I didn’t recognise her. I know it has been a long time and it was only a photograph but she has clearly aged dramatically. It’s grief. I know this. She has been so shaken by the loss of the child, it has uprooted her to her soul. We want people to stay the same. It is a selfish need. I do it all the time, particularly to women. All those temporary and stand-in mothers. I want them to remain unshaken by life. I want them to remain strong, for me, when I am weak. It cannot be so. Not if they are good and if they love as she does. My heart breaks for all those women. I can think of three, four, maybe five that I know whose lives are not the same as they were. And their bodies carry the pain of those seismic cracks.
I walked alone yesterday afternoon as he was too tired after the usual Monday morning shopping. It was strange to stride out alone and at that time. I expected the dark, and though it wasn’t sunny it was light, though a melancholy, heavy kind. I walked to the harbour only to encounter a line of RNLI volunteers in uniform, one holding a flag lined up outside the boat shed. Others stood on the steps, some not uniformed but in dark winter coats. I sidled past them up the steps eager to get out of the way of something (I couldn’t work out what) that was clearly about to happen. One of the boats was out of the shed, as was the tractor that they use to tow it to the water. I walked towards South Marine noticing people standing by their cars and a couple peering through a window of a downstairs flat. Then I saw the black car. I should say cars, for following the hearse, with its coffin inside draped in an RNLI flag, were three limousines. So that was it. Were they going to bury him (should I assume it is, was a man?) at sea? It was a moving, almost sensational sight. It sobered me. It sobered us all who saw it.
I walked back through town and saw its shabbiness. One of the waiters from the Shilam with a long, inappropriate name that I cannot now remember walk swiftly with a sideways glance into the betting shop. He is usually smiling, he wasn’t then. I told him about it afterwards. Oh, that’s quite common, he said, unmoved. I remembered an Italian waiter we used to see regularly on a Friday night, he too was a gambler, with him it was the horses, I think. I suppose its about dreams. I’m not judging, I feel compassion, and an awareness that perhaps they do not see the sordidness that I see.
We’ve started watching our box set of the BBC adaptation Lark Rise to Candleford for the umpteenth time for that half an hour wind-down before I go to bed. It is highly silly and schmaltzy but it is easy on the eye and there are moments of poignancy. Fisher Bloom and Laura Timmins have this thing that they say to each other. Shall I tell you one true thing? they say. Shall I tell you one true thing? Shall I? Well, the fact is I want to do an altruistic job. I want to do a kind thing, a caring thing. But at the moment I don’t know whether I have the energy. Oh, yes, there is my practice. My drawing, my writing, my sewing but it, they, isn’t/aren’t enough to make me feel that my life is worthy. You see it all too often comes back to how it makes me feel about myself. And if that is the case, is this really altruism? I don’t know. A philosopher we knew in Cambridge would say that there is no such thing. Perhaps not, but can’t I try to step out of my own needs and attempt to help another? I keep getting the emails. And I want to do it. Just as I wanted to be Samaritan. I thought I could help, and I think I did, a little but it took its toll. Would this too? He would say, yes. And I would upset all that we have put in place. And yet, I long to be a carer. I do. I want to sit with others in their trial and distress, to offer solace, kindness, care. Can I do it? Have I the strength? And is this weariness of body, this less than wellness a sign of an emptiness, of a feeling that I could do more? Be more?
There’s no doubt that they are noisy. They irritate him. I try to be more charitable. I admire their energy and their courage. To go into the water in such temperatures takes bottle. And they enter the café on the wave (excuse the pun) of their achievement, still thrilled, still exuberant and ready to relish their hot chocolates, teacakes and coffees. For all their coats, hats and scarves, you can see that they are substantial women. And they are mostly women. They need to be well-fleshed to take on this sea. Gosh, it was glorious yesterday, sending huge waves that crash and flood onto the Prom foaming and white. Several people stood with cameras aimed down by the harbour in an effort to catch the crashing. Even he had a go. I still walk you see, though not, alas alone in the early mornings. That has to wait.
The last time I saw you was October 2019, she said looking through my file. Yes, it has been a while. It was good to see her. She looked well, prettier and lighter in countenance than when I last saw her. And yet she has so much family stuff to carry. The little shed she takes me to at the end of her garden is always warm. I lie there on the couch and look at the wooden ceiling and it reminds me of a sauna. I yield to her and drift. Yesterday it was if my body had become architecture and I was a series of arched clear-paned windows.
You look tanned, he said when I came out. Do I? I said looking at my face in the car mirror. And he was right, the colour had returned.
There is controversy over when is the real Twelfth Night. I like to follow ritual, it holds me in place. The radio presenters I heard yesterday seemed to ally with the notion that it was yesterday so the decorations came down. It wasn’t a complicated procedure – though the thought of it was a heavy one. I prefer our home without frippery and yet I have enjoyed, as has he, the sparkling lights. We have little. There is my stylised tree, a white wire tree shape with tiny red lights, 4 sets of fairy lights, an unadorned birch heart shape wreath for the front door and some pine cones sprayed silver. That is all. And I like that. So there is no dying tree that has to be dragged, gracelessly to the bins leaving browned pine needles in its wake (though the bag with the pine cones did burst sending them tumbling down the stairs scattering flecks of silver dust – what did you say? he asked. Bloody hell, I replied. Though I must admit the sound of the tumbling and the sight of the shining pine cones littering the stairs and shared hallway (such a memory of her she was always spraying things silver for Christmas) was rather delightful). The house is empty now. And I like the vacancy.
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.
He died on the 23rd of December. He met his brother and mother and asked them. They said it was peaceful and that his daughter was with him. I am sorry for it. We didn’t know him well but he was a presence in both our lives. We ask the brother what will happen to their mother, who is now 104. She is very frail, he says. (She seems just the same to me, he tells me later.) She will have to acquiesce to what they decide for her, for she clearly can’t stay in that flat on her own, and they her other sons (and daughter though we’ve never seen her) have their own lives to live. It is sad. (I hate change, he says.) I think of him and hope that he was content for his life to end. I wish him rest and peace.
She articulates how I sometimes feel. We are so different but we share much. I hold her tight in my mind’s eye and my heart. She is hurting as I sometimes do but she doesn’t have the support and care that I live with daily. And yet we both cannot help but compare. It’s a hurting thing to do and does not help. Give her strength to make something of her life, however small. And give me the grace to do the same.
I thought he knew her, but it seems he doesn’t. Yesterday was the first time he actually had a conversation with her. I thought she had a New Zealand accent but it is in fact South African. And she has a cattery. He didn’t hear that bit. There is much that he misses. What did she say? he asked afterwards. So I filled him in. Neither of us thought that it fitted her, though what someone who runs a cattery looks like, I am not sure. But she is so pretty, he said.
I make resolutions. I have always done so, though as I grow older they are quieter, less ambitious ones. I have what, ten years of vital (ish) working at my practice (and trying to earn what living I can)? I hope for the energy and verve to see this through. And for some success, if only to carry me through into those inward years that lie ahead. But mostly I think I hope for an inner (and thus outer) serenity born of self-acceptance. Oh, how I have battled with that through my life. The curse of never feeling good enough (though what good enough actually looks like I’ve never known). Isn’t it time to let all that go? He thinks I am. He has told me often enough. Do you think I’d be with you if I didn’t? he says time and time again. And I can see it. My being here makes him happy. Isn’t that good enough? I think so, yes.
I’ve been learning to draw for over forty years now and I still feel like a beginner. Does this ever pass? I doubt it. Though perhaps not for those who are real masters of it. Does it matter? For I know in my heart of hearts that it isn’t about the end result but the doing of it. It is a fluid thing, a momentary sense of something wonderful, a kind of attune-ment that is soon gone. I like, indeed at times crave, the momentum, the energy of drawing from animate life. I love to watch, to really watch people and attempt to capture them with line, wash, colour whatever is to hand. But it is not an exact science (it isn’t a science at all) and it can be gloriously right and terribly wrong. But I work better with that uncertainty – there is something about that rush, that hurling of myself onto the page trying to get a gesture, a detail, a turn of a head just right. The still lifes, the buildings, the landscape I draw do not have the same effect on me. I need that testing. And yet when it isn’t there, or doesn’t feel like its there, like yesterday, I am brought so low. Keep going, he says, looking over at me from above his glasses. This doesn’t help, he continues, as he can tell I long to throw a tantrum. So I keep going making clumsy marks and not attuning. It has to be so. The learning is as much in ones failures as it is in the successes, perhaps more so. I think of van Gogh often at such times. His early drawings were lack lustre and unfelt but his later ones became sublime. Did he see the changing? How did it make him feel? Must we have others to tell us how good we are?
The sea-swimmers fascinate me. They come into the coffee shop most days, swamped in their towelling lined coats, their woollen hats, scarves, gloves and big boots. Yesterday one of them had a hot water bottle peeking out of the top of her coat. To be in such cold. To immerse oneself in it. I’ve done it in Cornwall, in November and the cold of the water terrified me. My heart felt like it was going to cease beating altogether. I’ve done it in the Med too. That was equally cold but at least one came out into the sun. And my body did feel exhilarated. Perhaps that’s why they do it. There is such camaraderie amongst them, as they order their hot chocolates and plates of toast. I miss feeling such vigour.
