Category: Writings

I’m reading John Bayley’s memoir of his wife Iris Murdoch. I’ve read it before but I read it now with more relish and, I think, more understanding. I say understanding because I am bringing my new found knowledge of dementia and that of being married longer to the experience. He writes with such ease, and enjoyment. He clearly loved her but he also let her be. How important a quality that is in marriage. I didn’t know this before. He talks about relishing (my word, not his) the solitude of marriage, by which I think he means that they both retained their automony while together (a quality that was eroded when Iris began to show signs of dementia when she would follow him everywhere. He writes about giving her a look when she made to join him at the kitchen table – his domain, presumably to work – and how she would immediately go into the living room to watch TheTeletubbies on the TV, only to be back again within 5 minutes.). Before that they remained separate. We do too. I am self-contained in this marriage, as I hope he feels he is too. There is no amalgamation, no blended, no loosening of identity. We are ourselves but together. This fact is, as it was with Bayley, immensely precious to me.

I’m trying to learn acceptance. It’s a lifelong challenge but I think I am better at it than I was. Perhaps it is an increasing awareness of my mortality and my smallness. I don’t matter a jot so why should my hopes, my ambitions, my longings and wantings matter either. They do and they don’t. Having a plan feels nice. As does having a path to follow. It’s there, that thing that I want but it maybe it isn’t meant for me. If so, should I have something else in place just in case? Or, does that take some of that energy away from the wanting? It’s a magic thing, that I seem to believe is more likely to make it happen. It doesn’t. I am learning that the most I can do in these circumstances is my best. And then? To just let it be, whatever it needs to be. Some say that there is no real difference between failure and success, that they are just different journeys. Possibly. The latter tends to feel better than the first, but that’s our training, our rearing. Dreams are good, they light a flame inside. All those possibilities for adventure, that will probably never be taken. Like that little house that I hold inside, in readiness for when he goes. It is my solace, my consolation. The rest. Oh, yes, I still long to do good work. Make good work and to touch others, however lightly. And to make peace with her (though how I shall do this I have no idea). And just to love and forgive and make this little corner of the world a little better…

I was transcribing my last interview and it is a rather tedious business, even though I do like to hear back the conversation I have had. It’s the writing out that’s humdrum. Anyway, I was flitting about, doing other things in between the scrawling and went on to Facebook. She’s blocked me but he is still there, not as my ‘friend’ I hasten to add, but nevertheless I could visit his page and that’s when I saw it. He is not cautious about sharing his family’s intimacy with the wider world. And at that moment I was glad of it. They were celebrating her first cycle ride without stabilisers. He was behind her, also on a bike, filming her whirling around and she was far ahead with the other one. Was he on a little bike too? She looked so slim, ethereal even, with her characteristic slow loping walk, and that slight curving in of her shoulders that always tried to lessen her height. I thought I was alright with it. That was until I called him. He was distracted, trying to tell me something and I just lost it. I threatened to hang up. He understood, as he always does. I didn’t know there was grief there. And it is, still there.

I drew her spoon later. I shall send it to her, along with other semi-precious things that she might like to keep, give to her daughter or even sell. That would be up to her.

The flags are up on the Prom. I love these signs of the oncoming summer. The lifeguards’ hut has been up for a while. The wind enlivened the flags as I walked this morning, hood up against its blasts. But the light is a joy. I even walked the back way, along the covered lane that brings you out onto the College Field. I felt brave enough, even to walk under the bridge. One more piece to write for now. Keep going.

I watched the daughter and the mother walking back home. The mother, now 104 years old, takes a daily walk around the old school. She doesn’t go far but it keeps her connected with the outside, nature and gives her some fresh air and exercise. I think she is proud that she can still do it. Her daughter, like her sons walks beside her as she does so. I suspect she’d rather go alone. I’ve watched her during these walks, particularly when she sits down on the pile of railings that have been dumped on the wasteland. She sits, sleeps, stares and sometimes talks to herself. Maybe she also prays. I don’t know. Either way, her continued independence, one might even call it fierce, is clear. The daughter, as I watched her, looked awkward. She lives in Milan and comes here infrequently. Perhaps their relationship is spiky. I wouldn’t be surprised. Italy is a long way to run to. I did the same, though London wasn’t as far. She has none of the Italian flair. Little appears to have rubbed of on her. Nor does she have the stature that her brothers have. She is small, relatively, round-shouldered and big-breasted. She has a look of her mother in her face but there isn’t much else to say that they belong to each other, are even of the same tribe. She is doing her duty. That is enough.

Our 104 year-old downstairs neighbour has her daughter over from Milan and I’ve heard opera being played. It was loud, so perhaps it was played for the appreciation of both (the mother being virtually stone deaf) not just the daughter. I rather liked hearing the wail of the soprano’s voice coming through the floor of my studio, even though I was trying to write. How the neighbour on the other side, a night worker in A&E, felt about it, I am not sure. The singing made the old school appear European in the sunshine, cosmopolitan even, cultured. I liked it.

I do hung up on the idea of the amount of waste that we as beings create. It’s always sharpest on a Tuesday, which is bin day here, when the seagulls rip open the food and recycle bags across the town spilling their decomposing contents across pavements and roads. It is an ugly site. And it stinks. Even more so in the current warmth. And then there is the waste that I form, not only bodily waste but all the plastic, cardboard and the paper that come wrapped around those things, that I like most others, feel I must have. Ugh, it is too much sometimes. I want to live lightly, to make hardly impression on this earth. Oh, to be just spirit, leaving no trace.

There is still so much to learn. This need doesn’t lessen as the years pass but increases. Learning to accept what life brings is one of them. A major one, I think. I need and try daily to accept that my body is different than it was, that it cannot do quite what it used to do. And that sometimes it hurts. I am learning to accept this, and the more I do the more at peace I am with the disease that life has brought me. I need to apply this to wanting things, like the research degree. The place of accepting the outcome whatever it is, is a more serene one than that of yearning to the point of misery. I cannot do anything more. What will be will be. It will. And I can live beyond it. I can walk, breathe, love, experience, draw, sleep, read….. Acceptance is a potent thing, not a weak, modest thing. It is powerful and I am empowered by practicing it.

When I’m in a writing period I have less to give this journal. So, I shall stay with the small things for the time being. Another mopping and cleaning morning. The flat was still warm from the sunshine of the day before. After preparing breakfast, I lay on my yoga mat doing some stretching and looked up at the skylight window above me. I’d just been thinking about being in Nerja and how the house and terrace there play through my mind when the weather is clement like this. Looking up through the window I saw a plane leaving a glorious vapour trail behind it, a drawn whiteness through the blue. A fillip of thrill, of joy, and a perfect encapsulation of those playful thoughts of escape.

I talked about it before, that focussing in on the small things and the delight they bring. Is it an age thing? Who knows and who cares, it helps me through the stiff and tired days, and with doing things that I’d rather not do like housework. Take this morning for example. It’s mopping all the floors in the flat week this week so I had to go down and do the outer stairs. I opened the front door only to be utterly taken over by the sound of the 4am birdsong. It was mostly blackbirds, or was it just one? Whatever it or they were it was marvellous. Perhaps this doesn’t qualify for a small thing, for it was large. A cacophony of sound, and so chirrupy and joyful. It helped with my work. So thank you, birds.