ellen bell

My fingers smart in it, my toes numb. But it is nothing. I know this, and I try to hold them in my mind as I register such knowing. It is nothing compared to the cold being felt at this moment by those displaced, homeless people in this world’s war zones. I think of those in Gaza, in Ukraine, in Sudan. I don’t know what to say or do for them. If wishes count for anything let 2026 bring an end to such horrors. Let there be a lasting peace. Let it be a kind time, a year of people being fed, housed, warmed and cherished. All people, all religions, all skin colours. Let is be so.

I notice how we are both being diminished. It isn’t just him. We are both forgetting things. I work hard at remembering, writing copious notes, or holding information in head, repeating it silently until the act of whatever it is I was trying to recall is done. I get cross when he forgets things, like the key in the door last night, and then I am sorry. Help me to be kinder, more tolerant and patient with him.

They jar today. Somedays there is a smoothness, an almost forget ease about them, but not now, not this morning. I try to welcome the pain, the discomfort. Knowing it, feeling its existence. It is better that then fighting it and getting all tight with despair. This is how it is. My body is ageing, becoming less than right. I can manage this though. It is ok.

I wish my thoughts to have more power, to effect a change, to make a difference. I think of that man, that brave man fighting to preserve his country’s sovereignty and security going to the US to find some kind of peace promise. I think of him and wish him the best that can be found so that the killing can stop.

It was always a disappointment of a day when I was small. After the excitement of Christmas Eve and the anti-climax afforded by Christmas Day there was nothing left to say by the time Boxing Day came along. What did we do? Visit people, I suppose. I remember the languor too well. This day I shall work. For the time being I am happier doing so…..

I go in to wake him up for breakfast. He is fast asleep, his mouth open and I think that is what he will look like when he dies. Let it not be yet.

I cannor explain it. It goes deep. To my core. I long for all of them, both real and memory. All of those to whom I am connected through blood and shared history. All of those whom I loved and continue to love and to whom his Christmastide has always belonged. I miss you all. Too much.

Thinking of and remembering him as I walked this morning, has helped me in my gloom. There was desire there once, and I am glad for it. And it was he who introduced me to Chris Rhea. And I remember that other flat he had and him coming home to me in that single bed telling me of listening to Wichita Lineman on the pub jukebox.

She told us that her father had chosen it for her from the toy shop at the top of the town. She’d been about eleven and she’d hated it. He remembered it too, as being the doll he’d, as a baby, rubbed faeces into its eyes. It made her laugh, the remembrance of that. I suppose they had to throw it away after that, he said. Yes, she said, I suppose they did.

My current reading matter is a heavy one and my spirits are made bleaker by it. And yet, there is beauty in it too. Much. Like the dead rat I came upon yesterday. So unexpectedly exquisite in its mortis.