hooha in my life, at this late stage of said life, but not lacking a single moment of sparkle, and, as I solidify, with great resistance, I notice words. They flicker about my head like the swallows, all of them going somewhere too fast for me to follow. I watch them flit away, catch the tail end, reach out to catch what I can never catch. Fleeting are they, and so are many things, many people, it seems, and I know it, have known it for decades, had forgotten it in the steady dusky trudge of olding. I had. I really had. When I reconnect with the students we had working with us over a decade or more, I hear of families, even of teenagers, of the birthdays and failures, the surprises, the moments, and I am confounded. These wee ones were my wee ones, once. They arrived all full of promise, fists up, (particularly the girls) and with intelligence we really needed in order to create a huge charity that still lives on today – The Hebridean Whale and Dolphin Trust, one committed to benign research in Atlantic Waters.

I remember walks down to the pub after looooong days at sea, doing this research thing, my own boys as crew, or skippers, eventually, and the buzz, oh the buzz of being recognised and invited was so exciting. I thank them all. I get that this sounds ‘all about me’ and that’s another thing I would blow out of the water, given time. It’s dismissive and judgemental and, ok stop there.

To the point, or points. Solidify gives me indigestion, the word, that is. It sounds like sludge. I don’t do sludge, even though these past few days of what, of coping, no, of moving on, no, of understanding, no, I sense a sentence barking for ‘in’. I may not be such a writer. The confluence of contradictory wordage can split an understanding. I think I need my dad here. When, let me develop this……the challenge is made (weak word), the challenge accepted, the pistols at dawn are an inevitable. And, although I’m unsure of that word too, I kind of like it. Hearing it, or reading it, gives me fight.

I was fine as I was. I was in sludge, I now know. I was thinking, I am over the hill, now. I am 71. I know I am feisty, I know I am strong, I know I am lonely, I know I am, what? I know obeisance. click. I know levitas. click.

And here is where I challenge, Foundling. With the deepest respect. I am she.

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Island Blog – Just Saying

My garden throws its colour to the sky. I know from the slow down of all those throwing blooms, that these wise creatures are saying farewell for another year. They feel the chill of Autumn, are bent tapselteerie by the sideways punchgusts of October, and they accept. They’re probably knackered anyway. I know how they feel. Pushing out colour and brilliance, every day and for months, is a demand and a half, for sure. Languid clouds in a troposphere of unusual calm, float like holidaymakers, pulling apart now and then to let the sun blast out his light, dazzling my eyes. I watch the season turn and it thinks me. I probably do that thinking thing a bit much, but everything fascinates me. On walks with friends, I point out the spot where deer have traversed the track. I see the flattened grass over here and then, look, a continuation to our left. I see where mice or voles or wotwots have nibbled at fungi, where birds have pulled off the buds that come, always too late, a nourishment as food supplies dwindle. I hear the change of birdsong. And I think about all of it.

What is it like to roost hungry, and how many days can any bird manage that? How many deer in this fold? Are there young? A hind and her healthy looking calf, stand just beside the track. I lasso the dog and avert my eyes. I mean no harm, I tell her, in my calmest voice, and keep walking. I look up now and then to see here black eyes fixed on me, her head turning as I move on. She is beautiful. From the look of her calf, she is a good mother. I remember that this is the rutting season, the big fight ahead for the stags. I will hear them roaring soon, the clack of antlers across the sea-loch and that will think me all over again. Survival is key to all animals, the continuation and strength of bloodlines. The old guys will be thrown out, or killed on those hillsides. It makes sense, in the animal kingdom. The males fighting, always fighting. The females protecting, always protecting. Who is the wiser, I wonder? Neither, is the answer. Both have a role, an essential role, and in the animal kingdom it is clear and unquestioned. Perhaps in the realm of humans, this is where we get in a muddle, because I believe that our men can feel very lost around all the powerful and assertive women.

Not that I pay any homage to the old ways. I have, personally fought against that load of nonsense, and with zeal and planted feet, but I do think that even our young men are in a spin. They learned a role, it was clear. And now, it’s as if they have been thrown into a womansphere, in which they might be forgiven for feeling that they have little space, if any. Perhaps we women might refrain from criticising men in general, much as we worked hard to stop them from critising us, and to, instead, see them as individuals, just as we women are.

Just saying.

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Island Blog – Window Clown

I am home again after a weird but wonderful weekend. My eldest granddaughter turned 16, all excitement and hormones and friends over. I arrived on Thursday, driving Miss Pixty Forkov (feisty daughter of the Duke and Duchess of Palaver) who is throaty and fast around corners, holding the road like she owned every inch of it and refusing to let go. I am always anxious about journeys, for no good reason. I know the road, so does Pixty, and the drive is lovely as long as I can bumble along, not that my car does ‘bumble’ very happily, preferring, instead, to roar past everyone like an Arab filly. I hold her back.

On Friday I travelled by train to the hospital, grabbed a delicious pesto wrap for lunch and marched out to find a smiley taxi driver. No distance, and I was in and settled when my sister arrived, she who knows about breast cancer and has more than ‘survived’ it. We met June, a ward orderly who remembered my sister and hopes I am in Ward 6 when I go for the chop. I hope so too. We reminded her (and I think she remembered) years back, when I had asked her who cleaned the windows. They were filthy. She said, Not Me, and so I asked for a bucket and water and a cloth, climbing onto the wide sills and bringing in the light for all those brave women in rows, in beds, survivors, I hoped. On a high now, and literally, I moved along all the wards. Hallo, I am the Window Cleaner, I announced, all smiles and bucket, receiving welcome smiles from pale faces that still could lift one. As I consider my own possible time in that ward, I hope there will be a window clown for my stay.

Needles. Loads of them. Anaesthetics then biopsies, then two more markers as another dark patch, a possible cancer lump, and joined to the other one. Then a mammogram to photograph the markers. I am titanium woman now. There’s a song in there, somewhere. I await results next week, and, hopefully, a decision or, at least a suggestion as to surgery. The original lump has grown a tiny bit, and, in truth, the lump itself is barely visible to the naked eye, but because of the proximity to a nipple, and if a lumpectomy might leave me with the Ochil Hills, all ups and downs and a right frickin mess, I may choose, or they may recommend, a mastectomy. Ectomy. What does that mean?? Sometimes the fanciness of word endings makes me laugh. So much pomp and dictionary when most ordinary people just want plain language.

It is glorious to be home. To walk in the Fairy Woods, to watch the leaves fall, to notice foot tracks on the narrow track, human, male heavy, woman dance-foot, deer, dog, all of them leaving their marks on this wonderful Earth. Hazel nuts and acorns scatter the ground but no conkers, no conkers, no shiny balls of smash and clash for children. My husband, canny as you like, would soak conkers in vinegar overnight to make them hard as iron. He always won, or so he said, back in the days when there was no such thing as a ‘device’ to lure a child into a world he, or she, had no real understanding of.

The 16th party was wonderful, even as I was too tired to join in, watching through the window. The fire pit lit the night, as did the lights strung through trees. Snacks and dips were laid out as the 16s arrived, the boys and girls on the cusp of adulthood, beautiful, gangly, brazen and funny. I said hallo, then disappeared upstairs. I heard them singing together, playing rounders with a luminous ball, dashing off to hide and to seek in the big harvested field, returning for pizzas and fire poi, trying their hands at what is way more of a skill than they realised. At 11 they left, bar the girls, who slept over. Slept? No. No slepting at all. I reckon they chatted and laughed till 3 am and it reminded me of my own 16 when life was laid out like an endless and beautiful carpet, riddled with rips and tears but still laid out. I saw the ease with which my daughter and her husband talked and laughed with the 16s, having known them since toddlerhood. I remember that ease with my own kids.

Ah…… the memory of time passed is a beautiful thing. All those parties, all that confidence, all those rips and tears, all that colour, dance and light! A view from the window, now, but I will always be the clown, breasts or no breasts.

Trust me.

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Island Blog – All Queens

Facial needling. Heard of it? I certainly had not and required the process to be thoroughly explained before I ventured near. The clinic welcomes me with lovely and uplifting messages, discreetly placed, phrases that tell every woman she is beautiful, with which I whole-heartedly agree. Beyond the weatherings of skin and body, lies a woman with goodness and love in her heart. Just look into her eyes and you will find her no matter the harshness she has survived, no matter how strong her armour and her need to hide within it. Not one of us finds life perfect all of the time. Not one.

I digress. Soft pastels cover the walls and the welcome is warm and genuine. I am guided to a flat bed and asked to remove jewellery and upper clothing and to lie down beneath the coverlet. My clinician is young and, yes, beautiful, and she explains the process. I am no fearty around needles, not me with all my tattoos, my five babies wombed and delivered au naturelle, various minor ops and various minor accidents. Needle away, I say and she begins, having first cleansed my face and neck with her gentle fingers. It feels like a sharpish massage and I wince, once, only once, settling quickly into acceptance. I relax and close my eyes listening to the buzz of the instrument and mentally following it over my face, marking out the rise of nose and dip of chin, the soft plump of cheeks, the wood of my forehead. I feel the bones beneath, the way they are perfectly fashioned to fit my skin, the precious brain they protect and have protected for 70 years, or nearly. No sell-by date for bone structure, not if you’re blessed with a good dose of bloody-mindedness and a further dose of luck. She works on my worry line, that damn thing between my startlingly dyed eyebrows which appeared when I was about fifteen and is now like a dried up river bed, deep and permanent. Or so I thought. This will tighten up all the lines and wrinkles, she tells me with a smile which I can hear, but not see. Yeah, yeah, I think. I’ve read such drivel on the backs of endless potion bottles promising youth after a few applications, and bought not one.

Process completed, advice on not using abrasive face washes etc gifted, I return home feeling as though a million prickly things are trying to get out of my face. Not unpleasant, more tingly and exciting. I have no worry line now, although I do realise this is not a long term magical fix and that I, from this day forth, fifth and. sixth will need to not worry, not invite the return of dried up river bed. I must keep my eyes wide, remain curious, laugh a lot, particularly at my worries and remind myself that I am beautiful, I am a queen. It thinks me about playing cards. What does each queen represent? I google and find that, although each one holds specific values, all four are really one queen. The queen of hearts brings love, fertility and creativity. She also tells of upheaval and change, understandably because love is heart-breaking at times, fertility never a given and creativity can be stifled by herself, by others, by the demands laid upon her. The queen of clubs gifts new beginnings, transition and opportunities. We all know all about those, even if the last has felt as far away as Pluto. Diamonds, well, she’s sharp that one. The queen of swords, intellectual, quick-witted, able to think on her feet, change, evolution. The Joan d’Arc within each one of us. HRH spades brings female intelligence, judgement that is practical, logical and intuitive.

So my thinking is that we all host all four queens, finding at the right time, whatever skills we need to make our lives the best they can be in any set of circumstances. Easily said. There’s no mention of all that sobbing in the dark, the longings for escape whilst trapped, nor the sacrifice of our dreams in order to play a bit part in someone else’s life. We all know those times. However if we can hold on, albeit with exhausted fingers, to the knowledge that we are all queens minus thrones, that tiny flicker of flame kept alive can take us through things we never asked for but which came our way regardless. What did we. expect, after all? A happy ever after, a magical and perfect life? There is no such thing and that is the harshest of truths to accept. But if we can accept it, without rancour or bitterness, we become the queens simply because we, in the silence of our hearts, beneath the armour, inside that beloved brain, believe it, even if it is never acknowledged.

At fifteen, when the worry line began to make itself known, I wrote down my dream. I want to marry a man of adventure, have lots of children and to live in a wild place. And that is exactly what came about. The queen bit had to come from within, yes, there was no encouragement on that score, but it didn’t stop me. I have no throne, no wish to queen myself over others, no interest in that. All I will ever do is encourage other women to find their own majesty and to clothe her in dignity and grace, to learn all queenly skills and to never let the world or anyone in it bring her down.

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Island Blog – Tumbleweeds

You know those times when you venture into something new, something that has your belly all of a quibble in the morning, the doubts like angry Koi (carp) banging against the confines of a plastic pond about 100 miles and even more decisions short of freedom? I know you do, as do I. Off I go into the nowhere of something with my clothes on, my pencil and pad, my car fuelled up, my timing considered, my small dog sorted. Breakfast at five am, just in case I am late for the 10 am clock in. Good flipping lord to that! Nonetheless I wake and rise, bleary and wondering if I am completely bonkers to be doing this, this whatever, stepping without the right boots (what are the right boots?) into a new environ. When I write environ, it happies me, a French word, kind of distancing me from the right here island soaking wet long drive thingy. And, in French, it means ‘About’ and I am so about, wishing the sun would flipping rise so at least my dog will get this early breakfast tiddleypom.

So off I pop, eventually, having secured all things dangerous that never were such before this leaving. I spend a while reassuring the dog that I am gone for the day, alarming her in the process because I keep telling her I’ll be back soon, which I won’t and she kind of gets that with all this overdose of repetition. I check my car for oil, fuel, windscreen fluid, the tyres. I’m going 23 miles for goodness sake, still on the island, and for only 6 hours. My friend is walking said, and now thoroughly bothered, small dog mid-day. What is WRONG with me?

Answer……Nothing at all. Rising from Covid – all of us. Long Term Caring and Bereavement – some of us. Difficult childhood trouble – many of us, rackshattles a soul, diminishes a person, confounds, contracts and confuses her or him. All known parameters swing out and dissolve like sherbert. The boundaries fly off into space, known and trusted familial or friendlial supports bend and some break. The tide of time, this time, arrives not as a sudden tsunami, no. It is like smoke under the door, or a whisper on social media, a moment in the school playground, a cruel word that peers hear, a comment as you leave the shop in some sort of shame, card declined, child in meltdown, a sudden need to get out, get out, get out. Been there each time, this legacy of ripples creating a wave that finds you on the other side of your life as a drowning. I know it.

And then a new thing comes in. The invitation to step into the desert of what if. It comes, trust me, it comes. It infuriates, I resist, I say no and yet the yes in me rises like a koi to the lights, even in the trap of a plastic pond. I think I want the freedom to demand a lake, a mountain tarn, a river, but no, not yet. For now, as I learn to rise again, what I need is a plastic pond with lights. I learn new things, I engage with splendid women, we laugh about how to make a good sandwich, what all this learning affects us, we hug and offer a lift home. We are not Koi in a plastic pond under lights to amuse. We are tumbleweeds in a new desert but with the wind in our favour. We are brave. So are you.

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Island Blog – A Feisty Queen

Waking after a good sleep to the moon, huge and bright, her mountains shadowy. She isn’t full yet but will be tonight. So long we island folk have missed sight of her, clouded thick and rained off as if dissolved completely. Funny how important it is to be able to see the moon (and the sun) and after many many weeks of a closed day/night sky, I can feel a joy run through me. It was midnight when we met. She lay heavy on my bed, waking me, her lemony gold light pushing around the blackout curtains, strong as a policeman’s torch. I got up to welcome her. She hung powerful in the black, throwing her light down into the sea-loch, lifting it into an eerie luminosity, rippled, soft, almost green. I heard oystercatchers up way too late and, in the distance, the scream of some creature calling out the last of its life. It didn’t last long.

Some days are full of fun and laughter like the lift of a kingfisher, all sudden and electric blue and unexpected, or the happy cries of children, or a kindly word from a friend or stranger. Other days can be quiet and unresponsive, seemingly tired of being ‘just’ a day. Little things can elevate a mind, blow away the closed sky, open it wide to the sun or the moon, bring a gasp. But these are not little things, not in my thinking. Little things are such as a household shop, taking out the bin, opening a bill, tidying a room, making a bed. Big things always involve people. People change everything. A chance encounter with a kingfisher is a wonderful thing but I want to share it. I want to point and say Look, There! It’s the same with the moon, or Father Sun when He finally battles his way through the endless cloud. I want to share it all.

Although Myself does, as you know, a lot of snorting, she is a mate. She is always here and I now recognise her value to me. Chances are she snorts at this too, but I am busy writing and she knows not to disturb me at such times. I also get that people talk to themselves. I am doing it all the time and it isn’t weird as is generally perceived. When there was another here, I didn’t need her. Now I do. And I am thankful. However, in the perception of the world, I might be seen as a weirdo. Well, no change there. I decide to fully engage. I still love people interactions, still need them, we all do or we end up in a silence that I’m not sure is healthy. But I do know that being alone and out of kilter with that alone-ness is just a state of being and I have gone through plenty of those, all those transitions, all those changes over so many years. And what I understood every time is that my full engagement with the uncomfortable process handed me the key. I must re-kilter. If I can accept and allow whatever life has thrown my way then I take control, not of it, but of me, and that is empowering.

I love a full moon these days because I have her number. Instead of allocating all blame to her, my mood swing, my lack of sleep etcetera, I welcome her. I ask her what she is teaching me about the bloody hoopla of womanhood, the lies that fetter a woman, the controls that imprison her. She doesn’t bother my sleep any more and I love to wake to her voice, to watch her fill the night with all her power. Controlling the tides, the women of the world, the weather, she is, indeed, a feisty queen, whether I can see her or not.

Feisty Queen. I wouldn’t mind that on my gravestone.

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Island Blog -Still Breathing On

I meet with two other widows over coffee in a brightly lit cafe/chocolate factory. All last night I was fearful, not of meeting them but of going out at all. I had to choose paint, collect a prescription, buy soap from the best soap shop in history deliver a huge landrover tyre to the garage for unpunctuation and leave my own mini there for an hour or so. She, my mini, Miss Pixty Forkov, was having an argument with her onboard computer and I don’t blame her. She was telling me her tyres were fine thank you very much whilst her screen flashed me dire warnings of certain disaster. This long list of things confounded me, overwhelmed me and I had to take 3 deep breaths prior to firing up the engine. I realise this to be ridiculous. I have driven this tootling switchback road up and down endless hills and skirting 2 lochs for decades. But nowadays it can take on monster proportions inside my overactive imagination and it has everything to do with Covid restrictions and fears and widowhood.

Needless to say, once my lungs are well pumped back up again and my head silenced, all tasks are completed with ease. I arrive at the cafe and settle down with a double shot cappuccino to wait. I can feel myself calming down as we talk about how life is for each one of us. All our husbands died differently. All of us are still somewhat lost without them, no matter how pragmatic, how busy with ordinary tasks we may be. We feel abandoned and rather pointless. We live on for our children, not quite yet able to say we live for ourselves, having not lived for ourselves since we were 20 and that was half a century ago. What happens to souls after death, I wonder to myself. Is there an end date for a soul as there is for a body? If not, heaven must be overcrowded when I consider the thousands of years humans have been living out their lives. I look at my friends, two good strong women whose faces show me what they must see in mine. More lines, eyes not so bright, mouth busy but changed somehow, the ends pointing chinwards in repose. Is my heart broken? Is yours? We all agree. Yes our hearts are broken, our lives as we knew them stopped forever dead. It doesn’t mean we won’t heal, although the scars will always be there. It doesn’t mean we sit around feeling sorry for ourselves but it does mean we give life to these deaths in that we talk about them, about our dead men, the impact on our children, the legacy of loss, of father loss. You only ever get one of those.

For my own part, as the most recent widow, I have only just come to a place of acceptance, a sort of quiet river flowing underground. Sometimes this river hits a confoundment of rocks that cause a lot of hiss and spit, spume and roar. Other times a waterfall, rapids and quiet swirling pools. There are bends and long straights, deeps dark as the middle of a forest at midnight, shallows where fish skitter and reeds wave softly from where they root, denied air. I inhabit the ground above this river, walking alone. The river compels me, beckons me, calls to me and offers me continuity, hope and a future even if I have no clue what that future will be. I know, as my friends know, that our children watch us now like hawks, picking up on every stumble, every doubt, every fear. Mum is all we have left now. Mum must go on and we will make bloody sure she does, the old bat.

When we separate back into our own solitary lives, having covered most subjects in the book of subjects, I know we all feel lighter because of what we all have in common and because we are not afraid of death any more. It is not a word whispered as it was before we watched it happen to our life partners. At the very point of death, when we turned all practical and businesslike, we left a part of ourselves behind for ever. We can be afraid of driving short distances, of imagined dragons, but Death has no hold over us now. We met him, after all. We watched him cross the room. We felt his presence. We are taller now, stronger now and more likely to laugh with abandon at things we might well have censored before. We are woman, invincible and still breathing on.

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Island Blog – Very Blessed

This day I wake early, faff a bit, clean something, clear another. I like a tidy home. It was never tidy when I lived with a husband who didn’t do ‘tidy’. He scoffed, and said, oftentimes, that he considered it an affliction, like exzema or asthma. Even if it didn’t look like it I did honestly try to outrun his scoffing but it had faster legs and was canny. It could hide in corners and wait for my back to be turned. And it was very successful. In the end I gave up, to a degree, focussing on my innate skills and gifts and, to be honest, clearing up has never been one of those, even if I did, over time, morph into the extension of a broom, a mop or a dishcloth for decades.

I know what is happening later and I am so excited about the happening later thingy. Just a few weeks ago I would have cancelled. I know I would. I was very into cancelling and not just through lockdowns but way back into the caring years when I had lost myself. Everyone does, I hear it through the mouths of others, their tongues working out the consonants and verbs and pronouns and careful, so careful to halt the flood of emotion that could turn any sentence into a grammatical flood of nonsense. I can ride that flood with them, that wave, even if the words follow no particular order. I know, and yet I have no idea, how they feel. All loss and grieving is different, even if the name is the same. Mother. Father. Brother. Sister. Husband. Wife. And, God forbid, Child. But we can go into the rapids together, we can understand, to a degree and by more degrees than those who have not experienced such deaths.

There is a meeting of Bereaved Carers. How brilliant it that! The only people in the room will be, well, bereaved carers. I feel both safe and excited to meet whoever comes. I know the facilitator and she is like a sparkle, so we are all safe. We have a room to ourselves. We can talk out all the shit we feel, or not. We can go into awful detail without wondering if the rest of the room will barf and run. We know each other even if we don’t know each other at all. We drink tea, well they do, but it is strong coffee for me. A teapot lands on the table, a fat bellied old fashioned Derby, I guess, and it is warming, just the look of it. I managed to lose a teapot, I speak out loud. Me too, says another. How did we do that? We think in a communal sort of think. Well, I say, I reckon I must offered my teapot for a bigger group one day and then forgot to collect it. She, with the twinkly eyes and barely a wrinkle on her face nods. Maybe, she says, and we laugh. Actually we laugh a great deal, about caring, about death, about loss and emptiness. We laugh about the slow movement of time, the way we fill in the hours, the way we coped in the thick of caring.

It is delightfully freeing. I am certain each one of us leaves feeling humbled. There was she who dealt with that. She who coped with this, and not just once. There was the one who dipped and lifted, faltered and regained footing over a very long time. We may not see each other for a while but we will all remember this day and think of each other. Each one of us will remember the laughs, the gallows humour, the private sharing that will help us to heal lonely wounds. And, all thanks to the intuitive support we are offered. The Mother Hen. Argyll Carers. Support through caring, through the horrors, not afraid to take whatever gets yelled down the phone or straight to face.

I think we are very very blessed.