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Timeless

February 10, 2012 //
0

It’s odd, there’s almost an irrelevance about this

Time

Months

Weeks

Days

Hours

Minutes

Seconds

Nano seconds

A year

What does that mean? Has anything changed? Am I further away from that moment at all? It’s just a process, it’s what we do – marking ageing. And whilst crushed under the inescapable re run there’s a part of me outside of it, of understanding I’m intrinsically woven into that moment, it’s as much a part of me now, then, and always, like my consciousness .

There’s no separation between me and then it simply is, it’s there next to me, on my shoulder, just happened and happened in another millennia. We exist in a permanence, an endless luminous being in itself, something that travels with me as I age.

As I untie towards 365 days and the wounds are hacked into, cleaved open, left gaping and gutted, screaming, searing white pain tearing out into the universe and yet underneath it all lies a deeper truth. An unknowable knowledge. No separation from then. It hurts me, it drives me, it is me.

Time is only a human construct

I am then

I am now

Approaching a year

So?

Epilogue

Tuesday

I see the telegraph poles for the first time through the mist. Turned round to go, it’s too muddy for the feelings. Double backed and from this angle it looks like a shear drop, although I know there’s trampled summer down there. It looks appetising, calling. One displaced seagull and a squelching suede grey dog. Going towards the edge as the temperature dips again, not sure what’s over there,

in an aching English mist yearning for the Colorado river.

Pidgeons still there on a lower branch etched into the morning. Still watching me, biding his time. Just a ball of black from this angle, then flaps heavily fluted as they all pass over me. I look for his Mum at the bus stop and she’s there wrapped up in brown, powdered in the scent of setting lotion. And the chug throb takes her away as the snow starts to fall. A distant hammering over feintly shined bricks.

I can’t walk much slower. But I have to meet it.

Wednesday

Ground like cardboard, frozen paw prints, iced gusts slow my progress. I don’t want to be here. Lost seagulls wander skirting the air looking for a reason. Mud dried out dry ski slope, minus something or other. Nose and eyes running. Easier to walk but bitterly I’m not here. Can’t do this.

This coldness, this love, this pain

Time for the descent

Thursday

Bottom of field, fence ripped out replaced with steel bars from nowhere. Alien, out of place, a 6 foot letter N. Things hop by me mirroring my movements. Footsteps echoing on hollow ground, waiting to see who comes by. And here are my favourites waiting for the troops. Heavy blue frayed lines going over the top. The fields fueled with beaten gold, looks like it should be warmer. A jigsawed letter from when we used to use stamps and the sky looks like June somehow.

And there’s one twig left, arms outstretched under their calling caws

Bending in the breeze

cropped to fit my view

It’s the day before tomorrow

x

Today

Raven

Your cloak over food

bird prints smashed under deep tread

Hunger waits for thaw

One legged black bird

carried on avoiding crust

Twenty three reasons

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Categories Grief, Loss

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February 7, 2012 //
0

Week 51 waiting for the guilt of a day when I don’t cry. It will come, it’s inevitable but I fear it. I will have to allow it though, when it comes, let it in and let it pass just like all the other elements.

The physical process has caught up with me recently, running on empty for so long. I’m tired of the aching ribs after a bad few days. Tired of thinking and feeling, of constantly churning it around in my mind. It’s always there running in the background like some antivirus software chugging away, slowing down the system.

He would do a ‘clean up’ once a month and fiddle about with programmes that were outside of my area. I wasn’t really bothered so long as I could use email and internet. It was what he did, his designated department like doing the BBQ, poking the fire while I arranged lettuce or being in charge of the TV reception in a holiday cottage – he checked the scarts, I unpacked the clothes. Those little parts of a relationship that build up over the years, that you carve out between you, that you grieve for in the new world, losses within loss, all needing to be looked at.

I was never entirely sure why it took so long to run these scans but it was built into the odd weekend and apparently improved the system. So into the new world it occurred to me there was no ‘cleaning up’ being done mid month or at any other time and I wondered just how long the computer would work without this input. It did slow down a little but nothing that another cup of green tea couldn’t wait for. Of course whenever I switched it on it screamed at me to update, install and upgrade but I tentatively then defiantly and more recently, irritatedly clicked out of them. I could get to my blog, that was enough, it was ok. But at some point when the window reminding me of the number of updates became so huge it needed its own update, I decided to do something about it. And it rattled away through the night and a through a worrying amount of the following morning but nothing exploded or combusted and my email was still there. Solved it, for now at least. Another aspect to bitterly take over, to stumble through and take on. To just about get away with it, (like existing.)

It took me back to an early moment from before we were even married. In the long pre parenthood evenings we became obsessed with a computer game (me, for a while. Him for…a little longer). I faffed about with it, complained at some of the imagery, but occasionally enjoyed blowing something up after an irritating day at work, plus it was great for bouts of PMT. He, naturally, took it more seriously and compared notes and techniques with his friend who’d introduced the blessed thing to us in the first place.

There was competition between us and of course I couldn’t keep up. It was silly and fun and I was many levels behind him. However… one evening while he was engrossed in some programme I decided to have a bit of a catch up. I tried my best but still couldn’t get beyond the train depot, I was stuck, couldn’t jump, couldn’t go back and couldn’t find the trick to get out (like a bad day now.) I saved it, gave up and thought just for a moment I’d have a look at where he ‘was’. I clicked on his last session, had a snoop around, was none the wiser and came out of it. I did save it properly, I’m sure I did. Honestly. But something made me look again and a horrible creeping coldness came over me (a different universe of coldness to the one sledgehammered around you when you’re taken into a private office and the soft gentle click of the door closing behind you is as loud as your heart banging in your ears.)

But back then in that simple free careless griefless lossless world, it was a bad feeling. I looked again at his session and, god help me, I’d overridden it with my own, mine from the ‘early girly baby ‘ levels that he’d gayly skipped over weeks ago. This wasn’t good. Not good at all. I thought about trying again but was well out of my depth so trudged guiltily down stairs to get his attention. I stood before him like a naughty child, my expression saying it all when I thought I had bad news for him (a universe away from when I approached the same settee thirteen years later to sit by our son. Then there was no expression, there was no face, I was nothingness, I was void.)

But back then he looked up as I jokingly offered him back the engagement ring to illustrate the depths to which I had fallen. To be honest, there was some swearing and he had a fantastic range, so creative and so many new words that I’d learnt over the years. Some of them came out then, as he went to survey the damage. We were never really quite sure how I did it but clearly now there was a job to be done so I replaced the ring and let him get on with it. He was still busy getting on with it when I went to bed later and like my recently updated system apparently he also chugged away through the night …just to catch up. And so a mere seven hours later and all was as it should have been. I did finish the game at some point and we emailed his friend to explain my ‘faux pas’. I remember his email back to us, it was very very long and made only one comment repeatedly ‘Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha’.

Years later I was pretty good on the computer but he was always a step ahead and was in charge of the background stuff, that suited me and it worked for both of us. But now I have to tinker and mess about with things I don’t really understand. I have to make mistakes, and get it wrong, I have to research if I don’t know, I have to google it and if all else fails ‘get a man in’. Like I had to recently about the boiler. But I make sure I know my angles, till I know enough or have some idea of what to say. I gird my loins, know my lines and hide my ring finger in my pocket. I get through it, feel stronger until he rings back later with figures and says ‘do you want to discuss it with your husband first?’

I say I’ll get back to him and drop the phone. The remains of the day are overridden.

But now I can’t go upstairs to catch up, I can’t do anything, I can’t change it, no amount of hours will erase this incomprehensible situation. And the whole grotesque programme is turned up loud, running, screaming at me in the foreground now. And all I can see are all the details in a neon garish close up counting down brightly pixilated all around me, in a continual strange loop, inescapable rushes ticking and ticking, watching me watching it, re living it second by second, frame by frame, atom by atom for the next week

until

Game over.

x

Epilogue

Sodden after snow, remaining clumps hang on to coldness. The thick mist pulls itself close into the hill. The air is saturated with bird calls. Ugly mud demanding its way. Fuzzy horizon, battered and damaged ground beaten by snow and little ice pools of mud strawed out the old grass.

Way too many dogs having to walk despite the cold.

Damp quelled people shuffle around me as though I’m not here. Standing oddly in the middle of nowhere typing with a purpose they don’t know.

Not so cold, but the day carries an odd heavy mysteriousness. Time to work this out at home, I think. Treading down the plants I stood by earlier, bashed and held back by frozen tears. None of this feels real today. The bird tapping through the mist, the careful steps, the tingling skin. I don’t think I’m here. I don’t understand this. Time for a slow descent, this isn’t working.

Heady anticipation

On the edge

Clinging

Tested the normal route but it was impassable, clung to branches and changed direction. Tripped, snagged by bramble, ignore and keep going. Needed to pick my way home by the steamed up traffic. Thrown back into the rush hour thoughts. Hurrying relentless. Glanced at woolied toddler safely shielded from this icy pain trundled by in designer wheels. Flipped back to the days of tantrums and tired achievements of getting out just to buy a sticker book. And it hurts too much and I have to stop.

And just by my drain I met the old lady, huddled years weighing her down. Taking care of herself in wool and nylon, smiling up at me with support of stick and terrier. And is that bedraggled matted guide her only company when she closes the door? Has she been through all of this near the end of her life? What agony has she lived with? How has she changed to accommodate the weight of loss? Creased and stripped by the hours but still out there in the cold, in the winter, hunching her way through the days.

I smile back. I want to hug her, I want to hold her tightly, this total stranger wet and wrinkled in navy. I want to take it all away, what ever it is. To comfort, to make better, to carry, to ease her pain and mine. It will be ok, it will be ok, it will stop. I want to cry in her arms as the dog pulls and yaps at our feet. His jingling collar shining through the darkness.

I hold the image. What does she know? What will I know by then?

Did I walk past myself?

Her persistence. Her pain.

One step in front of the other, following the scratch click of eager paws.

Hardened, but grace in her stoic fragility.

x

Tags , ,
Categories Grief, Loss

Bleak House

January 31, 2012 //
0

Crunching over iced spaghetti to a familiar place. Little lego houses touched by sun amongst the frozen air. Fingers throbbing through a peaceful still winters morning. The town beneath me easing into the day, the constant hum, the disembodied voices bringing their usual interruption. Rustle of anoraks and scamper of hardened paws. Watching them become the mist, free and eager, oblivious to this pain. I’m jealous for a moment, I want to run with them, fast, irresponsible and untroubled. But the feeling fades with the image and I slot back into my inert emptiness.

All the old words frozen into the ground, under the sturdy table, the moments, the minutes, the transience of feeling. Out now to the heavy dense horizon. White souled, our smoked cathedral, hiding behind it all. It’s all still here, the permanence under the changes. The truth carved out in the land, the things that cannot go, that lie waiting for release, the inescapable under everything. Coated in the cold ephemera of change, of trying and persisting on top of it all, of movement and life. It’s all here, waving at me in the statued twigs bending in the wind. In the bird call squeaky door that pierces the landscape – everything is white and quiet in the noise. Shy blushed walls thawing in the warmth that doesn’t reach its neighbour and a pale gold inching steadily, lying across the ground.

A plane engine drills and spins to somewhere

I turn to ice

Waiting

The landscape cuts into me

I am here

Tomorrow its February

x

Tags
Categories Grief, Loss

I feel therefore I am

January 18, 2012 //
0

Studying the worn out, creaky old thing in the corner of our room, time aged and unstable. No, not myself through the looking glass but his old bookcase, held together with masking tape and love. I spent many moments grieving through his books, looking at his favourite, the heavy old one, battered dust cover with pages he poured over and consumed. His need to understand to make sense of everything, to put it in boxes then make connections, to have his own world view. There in the pages, the ideas learned, projected, assimilated, the evolved musings and the notions we discussed. Thank god he got that book read. He’d been saving it for years – a real treat, like a great bottle of wine.

At least those words were drunk, swirled around and savoured. They made him dizzy and happy for a while.

But what about all the others? The new ones neatly ordered, ready to be worked through over the next twenty years. Pillars of novels now academia was out of the way. Mind you it would never have really been out if the way, always the odd new concept to creep in, something else that needed to be looked at. Couldn’t resist it. At least he worked through the books he bought, whereas I just bought books and added them to the pile. However,the past eleven months have made me read – greedily, desperately, searching for what others did. How ? what? why? stepping stones, outreached hands, nets and sky hooks, real hooks and hope. I have to get through all my new books before I can look back at any of the others.

And now his books sit and look back at me, questioningly. The pages, the chapters, the paragraphs, the sentences, the words, the letters, the punctuation, the hours. Will I read them for him? Maybe some of them, will our son? Maybe some. They sit collecting dust, like me. I picked one off the shelf in the early days, one from the top of the pile. ‘Descent into Hell’, another bit of light reading… Oh the irony, turned out to be my journey, not his. All of them of the old world, the old order, when there were plans.

What if it had been me who didn’t get to see out her plans?

What would he have made of this? How would this have fitted into his Weltanschauung? or veltanshnitzel, as I preferred to call it. How would he have coped? To be a single parent, to carry the weight of responsibility, the full-time job of grief. How to make sense of all this? The tumbleweed existence, this relentless nowhereland? How would he have moved concrete steps through the quicksand seconds?

Everything was about understanding.

And now I do the same, but its all about feelings not thoughts. Am I creating this grief because I experience myself as being alive? Is that even a valid question?

I get close sometimes then it slips away. It’s almost as though I ‘get it’ but it’s just off to the side in my peripheral vision and if I turn to look at it, to bring it into focus, into consciousness then it disappears. It’s there, I feel it, I sense it, but it can’t be looked at head on. Bit like existential angst but the flip side, he’d know what I mean. x

Battling with it all this morning.

Back in our early days on the phone, wrestling with four-dimensional space time (as you do). Then into the mothering it became less of a focus, for me. I was too busy or tired to think about Schopenhauer’s struggle with feminism while my own view on an ’emergent property’ had more to do with both ends of our child than a theoretical feature of the universe.

He nicked a friends classic line and often tried it out on me. ‘But how do you know you exist?’ Best delivered for maximum effect and impact while he was sitting comfortably looking out of the window and I was plate spinning toddlers, trying to find an illusive shoe or fighting fabric with my head up a duvet cover… Oh how we laughed.

Now I struggle with my own mind-body problem which is centred on the realisation that its morning and wondering whether or not I can be bothered to haul my carcass out of bed?

So now it’s me who sits and stares out of the window in this empty museum of wonders. Stale ideas leaving coffee rings around my heart. A delight of knowledge that served it’s purpose, a cycle, a journey, a mind. He didn’t like intermittent faults, liked to get to the bottom of things, to solve and to fix. No, he certainly wouldn’t have liked this. The irrational, the unpredictable, the ambiguous nature of grieving. This abstract and empirical process. To grieve, to occur in the grief itself, or of the grief itself? He certainly liked to challenge himself, but this is a book he’d have left on the shelf. Good job its my story, that its me bent double, tying myself in knots, feeling the ends of the universe as I unravel and implode in my own singularity.

Now I can finally answer his question.

Yes I exist, I know because I’m in pain.

P.S

First thing

As I crunch freeze into the last month burning gloveless, isolated tweets and hurrying calls. Too cold even for grief. Should have worn the scarf. Icing sugared sparkled bridge, wanted to stay but I daren’t. At least it’s frozen the recent mud. Too hard to be slippy today. Icicles instead of tears. Must go, steadily tiptoe down the rushy glen, tentatively over decorated steps. It’s hiding in the undergrowth today, a little bit timid and shy, it rustles at me as I hurry from the cold. It’ll be back, can’t do much with it if it won’t be looked at. Round the corner past the end house where we had the BBQ in a frayed lost summer. She talked without censorship and he assessed the potential, while our son entertained himself on the pointless slope. The wall blew over in the recent gales. I helped the owner throw bricks on the garden, clearing a path through the tired rubble, the bricks make my hands sore and scuff my fingers as I hurl them. They bash down hard on hopeful plants that were waiting at the edge.

Managing destruction… yeah, ain’t we all?

Nearly home, take the path by the drain cover, somewhere low and dark, it’s carried regardless, I hear it muttering, un-stemed, busily plotting and churning beneath us.

I glance at the crumpled cider can, finishing off their fussy border, their marked out territory, christened with Strongbow. I leave before the sun gets round to me.

x

Tags , ,
Categories Grief, Loss
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