All I Have To Do Is Dream

The eve of New Year's Eve, and snow still lying, frozen and compacted in some places, melting in others. It fell copiously on Boxing Day evening. Early that morning L's Mum died peacefully in her bed in the care home where she lived. She had severe dementia and it had been many years since she recognised L or anyone else. A difficult loss to fathom. L moving through memories and moods, and we wait to know when the funeral will be.

A ukelele has arrived in our home! The inspired Christmas gift from L to both of us. It is red and oh so small! And I am rediscovering the feel of making chords and strumming, at least 35 years after I last played the guitar at all regularly. And L is getting her fingers around these skills for the first time. We explore the internet for songs to play and since ukeleles have become flavour of the times, we find plenty to entertain us. Today I was singing and strumming the Everly Brothers' All I Have To Do Is Dream. It's such good fun, and the fingers on my left hand are already developing the beginnings of familiar callouses after being rather sore for the first few days! The main problem is my hands are quite big and the frets of a ukelele are small. Watch this space to see if I decide I really must get a guitar again after all these years...

Holy Heathen

Here I am enjoying the only thing that passes for Christmas music in our house - Waterson : Carthy's Holy Heathens and the Old Green Man. Last track now - Gloryland! So here I am heathen as ever, yet moved by the fantasy of 'a land beyond the stars - Gloryland, bright gloryland', drinking tea, baking bread and making soup - all this and writing a blog post too! Nearly time to put the bread in the oven which will be good and hot by now, the two round loaves very nearly proved. Baking has been one of my wholesome and healing activities this year, though actually this is the first time in a while. You have to order the fresh yeast from our local organic baker's on the phone and I don't often remember. The soup is leek, potato, carrot, parsnip, onion, celery - and last year's ham stock, just cleared out of the freezer to make way for this year's, plus some of the cold turkey, and one of today's loaves. Someone will probably tell me you shouldn't keep stuff that long even in the freezer, but I've never poisoned us yet!

Christmas always makes me sad, and this year the new deep sorrow that was added this time last year is hovering close. The wreath of holly and ivy L made and hung on the front door, is fluttering in the wind. I can see it through the glass. The wild winds of the last couple of days have dropped but persist steadily. Tomorrow I'll be in full traditional mode, blanching almonds, frying them in butter, then salting them, while I listen to the carols from King's College. That's when I miss my Mum. We'll eat gammon for dinner, with parsley sauce, potatoes and vegetables, and on Christmas day the full turkey dinner around five. Most importantly L and I will exchange stockings in the morning, opening them together in bed, with cups of tea! Easily the best part of Christmas.

Okay, loaves are in, soup needs blending. Late lunch today, I think!

1

A year today since G was murdered. I sit looking out at the fading December light, the mist descending on the moors, the rain falling steadily. Behind me a beautiful and huge Christmas tree which we have today decorated, having had to go on an unscheduled mission to Wilko's in Halifax for a new set of lights! It glows and twinkles in the darkening room. Soon I will light a fire, then later cook a good meal. I have a sense of having made it through something, survived a long and difficult stretch of the journey. And here I am. So glad to be here, so grateful for my life. And for the blessing of knowing G. I talk to her more these days, smile at her when life's paradox, synchronicity or irony raise my eyebrows. Which is not infrequently. I have had two therapy referrals, and though unexpected, they seem to go along with a sense of turning tide, the beginning of knowing I have some strength, some capacity to attend to the suffering of others.

Weirdly, we were to have been away this weekend, but a series of events (ice, car, sleep and stomach-related), culminating in the hotel phoning to say they had double booked our room, led to late cancellation. No regrets, not one. And the hotel are offering two nights for the price of one as an apology for the mix-up, which we plan to take up in the spring (and a bottle of prosecco in your room said the repetitively apologetic woman on the phone.) For now, home is best, and the sense of light in the darkness that the season brings is sustaining and comforting.

Willowherb In Words

Exploring last year's notebook, the one I was writing in before G died, I find in July I was adoring the willow herb in its prime....

It's the willowherb again and again
calling to my eye - tall, in serried ranks
marching up railway embankments and hillsides
as if guarding something with its tall green army,
its pink flowers pointing to the sky
each floret slowly opening out of a small pink finger
layer by layer, each of which will wither, fade, fall,
give way to the seeds carried in white fluff
which in three or four weeks will be blowing
about everywhere, looking for places
to sow itself and build next year's army
and then and then and then there'll be the glory
of all the leaves slowly slowly dying in shades
of red and gold, marvelous demise over weeks,
all the way into November, last year glowing
in the fog of my fiftieth birthday.

And in August

Is it the height of the rose bay willowherb
or the sheer quantity, the tall ranks of slender
individual plants making a mass of green
and pale purple now against the hillside
as it stretches up towards the tops?
There is something of the invading army
or the defending army, keeping out something worse
that might invade, colonising great stretches of railway embankment,
great swathes of verge beside lanes and paths,
thin and tall, the light filtering between the stems,
a blur of purple flowers as the train
moves fast past where they have climbed
to the top of the cutting.
And one by one the flowers will drop to leave
fine pinkish red fingers pointing upwards
each of which will in time open to release
the cotton wool tufts carrying the seeds
to be blown to another patch where
they can begin again.

5

On 1st December 2009 The Phoenix rose from Smoke And Ash and I posted here for the first time as Fire Bird. The work on our new house was in progress, and seemed somehow a fitting metaphor for my recovery from the fiasco with corporate-style-children's-charity-which-cannot-be named. Everything stripped back and having to be reconstructed.

I never expected to be where I am this December, struggling to recover from a blow far more devastating. I will rise once again in time from the ashes.

Fog

Fog today.

I could leave it at that.

Remembering G telling me how she liked fog.

The dampness on my coat, the tiny droplets that day.

From G's window another valley she often looked out at while I got my shoes and coat on at the end of the session. Even this time last year. Still then.

To be seen, understood, accepted and loved in one's rawness and vulnerability a rare and precious gift. To lose this a raw and aching loss. It goes on and I go on.

Nothing

When there is nothing to do that is what I will do
and try to do it properly, wholeheartedly,
not looking over one shoulder the whole time
as if to glimpse the shadow that may fall on me
darkly, and whisper sourly in my ear
about my failures, my omissions.

When there is nothing to do, count me in
and I will give myself completely to the project,
breathing quietly and bringing silence one by one
to the voices that kibitz from the sidelines,
bidding them surrender, relinquish all agendas,
be still, and let nothing prevail.

Ten Minutes Older

Finally

Fittingly this is the last of my previously published poems from the pamphlet submission. Written in 2007 but feels like it could have been written this year.

Over

In the end,

without explanation,

whatever the cause,

all the words will come crashing to a halt

on a Tuesday morning

or a Sunday afternoon,

in February or June,

as rain slides down a kitchen window

or sunlight casts deep shadows on a road.

We won’t have finished working out

the thing we really meant to say

when suddenly it will be over.

All the days we wore sweaters

and sighed; ate scrambled eggs;

searched for keys;

left the house, hearing birds

in the hopeful morning,

finally leading us to this.

Mirror

Me

The mirror

In 2007

 

 And circa 1987

Towards III

This one's from 2008 and first appeared in the also late lamented Smiths Knoll poetry magazine, as did Marking Time.

My Dad did love word play, and if it was funny once, well - it was funny a hundred times! His parents had a gardener called Willoughby and this had amused him since boyhood. 

Things can be hidden amongst the oats in the pan, amongst the coats on the bed...

Willoughby Porridge For Breakfast?

I put oats in the saucepan

and think of my father – the puns

whose repetition lit up his face.

I fumble through the mornings,

through all the afternoons and evenings

in search of something hidden there

as if beneath a pile of overcoats at a party,

thick, heavy, tricky to distinguish in the dimness.

How I long to open the window

and cast them out into the wind,

watch them fly like huge birds 

away and away darkly to the horizon.

Towards II

This is also from 2006, and was first published at the late lamented qarrtsiluni.

Hidden

My mother knows I’m here,

down behind the front seat in the dark space

where people in the back seat put their feet,

with gritty bits and half a rotting leaf

and a sweet paper sticking to my hand.

I just fit in here, hidden, squeezed in tight.

My father doesn’t know I’m here;

just off the London train smelling of the Times,

opening the car door tiredly climbing in -

he doesn’t know I’m here, and she pretends.

Crouching in my little place I wait,

my tummy quivering with a secret laugh.

I’ll wait until we’re driving up the hill

I’ll wait until I can’t wait any more

and then I’ll pop up just behind his head

and laugh out loud into his shiny ear

and listen to his marvellous surprise

Good heavens! I didn’t know you were there!

Towards

For Sabine. I can only post the ones that have been previously published, otherwise I will compromise the 'previously unpublished' status of the others, for purposes of submission to other publications. This I am delighted to do and it means a lot to me that you ask.

This from 2006, and which also features the white toy cupboard. The poem gave its title to the 20 poem pamphlet-to-be I submitted to the Mslexia competition.

Marking Time

Orange curtains hang

non-negotiable,

ornaments on the mantelpiece,

the pink duvet cover,

mono record player,

flowers on the wallpaper,

fish swimming in their heated tank,

the view down to where the dustbins stand

outside the back door quiet and cold.

And a woodpigeon’s meaningless call.

Nothing else but this world.

I imagine I could sneak a look

into my adult life,

but no pictures come.

I only wonder if I’ll still be here.

Alone with the white toy cupboard,

I feel my pulse beat

hotly in my ears, and don’t know

what it is I’m trying to find.

All these minutes and hours;

breaths and blinks and swallows,

the way your body marks time.

Hey Ho

Hello there, Thank you so much for letting us see your entry for our 2014 Women's Poetry Pamphlet Competition. I am so sorry to let you know that your work was not selected on this occasion. Our judge was Amy Wack, who is the long-time Poetry Editor of Seren Press and will be publishing the winner next year. Amy asked me to pass on her overwhelming impression that the standard of submissions was even higher this year than in 2013 and 2012. This may be because you have been refining your manuscripts, adding fresh material and/or redrafting some of your weaker poems. Or it may be that the poets entering this year are a different, more creative and experienced, group of women. Whichever is the case, we all feel excited to think that so many exceptional female poets are 'standing in the wings', as it were, waiting to step onto the stage with a first collection. Amy especially admired the manuscripts she read that had identifiable settings, both in the UK and abroad. And she remarked that there seemed fewer poems this year that tackled traumatic, uncomfortable, or 'difficult' subject matter – she hoped this didn't imply that self-censorship was taking place! She also wanted to stress that the winner this year (now that she knows who it is and has been in touch with her directly) has been writing for many years –steadily submitting poems, steadily recovering from rejection, steadily working on her art, steadily improving... Some of the poems in the winning collection were first written over 20 years ago; so it's well worth archiving your poems, until a time when they can be either redrafted, or given new life as part of a fresh sequence. At which point, we hope to hear from you again. Very best, Debbie T

Rainbow

Here I am, keeping on keeping on. Keeping faith with the daily imperative to get up and do it all again. To climb the hill again to find myself up there with heather and stone and grouse, and muddy puddles, looking out over the valley. Today a perfect rainbow over the tops. The rain began just after I'd set out thinking 'ah, the sun's shining, maybe I didn't need to wear my mac after all...' The rainbow a symbol, a message according to M that you are not alone. I saw one, at first partial, then growing gradually, inching to fullness, then finally disappearing, the morning of G's funeral, and it gave me hope, as I stood with tears and rain running down my face. I remember it every time I walk that way, look at that view. Remember G's rainbow. So, today's one, in a different position, of course recalled that too. A blessing. Still learning, absorbing, digesting that I really won't ever see her again.

What Difference Does It Make?

Umbrella

The sound of drips falling from the gutter
onto a windowsill, the motion of rain
passing through air on its way to earth,
the deep hiss of tyres on wet road
and I am remembering your funeral,
my mother's umbrella, hearing
some bone-achingly simple piano music
as they slid your coffin from the hearse
and lifted it high through the door of the chapel,
and a boy I knew long ago who
tormented his dog with the language
and gestures of play, so that we were confused
about what he was doing
with his foot on the animal's soft belly.

Still

This is from my notebook dated 20th May

Now, a sloping field peppered with yellow buttercups,
evenings light til after half past nine
and me in sandals taking down my summer clothes
in bags from the loft
and you still dead.

Now, when the date on the newspaper says May
and there are lettuces and radishes to bring in from the garden
and we sit outside with cups of tea, and rub in sun cream
you're still dead.

It's still December, it will always be December
or maybe the pouring rain of January
when we stared as your pale wicker coffin
emerged from the back of a hearse
and knew you were inside it.
It was you.

Now, when I cannot work,
when I stay at home and try to learn what healing is,
try to find a way to feel safe again, to feel joy again
I can't talk to you about it because
you're still dead.

Sand In Your Eye

13.16 From Manchester Victoria

Grey seat backs like funny stiff people, their little grey arms sticking straight out in front. The sound of the heating system blowing hot air into the train. Men in hi vis work on the new parts of the station, walk slowly, work slowly, as if they mustn't get it done too soon. Two men are building a grey wall, the wind gently rippling the backs of their luminous orange tabards. One sits on a crate to work. And a yellow tram passes. The sky is grey to match the dull grey breeze blocks the wall is made of. Rain threatens.

Slender silver birches bend beside the railway line
their small leaves lemon yellow, one or two still green.
A green slope, a brick bridge,
more silver birches, a grey corrugated warehouse,
a tall pylon towers over horses in a field.
A row of semis, a field of sheep,
a pool surrounded by tufted clumps of marsh grass,
a church with a pointed spire with a cross on top
and a clock that says half past one.
A factory chimney with the word ARROW in white letters near the top,
pallets stacked in a warehouse yard,
B&Q, a car park, streets of terraced houses and
we're at Rochdale; a park, a children's playground,
and Haji Cash & Carry est 1955
and the Catholic church that at first glance
looks like a mosque until you clock the cross
on top of its white dome....
and the hills, concrete silos, plumbing trade supplies,
a large blue and silver graffiti tag on a brick wall,
the dark line of the hills beyond all this,
and we in the bowl whose rim they form,
a bowl of fields, horses, houses...
and Littleborough Co-op and the church on the corner
where I used to see all the funeral flowers
lined up along the wall, as I waited at the red light
to turn right, then right again
and up the hill to therapy.

How Far

I stood on the busy platform (11C) at Leeds station, waiting for the delayed 17.05 to Blackpool North, surrounded by commuters. As the train pulled in, people tried to anticipate the position of the doors at the end of each carriage, collecting themselves in bunches, poised, ready to get on board and secure a seat. My estimation of the likely position on the platform that would correspond to the end of a carriage and its doors, was a few feet off, so I was not in pole position, and had to edge up behind a group of people, come in from the side, wait my turn as people stepped on board one at a time ahead of me, hoping that all the seats wouldn't be taken by the time I got there. And as I stood, and as I took my turn, I saw myself there, and I talked soothingly to myself about what was going on, and remembered not to hold my breath....

and I remembered the trip into Manchester back in April for my supervision, when I began to cry in the street as I came out of a Chinese supermarket having bought light soy sauce, and did not really know why, at that moment I was crying, and was not able to stop for a while. Sat at the tram stop blowing my nose, wondering what was happening to me, and wishing very much that I was at home. On the tram began to feel ill, and recognised the signs of impending panic attack, told myself to breathe in through my nose and out through my mouth, and to get myself to the cafe round the corner from my supervisor's house, get a cup of tea and a Danish, and keep breathing. All of which I did. Then got myself to C's and cried a lot more... That was when I knew I was in real trouble and needed more time off work. A lot more time as it turned out.

And here I am seven months on, Leeds today, Manchester tomorrow and no, it isn't always easy, but I am regaining my confidence, my basic life skills. My ability to manage the world.

Toy Cupboard

And so I stand again in front of the white toy cupboard
its broad doors flung wide
to reveal its two shelves and its floor,
the etch-a sketch, the humming top,
the wooden truck with the barrels on the back.

I know it all so well, want none of it,
want instead to pull them all out,
leave them strewn on the floor
like a ransacked toy shop,
climb inside the cupboard,
close the doors.

Chair

Today we went to IKEA, and I bought a new chair. I have for years been sitting on a chair that is several inches too low for my long legs, when I am working as a therapist. I have even been aware of it for a couple of years. Finally action! What a joy to have my legs bent in such a way that my thighs are parallel to the floor, and not sloping up towards the ceiling. Also my old chair has arms which used to make me feel constrained, hemmed in. My new chair makes me feel comfortable and spacious. Result!

This chair had to be paid for in the main IKEA building, and then collected from the warehouse round the back. Here, we waited forty minutes, waiting for our number to arrive at the top of a list of numbers on a screen, surrounded by bored, restless or fed up people. We could have gone and eaten meatballs and chips if we'd known how long the process would take! But somehow it made me appreciate the final acquisition all the more, and I drove home chanting hurrah!

Bob

Those eyes...

Unfathomable

All these years of living in this place inside,
knowing and not knowing its contours and walls,
temperature and tightness.
The long hours of each day spent in here,
yet still sometimes the total mystery
of waking up and finding myself
in half-light, dawn eating through thick curtains,
the outlines of cupboards or chairs emerging.
That coming to consciousness;
suddenly finding it unknown,
unconnected, unfathomable.

Rain

and I walk up on the moors in the cold damp air, water dripping from my hat brim, trouser legs growing dark, the colours of the grasses shining out of the fine mist, shining ginger plumes like fire, and I walk in deep muddy puddles of old rain like cold tea, my hands in black and orange mittens grow pink and moist, warm at the palms cool at the fingertips, and I see no one

Another Train Song

This train swaying slightly,
sunlight strobing through the trees
then gone - as we plunge into a tunnel.
This train our means of locomotion
from H to L, along the rails
predictable, preordained.

This train bound for Leeds
and all that is in it -
shops, museums, dog shit,
fading Victorian splendour.

A silver birch, its trunk wrapped
in white paper, shines
like the flashes on your jacket -
everything reflecting glory
this brilliant day
swaying on this blue train.

Remember Remember

Down to the allotment in dazzling sunlight this morning to pick kale, broccoli and chard. Then under the trees behind the plots with my big blue IKEA bag to collect firewood. It is more hidden now than the last time, a thick carpet of russet, yellow and gold leaves covers quite a lot of the wind fallen branches, but still it only takes twenty minutes to fill my bag to the top with kindling and some slightly wider gauge wood. I love this, scanning the ground, bending down to pick up sticks that can go straight in my bag, long branches I have to break into smaller lengths, with a series of satisfying cracks and snaps. I love it too because at G's funeral, her partner F spoke about the first and the last time he saw G. The last time, a few days before she died, they gathered firewood in Heaton Park in Manchester, slightly expecting at any moment a '50s style park keeper to come and tell them off. G full of delight at getting something for nothing! Gathering wood for the fire will always be one way I can feel close to her.

Now, I am making a mixed vegetable soup - onion, celery, carrot, parsnip with a little fresh red chilie - for tomorrow's lunch, when my friend C will be here. Listening to Bob Dylan's Modern Times.

Yesterday something loosened its grip on me, when I remembered that it is five years ago exactly that I was suspended from my job with corporate-style-children's-charity-which-cannot-be-named. My birthday was on Sunday that year. It was the end of half term. I went in to work on Monday morning, and in a team meeting the shit began to hit the fan, and later copiously in a one to one meeting with one of the big managers from London, who explained that a complaint had been made by one of my team about my private blog (the late lamented Smoke and Ash). The floor fell from under me, my stomach followed. The next day I was suspended on full pay. I never returned. My body is incredibly sensitive to the return of the times of the season, of the year, when traumatic things have happened to me. I knew I was beginning to feel unease and a renewed grief as G's anniversary approaches. But I had totally forgotten what was happening to me in November 2009. The last time my world fell apart. It all makes sense to me, or to my body at least, and I feel an easing in me I can't rationally explain, but it is so. Remembering rather than repeating.

Afternoon

Afternoon, and the low sun floodlights the fields.
At the same time an intimation of the coming darkness.
Schoolchildren in blue uniforms arrive back on a yellow bus.
I eat fudge and wonder at the size of a lily flower,
my eyes sore again from crying.

Willowherb V

52

So, I've been 1,2,3,4,5,6,7,8,9,10,11,12,13,
14,15,16,17,18,19,20,21,22,
23,24,25,26,27,28,
29,30,31,32,33,
34,35,36,37,38,39,40,41,
42,43,44,45,46,47,48,49,50,51
for a year each. Now it's the turn of
52
for me to be it,
or have it as the French say.

Flag

Feeling of overall well-being my foot!
I traveled to London to visit my Mum
who is thin and forgetful
and fell asleep after lunch
while I arranged white lilies in a vase.

All the minimum wage carers doing their best
and assisting old people in taking their drugs.
All the non-white carers
assisting the posh white old people.

Six trains in one day
and then
depression fell like a flag.

Hurrah!

Morning mist hangs, blurs the horizon, blows slowly across the fields. A small murmur from the central heating.  A partial solar eclipse today, but not visible here. Evening in North America so I read. And the sun edges into Scorpio, and my astrologer friend suggests this and a new moon, also in Scorpio, are auspicious and my energy and life-force will be revitalised! She adds  there’s a feeling of overall wellbeing over the last weekend of the month (25^th – 26^th) when Sun, Venus and Neptune all align to ease your path.  It’s about time!

All I can say is Hurrah!

Autumn Leaves

You can smell it. Even when there are half hours warm enough to sit outside. The next half hour it's time to find the woolly hat and gloves, then take them off mid-walk. Autumn, and every street has a leafy border now, rustling in the wind. How did this happen? Birthday season almost upon us. Relentlessly the months have passed, and soon it will be ten, and before very long, god help us, the first anniversary. Already my mother's first year in her care home completed. That indigestible change came just before G was murdered and everything rendered unrecognisable.

I've a sense now of surveying the pieces scattered about on the shore after the shipwreck. Some familiar, some broken, some inexplicable, some lost. Picking them up, turning them over in my hands, and looking for new ways to bring them all together. I am glad to be on dry land, and wondering how to patch up the ship. Glad I didn't drown. Sometimes. Mostly.

Willowherb IV

Last day of September

13.16 To Leeds

Did you get that last text? says a woman across the aisle, very loudly into her mobile phone. The couple in the seats in front do not appear startled. An area of Manchester Victoria Station under development is crammed full of cranes and diggers of various sizes, yellow and red with names like Ultra Boom and Liebherr The sky's the limit, Easi Utilities and Speedy. Miles of blue plastic mesh form gentle barriers alongside the track as we head towards Rochdale. We pass Brewery Junction and the Sapphire Garage, the Sharp project (entrance next left via Thorp Road) and the train cleaning and servicing depot.
An announcement describes the train as an 'express' service which merely seems to mean it misses the first three stations, though it stops at a further seven en route for Leeds. It chugs along, noisy and lurchy, at its usual pace, proudly missing Moston, Mills Hill and Castleton.
The trees show areas of changing colour amongst the dusty green leaves of late summer, then the startling red of hawthorn berries.
A strange-looking man with a Frankenstein's monster haircut waits on the platform at Rochdale station, but evidently not for this train, somewhat to my relief.
So many other train journeys are woven into the experience of this one. Other September days, when the weather teetered on a knife edge between summer and autumn, the sky pale blue with fine-spun white cloud, at any moment ready to turn the sunshine hazy, the air cool. The camp young man in Next, where I purchased the only desirable item of clothing in the whole shop - a stripy tee shirt - using the gift card I was given when I left my job, complained of being indoors when the sun was shining. He said that yesterday he'd gone out in his sunglasses for a cigarette break, and it had gone all dull, but he was hoping the sun would be shining today when he got off work at 5.30. I hoped so too.

Stones Aberdaron Beach

Willowherb III

First week of September

Fireweed seed

Godspeed

Wobbly

I click 'new post' because I'm sure there's something I want to say. What can I say about the effects of trauma? What can I say without sharing details I don't want to put up here? About how things play over and over in your mind. About how the present trauma evokes the 26 year old one of my father's death. I can tell you about going into Manchester - a fairly simple trip, about forty minutes on a train, about fifteen on a tram - and feeling just wobbly; wobbled by inadvertently buying the wrong ticket, wobbled by the train being late, wobbled by all the people, and their faces and their voices, their number, their energy. Wobbled by my supervisor not opening the door until the third ring. All ready to cry at any moment, and jelly-legged once again. And sometimes waking up in the night and not being able to find my place in my own mind. Can I explain that? Not knowing what to think about, what I am thinking about, what I was last thinking about. How to be in this mind. Using all the relaxation techniques I know to stop thinking and just let be, and eventually soothing myself enough to sleep again. And the lure of alcohol when it is so hard to manage the fearfulness, the sense of danger even when you know there is no present danger. I who know so well the dead end of alcohol but keep heading off down it, longing for some kind of peace. Peace sometimes available at the allotment, sometimes on walks amongst the beautifully blooming heather, sometimes not.

Willowherb II

Third week of August

Over

G's son has pleaded guilty to manslaughter, and is subject to a hospital order, his actions said to have been 'driven by mental illness'. There is relief at knowing, and it being over at last. Great sadness, and renewed shock at some of the details that have emerged. Eight months since she died. Nothing can bring her back, but maybe her partner and family can have some peace now.

Soft Animal

The open door admits air that is palpably cooling as the light visibly dims. We shall have more rain and soon. A little boy in a yellow tee shirt hopes that his friend will come out to play with him and his bow and arrow, pride and joy.

I consider the meanings of words. Sabbatical. Devastation. Surrender. Animal.

Wild Geese

You do not have to be good.
You do not have to walk on your knees
for a hundred miles through the desert repenting.
You only have to let the soft animal of your body
love what it loves.
Tell me about despair, yours, and I will tell you mine.
Meanwhile the world goes on.
Meanwhile the sun and the clear pebbles of the rain
are moving across the landscapes,
over the prairies and the deep trees,
the mountains and the rivers.
Meanwhile the wild geese, high in the clean blue air,
are heading home again.
Whoever you are, no matter how lonely,
the world offers itself to your imagination,
calls to you like the wild geese, harsh and exciting -
over and over announcing your place
in the family of things.

Mary Oliver

Upside Down

Travelled all the way to Leeds with a pear upside down cake in a tin.
Travelled all the way back with half a pear upside down cake in a tin.
There is talk of surrender. Also of rage.
I cannot find the co-ordinates for where I am.

Willowherb

Rosebay Willowherb, Chamerion angustifolium, to give it its full names, photographed on the last day of July.

And I discovered today the following:

Known as Fireweed to many, particularly in North America, this name reflects the plant’s appearance following forest fires and other events which leave the earth scorched. With greater light on the earth again, C.angustifolium seeds then germinate and grow in the cleared areas...

Do You Have To Go Crazy?

Balancing Act

What does it feel like to be alive?
Warm.
Vibrating.
Filling and emptying.
There is tension. There is floppiness.
There is waiting.
An ache.
A balancing act.
Overwhelming.
Excitement.
Despair.
Palms and soles tingling.
Not knowing.
Only this.
Everything.
Alone.
Hunger.
Impossible.
Possible.
Head eyes throat lungs belly legs feet.
The trajectory of a shout.

All The Time

And all the time this warm heart beating.
Your blonde head and your dark eyes.
I plant black kale for the winter and I think of you.
Drink beer and eat curry outside the pub.
Watch a cloud the shape of a mackerel.
Alder trees bear little green nutlets.
Always saying goodbye to you at your door.
See you on Monday. Yes, you will.

Keep Your Hat On Your Head

Gooseberries

So Far

I had a dream the other night that this song was playing on a device in my bag, Tom's voice emerging from its depths.

No Words

No words big enough
No cry loud enough
No arms wide enough
No kick hard enough
No tears wet enough
No sleep deep enough
No night long enough
No sound sad enough
No shiver full enough
No mind vast enough
No place near enough
No memory clear enough
No heart open enough

Words

An evening at the end of June. Cool. Drizzle falls outside, fine and steady as it has much of the day. The elder flowers shine in the dull light, like tiny moons, or saucers, or hands open to the sky.

Down in London, Wimbledon's first week draws to a damp close, and I think of all the years when I spent a day or two of the fortnight watching it on tv with my Mum, in her home, or my home. Her acerbic comments about the players, the commentators. Our feasting on cherries.

Six months now G has been gone. Still full of love and grief, I am called by this tragedy to open to the depths of myself, to become new. I search for language for the experiences I am having of pain, disintegration and mourning, of tenderness and sorrow. The old words, the old narratives will not serve. I am alive. I cry. I am afraid. I am excited. I am overwhelmed. I get up every day and learn what I can about this vulnerable being, this strong being that is me. I learn little by little what she needs.

Resigned

I have! My employer has been kind, and will continue to pay me until the end of the month, but has waived the lengthy notice period normally required. I sent the letter on Monday, and it has been a gradual process, but I begin to feel the relief, a lightening of the load.

The allotment is a joy. I picked the first two strawberries yesterday and there are many more coming, both there and in our garden, as well as a bumper crop of gooseberries ripening. The potatoes will be ready in a week or two - all Charlotte this year. Two courgette plants surviving so far. Beetroot, swiss chard, calabrese and peas coming along nicely. Oh and broad beans. Up here, in our raised beds we have rocket, mizuna, mibuna, mustard greens, radishes and several kinds of lettuce. More potatoes in bags, and raspberries which may or may not yield a crop - hard to tell at this point.

The foals are growing up fast. They don't pose for photographs and keep being moved from field to field so photographing them has been something of a challenge.

I have no idea why Blogger has decided to blow these pictures up so big....

Adjourned

So, the trial has been postponed, or perhaps the correct term is adjourned until at least August. Some new evidence was apparently brought to the court on Wednesday. I have no details. I am told this sort of thing happens all the time. I had a very bad week last week, but feeling a lot easier now in myself. I just feel for G's partner and family having to endure more limbo, more waiting, more anguish. I have been sending them all the loving kindness I can muster.

For me, yes, some sense of easing, of greater gentleness inside.

Wordless For G

Aftershock

We always knew that in time there would be a trial. Somehow it had begun to seem almost as though it was never actually going to happen. But it is, and it starts tomorrow. Body and mind are experiencing powerful aftershocks.

My thoughts are with G's partner, daughter, and grandchildren tonight.

What's Been Going On Around Here

Bread baking.

Garden design. Attempts at...

Planting peas on the allotment, growing chard and beetroot and courgettes to join them.

Going to see Sam Lee at the Trades Club

Meditation (or something quite like meditation)

Managing many moods and feelings some of them confusing and painful

Tying up the raspberries

Sorting out 20 of my poems for a pamphlet competition

Watching the foals grow

Proud

Spring

Back from the allotment with dirt under my nails, rhubarb to cook, flowers of wild garlic to put in a vase with bluebells and whatever else I can find in the lane later. Tomorrow we'll put up sticks and strings for the pea plants to grow up, do more weeding, strim the grass and generally tidy up in readiness for the planting, soon, of chard, beetroot, peas, and a second batch of broad beans. The strawberries are flowering profusely, promising mouth-watering treats to come. The potatoes are showing a few inches of growth.

And in the field down the road, two foals, one born yesterday, the other a day or two before. I will take photographs, I promise, before they grow much bigger. Impossibly long legs, a delicate down under the chin.

It's a pretty good time of the year to need extended time off sick.

Slowly

Wind and rain doing a passable imitation of March today. Just trying to catch up on the filing of paperwork for my mother's pensions, bank accounts, phone bills, care home fees. It has all been sitting in a basket that does service as an in tray since December. Anything that actually required action I have managed to keep up with, but the putting away of pieces of paper in an orderly fashion has been beyond me.

And here I am, week two of another period of sick leave, currently until 30th May. And about to go onto half pay. I am fragile right now. I can't be with the trauma and distress of others, as it tires and overwhelms me. I lose my boundaries, grow distressed and exhausted.

So here I am, resting and catching up with myself in all sorts of ways. Being as patient, gentle and kind as I can, as I find my way through a kind of disintegration / reintegration.

There are many invitations to become a patient. Offers of diagnostic labels, drugs, a request from school for information from my doctor about my 'condition' and 'prognosis'. If I have a condition it is traumatic grief but that isn't the one the doctor proposed.

I am healing, slowly.

In The Corner

Wordless In Cumbria

Better Late

I will get to grips with this camera. I will figure out how to upload the pictures onto the blog.

This one is from last August. But finally, here it is.

Keep

It's like this - just keep getting up in the morning, just keep going to bed at night. Hear the cry of the curlew even when you cannot see it. Remember how at last you felt understood, acknowledged in that old persistent pain, even though that deep connection is now in the past. Keep listening, keep remembering, keep looking at the pink sky at night. Even when it all seems meaningless, keep putting one foot in front of the other, keep cooking good food, keep turning up for each day, keep lighting fires, keep going for walks, keep talking to friends, even when there seems no point, no hope, no purpose. Keep on keeping on. Keep faith that the spirit will return.

Magic

In my singing group tonight, a woman who reminded me of G. In fact the mother of E, the young woman who leads the group. Something about her energy, her stance, the tilt of her head, something subtle in the arrangement of her features. I don't even think you'd say she resembled her, and she was a bit younger, but she evoked G's presence so powerfully for me, it was at times hard to know whether to stare or look away or try not to stare or try not to look away. I kept breathing and kept singing and I was alright. It was like a kind of terrible magic.

The evidently loving relationship between this woman and her daughter, and nine-year old grandson, who came to the first little while of the group before heading for bed, so moving, so alive. G's daughter and granddaughter were, I knew so important to her, and I saw them at the funeral, faces pinched with shock and grief. I am so happy for this family that they are safe and together, so envious, so angry, so - I don't even know what all these emotions are.

Seeking

Can't make things join up. Fragmented. Dead daffodils. Carbonated Natural English Mineral Water.  My house and the things in it. My head and the noises in it. The pasts. The present. Having no idea what to say but wanting to say something. Driving to work and home from work, endless temporary traffic lights, endless passing of the same pubs - The Saw, The Old Packhorse, The New Packhorse. And always G is there, as she was all those months I was trying to cope with the job when it was new and I couldn't sleep. She hovers over every drive to school and much of the drive home. She hovers over everything. And that is alright. But I am not and can't seem to be. I think it's having to work with other people's need and distress and I think ideally I wouldn't be right now. Blessing coming soon - two weeks off. If not for that I would be worried. More worried. Believe me I am seeking out things that help me, heal me. Massage, singing, friends who actually understand. Better for a while, I keep submerging again under the dark waters of despair. Panic.

Out

We made it out early evening for a meal and wine in Nelson's our local wine bar. Mexican pancakes, tongue-burningly hot and took about half an hour to arrive, but nonetheless there was pleasure in the familiar wooden-floored basement, friendly bar staff and reliable wine and veggie food. It was in fact the first time we'd been there since it reopened after being massively damaged in the 2012 flooding. More shocking to realise this was the first time I'd been out in the evening since G died apart from two weeks ago to the pub up the road, and a few weeks before that to a friend's party, which at first so overwhelmed me I thought I'd have to turn straight round and leave, but actually managed a couple of hours, a drink, a chat a little dance... Oh yes, I did also go to the pictures once... What is so disconcerting is to realise that is more than three months of barely going out in the evening, and it has not even occurred to me to notice. Going back to work has been such a major undertaking in the realms of being 'back in circulation'. Time is just so strange this year. And there we were in Nelson's considering our summer holiday options. I can still only barely comprehend that we are out of December, out of winter, into the third month of the year. It is hard to explain. Part of me still sitting on the sofa hearing the news of G's death, looking at the rug I grew up with that we had just brought back here from my mother's. Now I look at it every day and grow more used to it being here, more used to the way the days keep passing, keep taking me further and further from the last time I saw G.

Tomorrow

I am fairly sure that tomorrow morning early I will board a train down to London to visit my mother, and later board another one home again. I haven't seen her since G died, more than three months now. It's going to be a long day. I'll take music, book, notebook and pen and various edible goodies. Tonight I am slightly drunk and tearful, after a stressful day at work. I gather a bunch of photographs to show my Mum, will buy the paper so we can tackle the crossword together as ever.

Song

On the way to therapy, over and over...

you remind me of something
a song that I am and you
sing me back into myself


 

How Are You?

I hate this question at the best of times. But since G died it has almost become a phobia. Maybe I'm just too honest for my own good but I never mastered the art of the generic 'I'm fine'. Lately I tend to say, if I must answer this question at all 'mixed' or 'changeable' or 'up and down'. Or maybe 'I don't know'.

Grief is not linear. This I can testify. Sometimes I feel chatty and lively, enjoy myself for a while. Or I just feel ordinary. Ordinary driving, ordinary cooking. And it is such a gift. And it leaves as it came. And returns. But in between, the depth of the grief actually seems to get deeper and I didn't think it possible. At those times it is as if it will never end, as if there is no bearing it, no way to live with this reality of G's murder. The terrible tragedy and waste of it, and the loss for me of her in my life. Also for many others, and I do think of them too. But she was my therapist, and that means I don't know her close people, those with whose feelings I most strongly resonate. Can only imagine. And picture them as I saw them at the funeral. Helpless with grief. Utterly bemused to be saying good bye to a pale wicker coffin.

I can't explain therapy, least of all my own. I was privileged to have a profoundly intimate and healing relationship, with someone whose patience amazed me, but who was never afraid to challenge me either, in ways no one else ever has. To be more of myself. To grow. And she allowed me to allow her to become many people to me, as well as simply herself, in all her humanity, wonderful and flawed as are we all. So I grieve for all of these. And although I am not alone, truly truly not, at the same time, I grieve alone.

Options

I look at my feet down there on the floor, my hands resting innocently in my lap. Are they attached to my body? I move them. This is and isn't reassuring.

The daffodils are trying so hard to convince me.

The brightness of afternoon sun, grass blades glinting red, as I throw a stick for the black and white dog.

White wine.

All the people who care.

Plot

There seems to be so little to say. Or so much. The prevailing experience is of tiredness. Also unease. Anger. Crying has receded a little of late. I march about on the tops berating G for leaving me. Then I cry. Then I am on the lane towards home, and see people coming, and shift into another mode. I can't remember where I was before she died. This is what people mean by 'lost the plot' perhaps. It was about my mother, clearing her flat. This week the sale has gone through and my sister has had a house clearer to remove the very last items that no one else wanted. I have closed the gas and electricity and water accounts. The last time I saw G was just after the weekend we were at her flat, and G said to me 'you're grieving the loss of you Mum'. How strange life is. I was wearing my mother's cardigan, as I am now. G said 'is that your mother's cardigan?'

I went to see 'Inside Llewyn Davis' last night. I hated it. Of course I admire the look of it, the moody period feel, the set pieces and cameo performances, but in the end it was stone cold. The only thing that moved me was the cat. Oh, and the songs....

Telegram

Collapse. Half term. Rethink.

Opening

Waves

Daffodils, tulips, crocuses pushing up their grey-green shoots.
You can never hold back spring. To quote the immortal Tom Waits.
My sadness washes over me in waves as I listen to Glassworks by Philip Glass, newly burned for me by K who has been here for the weekend. So beautiful.
Fire in the woodburner. Still good and light at five o'clock, a pale blue sky with fluffy white clouds and some darker ones, scattered. L in London, phoning soon.
It has been very hard at work. Sometimes I am ok, or ok enough, sometimes I'm not. Sleep is a significant factor. It is really hard to gauge and predict my emotional capacity. What is alright for me, what is alright for my clients... Difficult decisions lie ahead.

First

Back to work tomorrow to start my phased return. Two mornings this week. A day and a half next, two days the week after. Then half term. Slowly, gently, patiently, kindly.

Daffodils slowly opening in a vase on the table. The first.

Comfort You

Keep On Walking

Still here with the rescue remedy, tissues and eye drops. Actually I've finished the rescue remedy. Still here with the low music and the book in the middle of the night, but not so much of any of these. And at length a plan for returning to my job. A phased return yet. Who knew my employer could be so compassionate? Sending flowers a couple of weeks ago and letting me return gently to my challenging work starting next week.

And meanwhile it has grown cold and the weeks are rolling around to February, and all this moving forward means leaving G further behind, and sometimes I sob as I drive, cook or walk. And then stop sobbing and drive on, stir the pot, keep on walking. And so it is.

Days II

...or in the case of me and G - hours....
 

Days

So the days come and go. The sun rising over the black line of the tops each morning. I make porridge and meet another day in a world without G. A walk in my wellies through the sucking mud and the puddles. Some small task, cleaning the sink, some shopping, washing my favourite jumper. Emails to friends, and to my work to start planning my return next week. Cups of tea. And as it grows dark, lighting the fire each day in the wood burner, the crackle of the kindling, the ticking of the metal as it heats up, the warmth growing in the room. I read through the pile of notebooks where I wrote about my therapy, and feel amazed, sad, moved, filled with respect and affection - for both of us who went on that journey together... who never expected it to end like this... And the nights come and go too, when I turn on the light at 2am to read I Capture the Castle, listen to Radio 3, or REM or Portuguese Polyphony on the MP3, doze on and off through the small into the bigger hours.

Missing

It was G's funeral on Thursday. So she is gone, unmistakably, undeniably, irrefutably, irreversibly and forever. In every sense. And I am still here. Though not just yet in every sense.