Artist and writer currently living in Aberystwyth.
I’m reading about grief. Stories about grief. Stories about dying. Some tell of after-life experiences. They are light-filled, warm narratives. Do I believe them? I don’t know. I baulk at sentimentality. But there is something, isn’t there? Something?
Was it that that knocked me sideways or the aborted attempt at getting a flu jab? The force of his personality, and now the force of his grief, unsettled me. I carried, it and him in my head as I walked into to town to have what I thought would be an injection but was denied it at the last minute. After that I just couldn’t bring the day together. I frittered away the time on admin and nonsense and felt shitty about myself. A waste. A wasted day.
It doesn’t feel like home. The landlord has been in and stained the floors. I don’t know it, as I did. There is an alien feel to it. I know that this is nonsense, histrionic, even. But there it is. I need to get used to it again, with all its new stickiness. He says he feels the same. We’ve been away, on and off, for almost a month. We are creatures of habit and we’ve been knocked off course. It will start to return, that normality we expect from life, though for others there is no such thing. These are little things, minor irritations, and the landlord meant well. I acquiesce to the imperfection of it all. I promise.
It’s a lifetime’s work. I may not manage it. But I can try. It’s all about perspective. Here is this, this wonderful opportunity to learn, to develop and become what I have the potential to be and I bog it down with fear. Fear of failure, of not matching up. Try, just try. Work hard, face it and it will evolve. It will become something. Perhaps not what you’d ideally like it to be, but something. Something worthwhile. Keep going. Onwards.
My desire to take myself to bed yesterday was overpowering. I didn’t feel good. A stomach bug. But, was it a bug or was it more a physical reaction to my greyness at being home, at facing the tangle that is my work? I cannot tell. I ached, felt nauseas and grumped. I was a grump. Wasn’t I? Poor love, he has to manage it all. I am a little better today, though my colon groans and bellows. We’ll see. Just keep going and things will get clearer.
It’s been a time of breakings, of things ceasing to work, of shoes letting in water, of clocks no longer ticking. I am home after a month of comings and goings, and it feels odd. I am out of kilter. My body is sluggish, as is my mind. The transition from nomad to stay-at-home is a prickly one. He is kind and wise. As always. Take your time, he says. He is right. I need to. I need to allow myself that.
Mostly I don’t know how to pray. I went into St Paul’s Church in Covent Garden last Wednesday to try. There was no peace. Visitors trundling in and out and a young man standing on a ladder fixing one of the chandeliers. Is peace a requisite? I pray in bed but invariably fall asleep. I want to hold them – all those in Gaza, Lebanon, Israel, Iran, Sudan, Afghanistan – the list is endless. I want to stand with them. Feel with and for them. But it is hard. There is no individual to relate to. Just numbers and a memory of sorrow.
Transitions are always tricky for me. Do others feel the same? It’s that moving from one life to another. It is never smooth. I miss the other, and then, once I’ve got used to my own again, it’s a wrench to leave it. I think of that other family, to which, for this last week, I have belonged. And now? It is as if it was never there. No heartbeat. I miss them.
Is that the word that Edith Hope wrote on the telegram she sent to her lover from Switzerland? I can never remember. Anyway, we are. We are returning. Today.
I need some time at home. I am discombobulated by all this rootlessness (though as I write this I think of those trying to maintain some sort of normal life in a war zone or refugee camp). But my work does suffer, or at least that is what it feels like. I need to be still. Though I also learn so much from the travelling and the seeing of people. We talked of sadness last night.