I’ve begun reading Gerda Saunders’ book about her early-onset dementia. What a pleasure it is to read a well-written account like that. She shares her life-story generously. I’m currently reading her foray into making sense of short term memory and think about my own. It is sad that it is so fleeting. I think about my first steps outside in the early morning and all those senses enlivened and awakened by the experience – the smell of the air, the feel of it on my skin, the sound of rain, the rushing of wind, the creaking of the beech tree – and how soon they are gone from me. And yesterday walking with him, in particular when I walked over the bridge as the steam train was trolling along under it giving me that snatch of a stink of cold, wet metal and the acid, acrid dry aroma of coal smoke. So much life and so soon to disappear.
The film has come to an end and I will miss watching Gordon Pinsent’s face, so impassive, with all his emotion shown in the way he carries his body, bovine-like and heavy with grief. And then there’s the other grief. Mine. I’ve heard nothing. Is that a good sign? Is there still a chance? It weighs on me.
She isn’t a friend. She’s a coffee-shop acquaintance that is all but she weighs heavy on me. Or perhaps I should say that I allow her to. I’ve touched her, that is I’ve held her when she cried. Twice now. I think the first time she cried was genuinely about her erstwhile fiance but this last time I’m not so sure. Not now that we know (and I wish we didn’t) about her misdemeanour. She’d mentioned the happening months ago saying that she’d been falsely accused of taking money from the launderette she often helped to lock up. She was indignant about it, pronouncing her outrage loudly and vociferously to all and sundry. He came back from the cafe yesterday saying he had some ‘gossip’. The FA man had told him that he’d been told that she’d appeared in court and had pleaded guilty. She hadn’t told him but someone else had. Small towns. I ache for her. Is that why her daughter won’t speak to her? She’d asked him to borrow some money. I hope her friends turn to, I hope she is held. And safe.
We’re watching the Canadian film Away from Her. We do a little bit a night. I like it that way. I savour each frame. It is a beauty, as much about the slow falling away of a marriage as it is about early-onset dementia. Gordon Pinsent is heartbreaking in his role as Fiona’s husband, Grant. It’s his silent witnessing of her love affair with Aubrey, the way that he goes to the home every day and sits and watches from the sofa, his coat still on, that’s the most moving. I am captivated. And Christie last night was so poignant, her face disintegrating from grief and sadness at Aubrey’s absence. It weaves itself into my dreams, it must be so.
I often dream of being in a car following a long drive. I am swerving in my bed, and being tossed and turn along the twisting bends of mountain roads. This time was no different, though in this particular dream I was both inside the car and outside and I could see clearly what was happening behind me. I watched as a small, vintage blue car suddenly mounted the pavement (which was sprouted with tufts of grass growing through its cracks). Then another followed suit and another until all the stream of traffic were speeding along the pavement. The sun shone and all was benign except for this inexplicable oddity.
She told me of her holiday visiting her grandchildren. It wasn’t peaceful, apparently, though the few days that followed where she ‘slept in her van’ were. “It’s an old builders’ van,” she said, “I’ve put a bed in there.” I love those little quirks you learn about a person and how they make you look at them differently. Nice.
I saw two as I walked this morning but I heard what seemed like hundreds, their keening cries that echo across the town cut through me. The two that I saw on North Road scurried away as if on wheels as I approached, their feathers still fluffy with unuse, blown array by the breeze. The look and sound so abandonned, which is what they are. It is heartbreaking.
It’s taken a long time for it to flower. What has it been, three years or was it four? He bought it for me for my birthday. It’s huge now. And its leaves curl over the pot. It leans. Like me. But it has flowered, with the first one opening yesterday. It is a beauty – white and fulsome with yellow and mauve stripes in its core. There are three more to come. It is enough. There is life. There is hope. I’ve just remembered that that was what I was going to write about. Well, firstly the woman yesterday who asked me to not draw her and hope. I wait, breath held, to hear about whether I’ve been shortlisted. I won’t hear if I haven’t. Can I hope? Is it still possible? I must leave it be. There is life to be lead, to be lived meanwhile. And what will be will be. Won’t it?
I do get thrown. I know this. I try to manage life in a way that it doesn’t wish to managed. But when it happens I do do my best to go with it, though the discombobulation it causes is mighty. Take yesterday. I was waiting outside the coffee shop with the dancing man who was delighting me with his very special take on things. The day before he’d told me about how he liked to film the SPAR lorry arriving with its delivery and that he’d only had one driving lesson but that he had “got up to third” but as he was “smoking a lot of weed at the time” he decided that driving was a very good idea. So there was I listening to him telling me about his mixed-race cousin Vince’s penchant for Rockabilly when these two men turned up and tried the door. The first one looked a little brutish with a tattoo on his face but the one behind, with his baby-pink face looked less so. They’d got no money they told the small queue gathering outside the door and needed to get to Newquay and asked if it was far to walk. The dancing man said it was doable others were less sure. He offered to buy them a coffee and the dancing man also offered. A kind boy. “Can we join you guys?” asked the tattooed one. My heart sank. I wanted to draw. But I acquiesced. The narrative was a flood – army “I was a Horse Guard”, gunshot wound, invalided out, epilepsy, daughter, American Staffordshire dog (like a huge Pit Bull, apparently). And the brother had his stories too – wanting to be a model (“you know, like the ones on the billboards”) and the challenge of caring for his brother with his fitting. They wanted to get to see the older man’s daughter for her 18th birthday and had spent all their money on a B&B the night before. He gave them the bus fare, naturally. My love. So generous. I couldn’t get them out of my head.
My lovely hairdresser told me about her labrador, Bruce. He’s 14 now and rather infirm. “He sleeps on our bed all day when I’m at work,” she said, “and I’ve got a camera on him so I can check that he’s alright.”
I’ve never known how to be with friends. I’ve never known how much to give, to expect and to hold back. I suppose this uncertainty covers most of my relationships, not just friendships. He is the only one with whom I am truly myself. He sees it all. He knows it all. And he still loves me. I know this. His love is the only one that I really trust. Not that I think people are inherently untrustworthy, its just that I know that I give truly to him and that he knows this and returns the same. There is anger towards those to whom I wish to be more intimate, and yet, if they demanded more of me I might run a mile. How can they know that I have such a longing to be known while staying unknown and private and separate. I keep it back, all this. It is illogical and, at times, rather ugly. The fault is mine. I am sorely ragged.
Where shall we go? I asked him over breakfast. Nerja? I suggested. The Parador. It’s a fantasy. Two weeks away with no need to think about work and the humdrum domestic stuff of meals, washing and cleaning. It lifted me from my despondency born out of over-working and not enough sleep. We can’t do it, won’t do it but for those ten minutes I could see it. And that was nice. It was enough.
