The snow that fell this morning in soft floating flakes like feathers has all but melted, and the day is darkening at 3.30 as fog sinks onto the tops. The school across the road has not reopened. Today is the funeral of one of their teaching assistants who died just before Christmas aged 56. Death seems to be around every corner. Yesterday came the news of Pete Postlethwaite's untimely demise from lung cancer. And my friend K is involved in the final stages of the life of her friend G who has cancer now in many parts of her body. Her friend becomes frail and thin and ill, needs oxygen, a commode, help to walk. And is afraid. As is K.
On I go with Dad's letters. Just at the point where he finally gets to go home on leave in December 1946, after a bout of dysentery, and in poor spirits, having been led to believe he may not be demobilised until early 1948 (in fact it was July 1947).
This winter feels long and hard. My feet inside socks and slippers feel cold. But my conversation with K, and watching an interview with Judi Dench yesterday evening have inspired me. Death waits for us all, and for some of us it doesn't wait long enough. But while we're here we do what we can. My habit of undervaluing myself and what I am doing can be corrosive. Even in this low time my endurance, my patience, my keeping going, are important. Even when I feel utterly impotent to help K with what she is going through, she tells me how much my thoughts, my insights, my support mean to her, and I must believe her. Judi D too seems to struggle to believe that what she does is good. Yet she does not run herself down. She is still and dignified and respectful of what others tell her about her glorious performances.
On Thursday I go back to the school for a second meeting and something new will begin. I have to keep on trusting this slow rising.
2 comments:
Just knowing that you are there means more than anything else to K, you know. And in doing that, you are doing something wonderful.
Try to keep warm, it's so important for the spirits. It is a hard winter.
I'm going to try to express appreciation of people more, I think, without gushing all over them or being insincere and patronising. It really helps, I reckon, on both ends.
I can't get over how absolutely inevitable and universal death and suffering are, and how utterly hopelessly unequipped we are to deal with them. Is it failure or progress that it is so?
Something I came across elsewhere, that we must be careful not to steal other people's sorrows, in trying to care for them.
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