I saw him from our top floor window. I thought at first that he was delivering a pizza or something but after watching for some minutes he didn’t come out of the building. He looked so world weary as he humped his bike and back pannier up the stairs. He clearly lives in one of the flats over there. Poor love. What a job. I hope has other things that promise joy.
He rang me yesterday morning from the coffee shop to tell me that he’d seen her daughter and she’d told him that she’d died last Saturday. From a blockage. It was very painful, she told him. She died in pain. There was no relief until the end. She was a tiny creature. An open woman, generous, kind and good. I liked her very much. May she rest in peace now.
It was biblical in its force, taking so many lives, so many of which were children. The grief of it, their grief, our collective grief, travels across oceans. I hope the deaths were quick, momentary, no time to think about drowning, just gone. Rest in peace and may those you leave behind heal.
It is still niggling. Still not better. I am not quite myself. And yet, have I ever been? It is a nothing in the whole scheme of things, particularly in the light of today’s 20th anniversary of the bombings in London. Why can I not properly recall the details? It shames me that I cannot. We talk about it over breakfast and then it begins to come back to me. So much horror in one day. And then we talked of Gaza and the horrors they are currently going through. What is my back in comparison? Nothing.
It a lovely word – succinct, clipped, adept. And with many meanings from fast cars to fast women to holding fast. For me it means purging, cleansing and denial. Just rice. No tea. That’s the worst bit. As is the withdrawals, though they are nothing compared to ones I had with coffee once. Three days to heal. Let’s hope.
Does any of it really matter? My PhD, the fact that it steals my sleep and invades my dreams, L. and her silence, my continuing sore lower back, and all those other more important bigger things like wars and people going hungry – are they but a blink of an eye in the larger scheme of things? I don’t know. Shouldn’t we still care, do our best? Yes, I believe so, but detachment is good to. I am a worrier about the small things, always have been. Let it be and then just do what you can. That’s all.
He talks of how I make him feel safe. It is an illusion, of course. I cannot make him safe. We both know this. Life will do its thing regardless of the regimen we put in place to hold us. But, nevertheless I am glad that he thinks this and says it. He is the first for whom this has been the case. And, will probably be the last.
I tend him. I do. And it is a tender tending. It is an act of love, of care. I didn’t think I could do. Family paradigms, I suppose. The love is returned by doing it. Twofold.
I am touched by her kindness. She didn’t have to do it. She enfolds us. She is benificent in a way that I can never be. But I do try to share it. I sent some to her and her children. I wonder what she will think of this?
What looked like a lesser spotted woodpecker that had been feeding on one of their bird feeders flew off as they opened their front door. I watched from my studio window as she, her son and then her husband stepped out into the rain. She wore a coat, her husband didn’t. And it was she who accompanied her son to the waiting taxi. And it was she who stood waving him and the taxi goodbye long after they had driven out of the old school gates.