It’s a grief for me. And I don’t see how I can change it. It frustrates him, I know, for he cannot see it as I do. He lists my achievements in an attempt to change my default view but it makes no real impact it is too inbuilt. The grief for me is that fact that each time I begin something I have to pull myself through such a sludge of fear and worthlessness. It sounds melodramatic but it is true. There is nothing there, no memory of what has gone before, no plaudits, just a blankness. So be it, I should say, and just accept it, even turning it to an advantage. At least there is pleasure in doing it – whether it be writing or drawing or sewing or making – for I do like being it the act of creating. It’s just the afterwards, that heavy blow of judgement. Let it be. Acknowledge the lack and keep on doing the doing of it.
I think of him. I walk through what I imagine to be his last days in my mind. I lay in my rather dirty bath (Welsh Water are doing things in our area and the water is brown) and thought about the age gap between him and his mother. She must’ve been 28 when she had him. And he died at 74. Just like my mother, my father dying at 75. So young for these days. I hope he wasn’t in pain. Was there more he longed to do? I know he loved to travel.
We walked in the sun yesterday, an unexpected pleasure. And we emptied out the last of his mother’s ashes (he had kept some remnants of her in the big large ugly plastic magenta pot the undertakers had given him – there is still a little urn remaining that he keeps on his windowsill) on the flower bed facing the sea where she loved to sit in his car and gaze at the water her head barely seeing over the dashboard.
