Early today I dreamed of you.
Calling you, holding your favourite books.
I wanted you near. I wanted to hold you.
But you were far away.
So far away.
'Come on, let's read', I said.
And I held up the books, I waved them so you could see:
Each Peach Pear Plum
We're Going on a Bear Hunt
The Snail and the Whale
You heard me, you turned.
You smiled. Such a smile!
And you came, running.
Running!
Running, running, running, in a pair of shorts, a t-shirt..in the plastic splints that helped you to stay balanced.
But running!
Up a steep hill. Fast and strong and eager.
And SO determined.
Weaving and dodging.
In joy.
How did you not fall, stumble?
You scared me. 'Steady, slow down!', I cried.
But then, in my arms. With such a force.
Smiling. In joy.
I felt your warmth.
For a moment, in my arms,
In my arms.
In my arms.
In my arms.
Wednesday 28 June 2017
About death
September 2, 2015
The other day I listened to a frank and refreshing interview between Robert Peston and Julian Barnes. They were talking on Radio 4, discussing the grief they felt after the deaths of their wives. Why refreshing?
Well, we don’t talk about death, do we? We shy away from it, we run away from people in the throes of it because we don’t know what to say... And even years after the death of an individual, some people would still rather pretend the person never existed for fear of saying or doing the wrong thing. How do I know this? Having lost my own son, Thomas, eight years ago, I’m kind of an expert, I guess. “What do you want of people?” Eddie Mair asked Peston, and it made me think; what do I want? I want: People to speak my boy’s name. Speak it and you will never upset me. Never. Watch me – my heart and eyes will fill with joy.
Speak his name and I will KNOW that he existed; that he isn’t just a beautiful angel in my dreams, a little boy I just made up. Don’t be afraid of asking me questions. I will answer them. Ask away. Please ask.
If you don’t know me – and ask whether I have any children – you will find yourself mortified. Don’t worry. I’m used to it (the deep breath, the “OK, here we go, I’m about to make things very awkward for a sec” bit).
Just don’t clam up and change the subject and regret having asked. It’s OK. Really it is. I love talking about your children, but please, PLEASE ask me about mine. And don’t crease your face with pity when I say I gave birth to no other child.
My boy was all, everything and the world to me. He was, is, all I ever needed. Don’t make me justify this or make me feel as if I have somehow failed, in some way, because I don’t have a second to fall back on. (How ridiculous, really, the very assumption that a second child would ease the loss of a first).
When you discover that he had special needs, don’t change the tone of your voice as if “ohhhh, that explains it”; as if his death was some kind of blessing. It wasn’t. And don’t imagine you know what he was like because of those wretched words “special needs”.
I hate them. I hate using the damned phrase. Because I see people form an image in their mind that is inevitably totally, utterly wrong – and then they become almost become relieved for me.
There is no such relief. Know this. My heart is, was and always will be, broken. That’s OK by me, by the way. Don’t say I’m brave. I’m not. To be brave is to have a choice. One thing I learned is how bloody-minded the biological urge to survive actually is. You go on. You go on. You go on. That’s fine by me too.
Don’t ask how I can be so OK “bearing in mind what’s happened”. (They mean bearing in mind my son is dead. Dead. Roll it round your mouth. Say it, for god’s sake. It wasn’t a “passing” or a “crossing over” it was a death. Thomas is dead).
My life is full, wonderful and filled with love because he was in the world and he inspires me and walks by my side in everything I do.
You might see me cry, but not so much now. The tidal waves don’t consume me as they once did, but play me a piece of music that was special for him, for me, and I might not be able to stop the tears.
This is also fine. Just hand me a tissue and give me a hug. Also, please understand, grief is something that never goes away. It isn’t to be “got over”. Why would I want it to be over – when love is the cause of it?
Here’s a truth: the grief doesn’t hurt half as much as the people, so fearful of death, of talking about death, of upsetting someone bereaved, they would prefer (albeit unintentionally) to deny my boy to me over and over again. That’s what I want.
The gale
January 11, 2017
It woke me up.
But then, it woke everyone up, I think.
You only really find out the secrets of a new house in the dark hours during a roaring gale.
Alone, half afraid, as doors creaked and shut, creaked and shut, and the loft hatch lifted and clattered, and the windows shuddered (as if poor Cathy were at the window), I realised I’d been dreaming of you.
You escaped too quickly for me to catch you, a fleeting remembrance of a little soul but then gone; carried away on the nor-wester.
As ever, oh yes, as ever and ever, that overwhelming sense of guilt. Wracking, heart-tugging gut wrenching guilt. Somehow, in the dream, I’d failed you again. Oh poor, exhausted unconscious mind that just won’t let things be.
Sleepless hours later and a compulsion to be part of the force that was felling trees, hurling trampolines into cars and being the general topic of conversation on the happychatty local radio stations, was overwhelming.
A mind thick and overflowing and anxious and searching needs something to focus on. So be it.
Such sound! With eyes closed it might have been the roar of the sea, a wild sea; a crashing sea; metallic spume-tipped and powerful.
It howled through the telegraph wires, and cast birds and carrier bags to the skies, and the oozy muddy sucky path was strewn with a carpet of lichen-covered branches whipped from their moorings on high.
There were starlings and a grey squirrel, a robin and a coal tit and curious magpies soaring from tree to tree, always one tree ahead of me. What were they waiting for?
Breathtaking, it was, Thomas. Truly. Literally. Cowed and hunkered, every step towards the gusts a weighted, heavy one. Tears ripped from the eyes. Real tears? Involuntary and shed willingly and joyously.
Muscles ached and beneath the layers a heart pumping hard and deeply and healthily. Oh, breathe!
From the glittering blue, a buzzard soared overhead, carried onwards onwards without a flap of his wings.
The stream in the deep heart of the steep valley was mucky and murky and the colour of weak, milky coffee; damned in parts with leaf debris. Too deep for wellington boots. And on the other side, in a lee by a mossy wall, a great pile of leaves, hip high. The temptation to plunge into it and throw them into the air for you almost too great.
Sometimes, where the wind forced wood upon wood, it squeaked and creaked, and the sense of walking amongst dancing fairies as dry leaves whipped from the ground went frittering and tittering past, the gust at my back pushing me to join them.
From the valley bottom back up the hill and a pause, against a suitably angled solid tree to, catch the breath.
Its trunk was thick and solid and it must have been centuries old and as I leant against it, face to the sun flinking between the branches, it moved; a rocking motion - imperceptible to look at - but profound to feel. Anchored in the deep, deep earth, swaying to the motion of its wind-whipped canopy. Comforting, Comforted. A wrapping up and a wrapping round and a soulfulness. Old tree.
Pressing onwards and upwards, squelching and squerching, towards the still-rising sun which warmed and welcomed on the brow of the hill.
And then, a few short steps to home. Past the farm with the healthy pong and the road which means you’ve arrived.
The wind howls still. And snow is forecast. And the dream of you still won’t reveal itself. But so be it.
Nature, the circle of life, the cycle of life, its beginnings and its ends and the forces that surround us; that play with us that render us but motes in a big big sky. All this is reassuring. It is how it was, how it is, how it will ever be.
It’s water bottle warm in the central heated house.
And the bedroom is stifling.
Go fly then, my boy, my dream, go fly.
I open the window and the wind rushes in to claim you.
Sunday 29 September 2013
Slow Train to Strasbourg...
January. We are sitting on once-plush, deep pomegrate seats with bouncy, trampoline springs. They are tatty, a bit threadbare.
Knees press against the under-table heater blowing waterbottle warmth into a compartment where we sit, still thawing out, ruddy cheeks raw, numb noses running.
Outside, crusted, frosted furrowed fields; trees naked but for the thick, lush tangled balls of mistletoe.
We are cut off in here. It's snug, a bit oppressive if you're not used to it. There are five of us and outside, on the other side of the door, people walk to and fro on the long narrow corridor that snakes through the train.
It feels as though there ought to be conversation, but instead the silence grows from awkward to companiable. And on occasions when eyes meet, there are fleeting smiles, nods of acknowledgement, that we are in for these five hours together.
As the train leans, twists and meanders, first one of us, then the other is blinded by the low-slung setting setting sun, flinking and flashing through the spidery arms of the trees, hiding behind distant buildings and flaring again. Now-you-see-it-now-you-don't at 120kph.
The snow is thick on the ground - it would go 'crump' under foot if you walked on it. Three days of sub-zero temperatures keep it here, a kind of suspended animation. There is no melt. There is more to come.
Chimneys smoke and as we sway through quiet villages, busy towns, alongside lonely farmsteads, people going about their business give us a passing glance. They are thick-wadded dumplings in bobble hats under sharp icy skies, under icicle clouds. Their hot breath blows sharp and is snatched away.
As the light dims, house lights go on..and we can glimpse other people's lives: a TV, a woman washing up, a man bent over his desk upstairs, children playing, a girl at a piano..
Hard earth, harder sky...and us in between. And the pylons move and sway and stride away, sweeping left to right.
The goods yards are postcard pretty. On pilings and girders the rust glitters a burnished bronze. Trucks, sheds, metal, piles of wood...all transformed.
We see few livestock but in one field, two Shetland ponies with thick, russet shagpile coats, wait out the winter by a pile of hay.
As the sun dips our shadows play kiss-catch, mine sweeps across my neighbour's seat..and my neighbour's neighbour.
The slow train. Time stretches, uncurls and expands, and we stretch with it, fill the space, fuggy in the waterbottle warmth. Detached from everything and everyone.
One of my neighbours nods over her book, her hand protectively resting on her rucksack. Her neighbour is at work; he has paperwork on his knees and gazes with intensity at his precariously-balanced laptop. The couple to my right share a packed lunch: baguettes, cheeses, meats and red wine in plastic cups.
A younger man, perhaps only a teenager, is vulnerably dead to the world, his cheek resting against the corridor window, his coat a pillow, his mouth open. Dark, curly hair flopping over one closed eye.
We are above the land now, on a ridge looking down over woodland, lakes, streams. A grey heron is priesting in the reeds, a buzzard is great-winged, soaring above. Another one ..this time in a treetop, its back golden, catching the last faint rays of the sun. Rabbits bounce bob-tailed through stubbly fields and a charm of goldfinches head speedily to roost: flap flap flap dip, flap flap flap dip. Unmistakeable.
Forests look mystical, misty, an illusion perhaps, but steam curls above them - are they breathing?
Flatlands, marshlands; dangerous, tempting frozen ponds; a snow-crusted war memorial, a factory belching white steam. Lines of cars, glimpses of tired faces at the wheel; headlights, streetlights, traffic lights//
All this and more Thomas - and we sway and doze and sway and doze. For a moment, not quite asleep, not quite awake, I feel you beside me, bouncing on the springy seats. Of all things you loved a journey. What lay at the end could take care of itself.
Heaven, for you, I think, might be a slow train like this.
Perhaps I was in a doze when the sun set. The light changes from silver to gold to pink to purple....
Darkness comes quickly...and the landscape rushes blackly against a blacker sky.
Now, in the windows, we are reflected back at ourselves....
nicola-furbisher.blogspot.com
Knees press against the under-table heater blowing waterbottle warmth into a compartment where we sit, still thawing out, ruddy cheeks raw, numb noses running.
Outside, crusted, frosted furrowed fields; trees naked but for the thick, lush tangled balls of mistletoe.
We are cut off in here. It's snug, a bit oppressive if you're not used to it. There are five of us and outside, on the other side of the door, people walk to and fro on the long narrow corridor that snakes through the train.
It feels as though there ought to be conversation, but instead the silence grows from awkward to companiable. And on occasions when eyes meet, there are fleeting smiles, nods of acknowledgement, that we are in for these five hours together.
As the train leans, twists and meanders, first one of us, then the other is blinded by the low-slung setting setting sun, flinking and flashing through the spidery arms of the trees, hiding behind distant buildings and flaring again. Now-you-see-it-now-you-don't at 120kph.
The snow is thick on the ground - it would go 'crump' under foot if you walked on it. Three days of sub-zero temperatures keep it here, a kind of suspended animation. There is no melt. There is more to come.
Chimneys smoke and as we sway through quiet villages, busy towns, alongside lonely farmsteads, people going about their business give us a passing glance. They are thick-wadded dumplings in bobble hats under sharp icy skies, under icicle clouds. Their hot breath blows sharp and is snatched away.
As the light dims, house lights go on..and we can glimpse other people's lives: a TV, a woman washing up, a man bent over his desk upstairs, children playing, a girl at a piano..
Hard earth, harder sky...and us in between. And the pylons move and sway and stride away, sweeping left to right.
The goods yards are postcard pretty. On pilings and girders the rust glitters a burnished bronze. Trucks, sheds, metal, piles of wood...all transformed.
We see few livestock but in one field, two Shetland ponies with thick, russet shagpile coats, wait out the winter by a pile of hay.
As the sun dips our shadows play kiss-catch, mine sweeps across my neighbour's seat..and my neighbour's neighbour.
The slow train. Time stretches, uncurls and expands, and we stretch with it, fill the space, fuggy in the waterbottle warmth. Detached from everything and everyone.
One of my neighbours nods over her book, her hand protectively resting on her rucksack. Her neighbour is at work; he has paperwork on his knees and gazes with intensity at his precariously-balanced laptop. The couple to my right share a packed lunch: baguettes, cheeses, meats and red wine in plastic cups.
A younger man, perhaps only a teenager, is vulnerably dead to the world, his cheek resting against the corridor window, his coat a pillow, his mouth open. Dark, curly hair flopping over one closed eye.
We are above the land now, on a ridge looking down over woodland, lakes, streams. A grey heron is priesting in the reeds, a buzzard is great-winged, soaring above. Another one ..this time in a treetop, its back golden, catching the last faint rays of the sun. Rabbits bounce bob-tailed through stubbly fields and a charm of goldfinches head speedily to roost: flap flap flap dip, flap flap flap dip. Unmistakeable.
Forests look mystical, misty, an illusion perhaps, but steam curls above them - are they breathing?
Flatlands, marshlands; dangerous, tempting frozen ponds; a snow-crusted war memorial, a factory belching white steam. Lines of cars, glimpses of tired faces at the wheel; headlights, streetlights, traffic lights//
All this and more Thomas - and we sway and doze and sway and doze. For a moment, not quite asleep, not quite awake, I feel you beside me, bouncing on the springy seats. Of all things you loved a journey. What lay at the end could take care of itself.
Heaven, for you, I think, might be a slow train like this.
Perhaps I was in a doze when the sun set. The light changes from silver to gold to pink to purple....
Darkness comes quickly...and the landscape rushes blackly against a blacker sky.
Now, in the windows, we are reflected back at ourselves....
nicola-furbisher.blogspot.com
Friday 3 May 2013
Bedside Manners...
It is a small gesture...yet it carries all the love and compassion in the world.
A hand placed gently on a shoulder...and left there. A slight movement to and fro as a mother might make to comfort a child.
Few words are said. A quiet, murmured 'Je sais, je sais' (I know, I know)'
Tears roll silently down the face of the woman receiving the gentle words. The pain is all-consuming today. The hopelessness and loneliness too.
She sits in a metal chair by her bed, attached to a drip. Her feet are bare and her toes are blue. The table at her bedside has no cards or flowers or fruit, no photographs, no books or magazines; just a jug of water.
She has no visitors. The staff told us this, and we know it too, because last week, in a moment of clarity, she told of a dead daughter, a dead husband, dead friends.
'All gone' she said. And the hugeness of her loneliness and her emptiness and her sadness made it difficult to know what to say. But we held her hand, and talked of her garden and of springtime and of birds and sunshine and told her we would see her next week.
The staff here in this busy Brussels hospital are attentive and kind but swift of foot and quick to move on. They care..but don't have the time to spend too much time doing it.
So others are stepping in to fill the void. A group of volunteers - the man with her, Arnaud, is one of them - gather at the hospital three times a week, organising themselves into a rota.
They push a trolley round the geriatric wards, offering tea, coffee, the occasional little cake when supplies and funds allow. Above all they offer the single most glorious gift they have within their power to bestow. Human kindness.
The woman Arnaud tends to has not opened her eyes today, she makes no effort to wipe away the tears that have settled into the wrinkles of her thin, gaunt, shadowed face. But at his presence there is a change in her demeanour, a relaxing. Her head tilts slightly towards his hand and it's clear she knows he is there.
Around them is the bustle of a hospital ward at visiting time: nurses, orderlies, daughters, sons, grandchildren, illicit mobile phone chatter.
Yet there seems a bubble separating this man and this old woman from the rest of the world. A peacefulness. We leave them there, together.
'We do what we can, we can only do what we can...if we can make just a little difference....' he says later.
In the next room we find a patient roundly berating a cleaner doing the rounds with one of those big circular sweeping floor polishers. She's cross because she can't hear the TV. The cleaner rolls her eyes at us and carries on regardless.
The woman's mood changes as does the subject of her ranting, when she finds out I'm British.
'Why you have Camilla?' she says. 'Why? You are fools to let her into your royal family. Camilla is bonkers...I Do. Not. Like. Her! Nobody like her! Why you British like her?'
She speaks in carefully enunciated but staccatoed English. 'Bonkers! Bonkers! She bonkers, you English bonkers to let her in!' and then she twirls each index finger at her temple. 'Bonkers!' She snorts and sniggers and gives such a stonking belly laugh that we have to readjust her oxygen mask.
She pauses a moment, reflects.
'...But Kate is sweet, I think...' and an afterthought, 'will it be a girl or a boy?'
She sits bolt upright, demurely accepting a cup of cafe noir, pressing her lips to the hot liquid.
A Parisian unwillingly in Belgium. She came 53 years ago to be with her now-dead husband but hates the place. Any attempt to put the city in a positive light results in a dismissive wave of the hand and a sound that could only come from a Parisian...a kind of scornful 'pffffh'.
So we turn the conversation to the city she describes as 'the greatest and most beautiful in the world' and her eyes shine as she speaks of Montmartre, the Champs Elysees, her memories of the Eiffel tower, of a childhood heady with sunshine and joy.
Then she adjusts her flannelette nightie and fingers the ruffled neckline.
The ward is oppressively, fuggily hot. The world outside seems a long way away.
'I know where Diana died, I go to the bridge and I remember her,' she says, lowering her voice, gesturing that I move closer to her. 'I think they kill her,' she hisses conspiratorially.
She takes another gasp of oxygen and her chest rises high and falls.
In the bed next to her, a woman lies hollow cheeked, open-mouthed, eyes wide but seemingly unaware. She groans, coughs sharply, spittle flying from her mouth.
Her arms are heavily bruised, her bare, skinny legs protrude from the sheets. One of the volunteers, Adilah, is with her. She gently adjusts the blankets and wipes the moisture from her cheeks. She takes her hand, more bone than skin and gently rubs it between her palms.
The rest of us move on and find Marlene sitting in a chair next to her bed. It's her birthday, her 92nd. She's here because she had a fall at home and has a pot on her arm and leg. She's fretting about who will do the gardening and how she will manage when she gets home.
She points at the ceiling when she talks about her long-dead husband and we celebrate her birthday with a cup of tea and a petite Madeleine in a plastic wrapper.
'I lived through two world wars,' she says, in a voice that suggests 'so think on!' And we do.
And the hours pass and the team moves from room to room, ward to ward, chatting, consoling, supporting, and it is an honour and a privilege to be with them.
At the far end of the last ward is a woman so tiny and dainty she is almost doll-like. The small hospital bed seems huge against her.
She is reclined, just so, on top of the blankets, in a floral-patterned, quilted dressing gown fastened up to the neck. She has purple fluffy slippers on her neatly placed feet and her hands are carefully folded across her middle.
She might appear serene and calm - but her eyes give her away. They are filled with anxiety and something else...hope. She looks constantly to the window, as if thinking she might see something, or someone, important there.
Then, as we approach the bed, she sees me and everything changes. She smiles with what seems to be relief - a huge, delightful gummy smile.
'My daughter, my daughter, I was so scared you would not come. I was so scared...' And she repeats this. 'so scared so scared so scared..you have comeyouhavecome...at last...'
And I don't contradict her and I sit on the bed with her and hold her hand. And she talks and talks and rambles and chatters and I cannot understand all she says...but she grips my hand with such strength and her eyes shine.
With Arnaud's guidance I lift her to a sitting position, gently feed her juice through a cup with a spout, and hold her paper-thin hand as she speaks to the daughter who is not here, through me.
It is hard to leave her and to release the iron-like grasp on my hand, but I do, gently, and tell her I will be back to see her again.
As we leave I look back at her, perhaps to wave. But it's clear I am forgotten. Her gaze has shifted, hopefully, longingly, to the window once more.
xxx
* For more information on the hospital volunteering programme and other ways to volunteer visit www.servethecity.be.
"A movement of volunteers serving cities in practical ways & inspiring people to be givers in this world. We believe that many people doing small things together can make a big difference in our world"
A hand placed gently on a shoulder...and left there. A slight movement to and fro as a mother might make to comfort a child.
Few words are said. A quiet, murmured 'Je sais, je sais' (I know, I know)'
Tears roll silently down the face of the woman receiving the gentle words. The pain is all-consuming today. The hopelessness and loneliness too.
She sits in a metal chair by her bed, attached to a drip. Her feet are bare and her toes are blue. The table at her bedside has no cards or flowers or fruit, no photographs, no books or magazines; just a jug of water.
She has no visitors. The staff told us this, and we know it too, because last week, in a moment of clarity, she told of a dead daughter, a dead husband, dead friends.
'All gone' she said. And the hugeness of her loneliness and her emptiness and her sadness made it difficult to know what to say. But we held her hand, and talked of her garden and of springtime and of birds and sunshine and told her we would see her next week.
The staff here in this busy Brussels hospital are attentive and kind but swift of foot and quick to move on. They care..but don't have the time to spend too much time doing it.
So others are stepping in to fill the void. A group of volunteers - the man with her, Arnaud, is one of them - gather at the hospital three times a week, organising themselves into a rota.
They push a trolley round the geriatric wards, offering tea, coffee, the occasional little cake when supplies and funds allow. Above all they offer the single most glorious gift they have within their power to bestow. Human kindness.
The woman Arnaud tends to has not opened her eyes today, she makes no effort to wipe away the tears that have settled into the wrinkles of her thin, gaunt, shadowed face. But at his presence there is a change in her demeanour, a relaxing. Her head tilts slightly towards his hand and it's clear she knows he is there.
Around them is the bustle of a hospital ward at visiting time: nurses, orderlies, daughters, sons, grandchildren, illicit mobile phone chatter.
Yet there seems a bubble separating this man and this old woman from the rest of the world. A peacefulness. We leave them there, together.
'We do what we can, we can only do what we can...if we can make just a little difference....' he says later.
In the next room we find a patient roundly berating a cleaner doing the rounds with one of those big circular sweeping floor polishers. She's cross because she can't hear the TV. The cleaner rolls her eyes at us and carries on regardless.
The woman's mood changes as does the subject of her ranting, when she finds out I'm British.
'Why you have Camilla?' she says. 'Why? You are fools to let her into your royal family. Camilla is bonkers...I Do. Not. Like. Her! Nobody like her! Why you British like her?'
She speaks in carefully enunciated but staccatoed English. 'Bonkers! Bonkers! She bonkers, you English bonkers to let her in!' and then she twirls each index finger at her temple. 'Bonkers!' She snorts and sniggers and gives such a stonking belly laugh that we have to readjust her oxygen mask.
She pauses a moment, reflects.
She sits bolt upright, demurely accepting a cup of cafe noir, pressing her lips to the hot liquid.
A Parisian unwillingly in Belgium. She came 53 years ago to be with her now-dead husband but hates the place. Any attempt to put the city in a positive light results in a dismissive wave of the hand and a sound that could only come from a Parisian...a kind of scornful 'pffffh'.
So we turn the conversation to the city she describes as 'the greatest and most beautiful in the world' and her eyes shine as she speaks of Montmartre, the Champs Elysees, her memories of the Eiffel tower, of a childhood heady with sunshine and joy.
Then she adjusts her flannelette nightie and fingers the ruffled neckline.
The ward is oppressively, fuggily hot. The world outside seems a long way away.
'I know where Diana died, I go to the bridge and I remember her,' she says, lowering her voice, gesturing that I move closer to her. 'I think they kill her,' she hisses conspiratorially.
She takes another gasp of oxygen and her chest rises high and falls.
In the bed next to her, a woman lies hollow cheeked, open-mouthed, eyes wide but seemingly unaware. She groans, coughs sharply, spittle flying from her mouth.
Her arms are heavily bruised, her bare, skinny legs protrude from the sheets. One of the volunteers, Adilah, is with her. She gently adjusts the blankets and wipes the moisture from her cheeks. She takes her hand, more bone than skin and gently rubs it between her palms.
The rest of us move on and find Marlene sitting in a chair next to her bed. It's her birthday, her 92nd. She's here because she had a fall at home and has a pot on her arm and leg. She's fretting about who will do the gardening and how she will manage when she gets home.
She points at the ceiling when she talks about her long-dead husband and we celebrate her birthday with a cup of tea and a petite Madeleine in a plastic wrapper.
'I lived through two world wars,' she says, in a voice that suggests 'so think on!' And we do.
And the hours pass and the team moves from room to room, ward to ward, chatting, consoling, supporting, and it is an honour and a privilege to be with them.
At the far end of the last ward is a woman so tiny and dainty she is almost doll-like. The small hospital bed seems huge against her.
She is reclined, just so, on top of the blankets, in a floral-patterned, quilted dressing gown fastened up to the neck. She has purple fluffy slippers on her neatly placed feet and her hands are carefully folded across her middle.
She might appear serene and calm - but her eyes give her away. They are filled with anxiety and something else...hope. She looks constantly to the window, as if thinking she might see something, or someone, important there.
Then, as we approach the bed, she sees me and everything changes. She smiles with what seems to be relief - a huge, delightful gummy smile.
'My daughter, my daughter, I was so scared you would not come. I was so scared...' And she repeats this. 'so scared so scared so scared..you have comeyouhavecome...at last...'
And I don't contradict her and I sit on the bed with her and hold her hand. And she talks and talks and rambles and chatters and I cannot understand all she says...but she grips my hand with such strength and her eyes shine.
With Arnaud's guidance I lift her to a sitting position, gently feed her juice through a cup with a spout, and hold her paper-thin hand as she speaks to the daughter who is not here, through me.
It is hard to leave her and to release the iron-like grasp on my hand, but I do, gently, and tell her I will be back to see her again.
As we leave I look back at her, perhaps to wave. But it's clear I am forgotten. Her gaze has shifted, hopefully, longingly, to the window once more.
xxx
* For more information on the hospital volunteering programme and other ways to volunteer visit www.servethecity.be.
"A movement of volunteers serving cities in practical ways & inspiring people to be givers in this world. We believe that many people doing small things together can make a big difference in our world"
Ice and Fire....
Not sure how I ended up here. It wasn't the plan when I set off today.
Alone in a heaving restaurant in Strasbourg in February.
It was partly the cold: minus 10 and dropping - a walk in that kind of cold can only last so long before it becomes an endurance test.
And partly something else. A thought that needed....that needed, well, thought. Something that struck me in the middle of a frost-bitten park where early-arrival storks clattered beaks in noisy mating rituals and we slipped and slid on paths of sheer ice under a low, blinding sun.
A thought that shocked me into stillness.
They found me a table, squeezed me in, between a greying man in a suit reading a French-language newspaper and a couple in love, feeding each other spaghetti.
It is noisy and busy and people are devouring jugs of wine, steaming plates of choucroute, baeckeoffe, shining steaks, perspex bowls greasy with salted frites.
They have their coats and bobble hats and scarves on as they tumble inside, into the heat of the restaurant, into sanctuary from the kind of weather outside that eats you up, that turns you inside out, that keeps your eyes on the pavement so you can keep your nose in your coat. The kind of bitter that scratches your face, hunkers you down, the kind of cold you can't imagine on a summer July day.
In here we turn ruddy-cheeked.
There are old ladies gesticulating wildly across the table - one has her hair in plaited pigtails wound over the top of her head. There are business meetings, business cards exchanged, ipads and Macbooks showing flow charts and Excel sheets, tourists chaotic with shopping bags and cameras.
Conversations rise and fall, the kitchen clatters, the waiters are a smart, efficient blur of black and white. There is a small kerfuffle at the next table as one of the young lovers knocks over his glass of red in his eagerness to reach out and touch the face of his girlfriend.
The strong, hot, milky, foaming coffee is bitter.
Any place would have done...a place with a table to write on. Because sometimes the urge is unbearable, unstoppable like the foam-tipped waves that suck and surge around the sheer cliffs at Flamborough.
I chose your coffin.
That was my thought in the park. That came out of nowhere and hit the solar plexus like a boxer's right hook.
I want to say it out loud. Perhaps to stop the world in its tracks, perhaps because it carries on regardless.
Why now? Why think of it now? Cursed mind with its own secret ponderings throwing things up to spoil the day.
I chose your coffin.
The black-suited, black-tied, funeral director; stiffly formal, trying to be informal, with his click-shut folder, A4 pages stuffed into plastic holders, each page a different option, a colour, a finish, handles and whatnot.
Light, dark, elaborate, plain, fancy-handled, varnished; page upon page upon page upon page, getting grander and grander, more elaborate. And he carefully, gently, lifts and turns, lifts and turns, each time smoothing down the plastic with a sweep of his hand, not meeting my eye..noting the descriptions, the finish, as if we're choosing a bookcase.
Until I put out my own hand and I said 'Stop. Please'. And I turned the pages back, right back, to the first one. To the plainest simplest one, made of light oak - or was it beech? 'That one' I said.
Yes, that one. The box that will carry my dead child on his final journey. Decision made. How simply done. How easy I must have made it for that kind, awkward man. No weeping, no wailing, no tearing of hair or gnashing of teeth. Just 'That one'.
I remember the thought process. You were a child; a child of simple pleasures, a child of light and joy and the very thought of....of what? Of you being encased in heavy, swathed grandeur? Yes, that's it. It didn't fit. It wasn't you, I thought.
And we moved on.
I see the moment in the park for what it is. An aftershock. Unexpected. Landed from nowhere. One of the 'waves' that those who are paid to know these things tell you about.
They come and they come, these waves...sometimes gentle, joyous ripples of memory in a sparkling sea, sometimes seismic spume-tipped breakers that wash you away, and there is nothing to be done but let them carry you to where they will...to ditch you on a shore where you emerge battered, storm-tossed, but alive...alive!...and able, somehow, to carry on.
Because that's what happens....it's not bravery....or strength...it's just what we're genetically programmed to do, to crack on.
So I don't do what I want to do which is to sweep away the tray, the coffee cup, the teaspoon, sugar, the silly little wrapped-up lump of nougat they always put on the saucer; to sweep away the steak and chips of the fella next to me, sweep away his wine and the table and the spaghetti and the sucking, spooning lovers and crawl under the table and weep and weep.
I don't do that. And it passes as I watch people enjoying their lunch. Wondering, as I always do, what waves may engulf them, too, from time to time.
Five years and this still happens. Not as much, not half as much, but it does.
And inevitably, one wave brings another, brings another. And when the waiter brings the bill I'm surprised because I'm splashing with you in the fountains at Alnwick Castle gardens, walking the desolate beaches at Bamburgh, staggering and stepping back to keep our balance, to hold you up, when the tide briefly catches up with us and the water covers our shoes, marching in time, like soldiers, back to the cottage over windswept dunes, drizzle in our hair, fingers numb with cold.
Watching your Mary Poppins DVD; taking that last photo, us together, holding the phone away towards us in my right hand, the image blurry as a result; me all red nose and heavy cold, you with your rosy plump cheeks and Dr Who tee-shirt.
The picture is still on my mobile phone and I fumble for it and my heart lurches at it. So I write and write and it is as if steam pours from the pen.
Ice and fire made up your last day: a bitter, bitter February and you, consumed by the crackling, spitting logs in the open fire of Alnwick's Barter Books, rosy cheeks redder and redder. You watched in wonder.
Ice and fire. Ice and fire. Our last day together. And a few days later I chose your coffin.
Could I ever visit that place again? That place of vast, sweeping beaches, a great castle silhouetted against a wide sky, a place that is more myth, legend, to me now.
The dunes where I made calls to tell desperate faraway friends as the wind snatched my voice away. The dunes, the sand, the sea, the sky, over and over.
I chose your coffin.
There is wine and cheese and the man at the table next to me has left. My coffee was finished long ago and the waiter hovers, anxious to clear the way. All the languages of the world are here. People are cheery, busy, moving on, living.
I close my notebook, pay up.
Outside..and the sun has dipped lower and the freezing air whips our breath away in great foggy gasps of steam.
At the tram stop there is a noise from the skies, a huge skein of geese, flying high in a v shape, then another and another.
Their calls are clear, desolate, telling of far off places, of wild tundras.
They foretell longer, warmer days..they foretell spring.
xxxxx
Alone in a heaving restaurant in Strasbourg in February.
It was partly the cold: minus 10 and dropping - a walk in that kind of cold can only last so long before it becomes an endurance test.
And partly something else. A thought that needed....that needed, well, thought. Something that struck me in the middle of a frost-bitten park where early-arrival storks clattered beaks in noisy mating rituals and we slipped and slid on paths of sheer ice under a low, blinding sun.
A thought that shocked me into stillness.
They found me a table, squeezed me in, between a greying man in a suit reading a French-language newspaper and a couple in love, feeding each other spaghetti.
It is noisy and busy and people are devouring jugs of wine, steaming plates of choucroute, baeckeoffe, shining steaks, perspex bowls greasy with salted frites.
They have their coats and bobble hats and scarves on as they tumble inside, into the heat of the restaurant, into sanctuary from the kind of weather outside that eats you up, that turns you inside out, that keeps your eyes on the pavement so you can keep your nose in your coat. The kind of bitter that scratches your face, hunkers you down, the kind of cold you can't imagine on a summer July day.
In here we turn ruddy-cheeked.
There are old ladies gesticulating wildly across the table - one has her hair in plaited pigtails wound over the top of her head. There are business meetings, business cards exchanged, ipads and Macbooks showing flow charts and Excel sheets, tourists chaotic with shopping bags and cameras.
Conversations rise and fall, the kitchen clatters, the waiters are a smart, efficient blur of black and white. There is a small kerfuffle at the next table as one of the young lovers knocks over his glass of red in his eagerness to reach out and touch the face of his girlfriend.
The strong, hot, milky, foaming coffee is bitter.
Any place would have done...a place with a table to write on. Because sometimes the urge is unbearable, unstoppable like the foam-tipped waves that suck and surge around the sheer cliffs at Flamborough.
I chose your coffin.
That was my thought in the park. That came out of nowhere and hit the solar plexus like a boxer's right hook.
I want to say it out loud. Perhaps to stop the world in its tracks, perhaps because it carries on regardless.
Why now? Why think of it now? Cursed mind with its own secret ponderings throwing things up to spoil the day.
I chose your coffin.
The black-suited, black-tied, funeral director; stiffly formal, trying to be informal, with his click-shut folder, A4 pages stuffed into plastic holders, each page a different option, a colour, a finish, handles and whatnot.
Light, dark, elaborate, plain, fancy-handled, varnished; page upon page upon page upon page, getting grander and grander, more elaborate. And he carefully, gently, lifts and turns, lifts and turns, each time smoothing down the plastic with a sweep of his hand, not meeting my eye..noting the descriptions, the finish, as if we're choosing a bookcase.
Until I put out my own hand and I said 'Stop. Please'. And I turned the pages back, right back, to the first one. To the plainest simplest one, made of light oak - or was it beech? 'That one' I said.
Yes, that one. The box that will carry my dead child on his final journey. Decision made. How simply done. How easy I must have made it for that kind, awkward man. No weeping, no wailing, no tearing of hair or gnashing of teeth. Just 'That one'.
I remember the thought process. You were a child; a child of simple pleasures, a child of light and joy and the very thought of....of what? Of you being encased in heavy, swathed grandeur? Yes, that's it. It didn't fit. It wasn't you, I thought.
And we moved on.
I see the moment in the park for what it is. An aftershock. Unexpected. Landed from nowhere. One of the 'waves' that those who are paid to know these things tell you about.
They come and they come, these waves...sometimes gentle, joyous ripples of memory in a sparkling sea, sometimes seismic spume-tipped breakers that wash you away, and there is nothing to be done but let them carry you to where they will...to ditch you on a shore where you emerge battered, storm-tossed, but alive...alive!...and able, somehow, to carry on.
Because that's what happens....it's not bravery....or strength...it's just what we're genetically programmed to do, to crack on.
So I don't do what I want to do which is to sweep away the tray, the coffee cup, the teaspoon, sugar, the silly little wrapped-up lump of nougat they always put on the saucer; to sweep away the steak and chips of the fella next to me, sweep away his wine and the table and the spaghetti and the sucking, spooning lovers and crawl under the table and weep and weep.
I don't do that. And it passes as I watch people enjoying their lunch. Wondering, as I always do, what waves may engulf them, too, from time to time.
Five years and this still happens. Not as much, not half as much, but it does.
And inevitably, one wave brings another, brings another. And when the waiter brings the bill I'm surprised because I'm splashing with you in the fountains at Alnwick Castle gardens, walking the desolate beaches at Bamburgh, staggering and stepping back to keep our balance, to hold you up, when the tide briefly catches up with us and the water covers our shoes, marching in time, like soldiers, back to the cottage over windswept dunes, drizzle in our hair, fingers numb with cold.
Watching your Mary Poppins DVD; taking that last photo, us together, holding the phone away towards us in my right hand, the image blurry as a result; me all red nose and heavy cold, you with your rosy plump cheeks and Dr Who tee-shirt.
The picture is still on my mobile phone and I fumble for it and my heart lurches at it. So I write and write and it is as if steam pours from the pen.
Ice and fire made up your last day: a bitter, bitter February and you, consumed by the crackling, spitting logs in the open fire of Alnwick's Barter Books, rosy cheeks redder and redder. You watched in wonder.
Ice and fire. Ice and fire. Our last day together. And a few days later I chose your coffin.
Could I ever visit that place again? That place of vast, sweeping beaches, a great castle silhouetted against a wide sky, a place that is more myth, legend, to me now.
The dunes where I made calls to tell desperate faraway friends as the wind snatched my voice away. The dunes, the sand, the sea, the sky, over and over.
I chose your coffin.
There is wine and cheese and the man at the table next to me has left. My coffee was finished long ago and the waiter hovers, anxious to clear the way. All the languages of the world are here. People are cheery, busy, moving on, living.
I close my notebook, pay up.
Outside..and the sun has dipped lower and the freezing air whips our breath away in great foggy gasps of steam.
At the tram stop there is a noise from the skies, a huge skein of geese, flying high in a v shape, then another and another.
Their calls are clear, desolate, telling of far off places, of wild tundras.
They foretell longer, warmer days..they foretell spring.
xxxxx
Putting a Sock in it...
One of the best things I never did was go to Diana's funeral.
Quite extraordinary when you think about it. Imagine, a front row seat (kind of ) at one of the biggest events the world has ever seen..and I said no.
And people look at me with incredulity when I tell them. When I say that, instead, you and I sat at home, watching it on TV, and you took off your sock during the minute's silence and put it in your mouth. As if you knew there was no way you could keep quiet without it.
You were five then - though not five, not really. Still a baby who needed feeding, changing, pushing about in a push chair, prone to temper tantrums...and 5am waking.
I remember us in the front room of our little home, me on the floor, nose pretty much pressed to the TV, you on the couch in the sunshine surrounded by toys (you didn't move about much then - I could vac the whole house and mow the lawn and you'd still be there, an hour later, merrily beating up a playgym).
I remember sitting there and glancing at you as the Westminster Abbey choir reached its agonising, unbearable heart-rending crescendo. And you put one finger in your ear, shouted with what sounded like joy, and glugged from your juice cup. And as the world wept I knew, right then, that this would be one our most precious moments together.
A moment in time printed as if in tableau, as if painted, like a Leonardo fresco, on some deep part of the mind, but never losing colour, never losing light, no cracks appearing over long, interminable years without you.
The world fell silent and you put a sock in it. Worth all the tales I might have been able to tell about rubbing shoulders with the great and good, about being a player on this world stage...
Why did I decline? Because I had been away from you without you for two weeks, because Diana's death meant I'd spent another weekend in the office, another weekend away from you and I needed you with me. Does that make sense?
Precious hours.
I think I knew, you see. I think I always knew that we wouldn't have you forever. Don't tell me how I knew? I'm not even sure if I acknowledged it to myself. No doctor ever said your time on earth was limited. You were rarely ill, you were as strong as an ox.....
But sometimes in the quiet of an early morning, I would lie in bed, waiting, listening.
This is how it would go: first the thud as you negotiated yourself out of the bed and on to the floor, seconds of silence as you bottom-shuffled your way across the carpet and then the crash-bang-wallop as you started on your toy box. Emptying it all , picking out your favourite, and giving it hell for leather.
This until you got bored. Then you'd fumble your way round the bedroom door, bottom shuffle along the hallway to the kitchen, dragging along your best toy to the washing machine and bang it around inside.
But sometimes, this didn't happen. You would sleep in and I would lie there thinking...not today Thomas, not today. And it never was. Until it was.
Do you know how many times that happened? More than I can say. Do you know how many times I played over in my head while sitting at my desk, scenarios of how it might be...and what if I were far away?
Do all parents carry such dark morbid thoughts with them or was it my subconscious preparing me for something it knew would come?
I took so many videos of you, as other parents will do...but I took them thinking, I need to make sure I always have you....just in case.
So when I was asked to cover the funeral, that we had tickets to get into the Abbey, I think they were surprised. I surprised myself to be honest. But I never regretted it, sacrificing the chance of pomp and circumstance, to watch you putting a sock in it..
xxx
Quite extraordinary when you think about it. Imagine, a front row seat (kind of ) at one of the biggest events the world has ever seen..and I said no.
And people look at me with incredulity when I tell them. When I say that, instead, you and I sat at home, watching it on TV, and you took off your sock during the minute's silence and put it in your mouth. As if you knew there was no way you could keep quiet without it.
You were five then - though not five, not really. Still a baby who needed feeding, changing, pushing about in a push chair, prone to temper tantrums...and 5am waking.
I remember us in the front room of our little home, me on the floor, nose pretty much pressed to the TV, you on the couch in the sunshine surrounded by toys (you didn't move about much then - I could vac the whole house and mow the lawn and you'd still be there, an hour later, merrily beating up a playgym).
I remember sitting there and glancing at you as the Westminster Abbey choir reached its agonising, unbearable heart-rending crescendo. And you put one finger in your ear, shouted with what sounded like joy, and glugged from your juice cup. And as the world wept I knew, right then, that this would be one our most precious moments together.
A moment in time printed as if in tableau, as if painted, like a Leonardo fresco, on some deep part of the mind, but never losing colour, never losing light, no cracks appearing over long, interminable years without you.
The world fell silent and you put a sock in it. Worth all the tales I might have been able to tell about rubbing shoulders with the great and good, about being a player on this world stage...
Why did I decline? Because I had been away from you without you for two weeks, because Diana's death meant I'd spent another weekend in the office, another weekend away from you and I needed you with me. Does that make sense?
Precious hours.
I think I knew, you see. I think I always knew that we wouldn't have you forever. Don't tell me how I knew? I'm not even sure if I acknowledged it to myself. No doctor ever said your time on earth was limited. You were rarely ill, you were as strong as an ox.....
But sometimes in the quiet of an early morning, I would lie in bed, waiting, listening.
This is how it would go: first the thud as you negotiated yourself out of the bed and on to the floor, seconds of silence as you bottom-shuffled your way across the carpet and then the crash-bang-wallop as you started on your toy box. Emptying it all , picking out your favourite, and giving it hell for leather.
This until you got bored. Then you'd fumble your way round the bedroom door, bottom shuffle along the hallway to the kitchen, dragging along your best toy to the washing machine and bang it around inside.
But sometimes, this didn't happen. You would sleep in and I would lie there thinking...not today Thomas, not today. And it never was. Until it was.
Do you know how many times that happened? More than I can say. Do you know how many times I played over in my head while sitting at my desk, scenarios of how it might be...and what if I were far away?
Do all parents carry such dark morbid thoughts with them or was it my subconscious preparing me for something it knew would come?
I took so many videos of you, as other parents will do...but I took them thinking, I need to make sure I always have you....just in case.
So when I was asked to cover the funeral, that we had tickets to get into the Abbey, I think they were surprised. I surprised myself to be honest. But I never regretted it, sacrificing the chance of pomp and circumstance, to watch you putting a sock in it..
xxx
Saturday 9 March 2013
Day Between Days...
Driftwood.
Six pieces. Grains of sand and salt crusted in the smooth grooves and crevices.
Found in the slush and mush of a seaweed tideline on a sloped beach of grey pebbles and shining silver sand, where oystercatchers divebombed black backed gulls and the sun crackled on the surface of the water - and we couldn't help but turn to it and close our eyes.
We got there by mud-sucking path that was drenched and saturated after days of rain, past curious scraggy cows with long highland horns, clumps of muck clinging to their bellies, past gorse that smelled of coconut if you crushed it in your palms.
It was a day between days, a day of casting off clothes, of cares; for gazing in happy awe at rock pipits courting in the crevices of the cliff face, at the winter-starved pipistrelle venturing from his sleepy hollow to catch a snack in the sun, at the flash of a redshank's legs.
Driftwood. Drift. Drifting..
One piece is long, round and smooth like a relay runner's baton, another is broad and rectangular, worked and worked by the sea until it is all but hollow. A third is long hard and spiralled, as if someone has taken each end and twisted and twisted.
They smell of wet sand and sea and seaside air and, fleetingly, of woodsmoke, and I collect them and add them to the pebbles, shells and stones in the rucksack.
Around the cottage we have eagles and otters, shiny, chunky rocks and water, water everywhere.
There is a stove with a creel hauled above it where we dry the tea-towels; there's a supply of too-damp logs, a torn, raggedy patchwork quilt on the lumpy bed, a bath with a spider in it and chairs that sag and tip you out.
Our home squats on a peninsula and we wander from window to window constantly - spotting birds, watching the snowline drift on the mountains - and at night we watch the flashes from distant lighthouses. By day we have it to ourselves and at night it is blacker than black outside and we hunker down.
Today the hills across the Sound of Mull are dripping with grey, heavy, slung-low cloud and on this side of the cottage - the sea side - the wind whips the water and every ripple is an otter's slick back or shiny snout or a porpoise fin. Light flinking and flashing, playing tricks on the eyes.
On the loch-side of the cottage, in the little harbour near the front door, the water is millpond calm and in each passing moment, the tide slides away exposing oily, pulpy seaweed.
It's sheltered from the wind here and the long grasses springing from the deep muddy prints left by Highland cows are russet brown and dipping gently, heavy with raindrops...although the rain stopped long ago.
I brought you here once.
I don't know what you made of it. We sat together on the rocks on a beaming blue day and watched porpoise, scores and scores of them, rolling and rolling in the blue. The sea glittered.
Then we had a snack of yoghurt, bananas and juice on a rug at the foot of Ben More and we rode on the Mull Little Railway. You chuckled as it clattered on the tracks, as if you couldn't believe your luck.
It is one of my happiest memories. That special week, all of us together....
Time moves differently here, more slowly.
Or perhaps we just notice more, second by second.
On the little pier near the cottage, the sea sucks, gloops and slurps.
Black-headed gulls hunt one last time before flying to roost. They lift on a bank of air, hover, spot something beneath the surface - and dip, settling briefly, before they paddle, paddle, paddle, feet pattering on the water, and up again.
A curlew lifts and makes his lonely, rippling call and a grey heron stalks the shallows. And as day turns to dusk the wind finally finds us and brings with it icy rain.
Driftwood. Found on one of the days between days, between the day you died and the day you were born.
A week of anniversaries this. Lifted, lifted by the soar of golden eagles in Glen More, by the otters and their rings of bright water, by the mother and cub swirling and twirling together near the shoreline - the little one swimming for the beach and leaping and bounding as if for the simple joy of living.
By the white-tailed sea eagle languidly coasting low over grey waters; by the bright eyes of fallow deer; by sheep-infested seashores.
By oysters collected on a desolate, deserted beach; by a hen harrier dipping and looping, pausing and swooping over hillocks and heather-strewn wilderness.
By wild winds, driving snow, bitter cold and, on that one day, by a gift of spring.
A week of anniversaries, of memories of birth and death, of days before and days before that . Of a whole life lived and then lost.
And here, on our island sanctuary, the wind strengthens, the rain is hard against the window. A log drops down in the fire and the sea is a constant gentle roar.
And it is so very peaceful.
xxx
Six pieces. Grains of sand and salt crusted in the smooth grooves and crevices.
Found in the slush and mush of a seaweed tideline on a sloped beach of grey pebbles and shining silver sand, where oystercatchers divebombed black backed gulls and the sun crackled on the surface of the water - and we couldn't help but turn to it and close our eyes.
We got there by mud-sucking path that was drenched and saturated after days of rain, past curious scraggy cows with long highland horns, clumps of muck clinging to their bellies, past gorse that smelled of coconut if you crushed it in your palms.
It was a day between days, a day of casting off clothes, of cares; for gazing in happy awe at rock pipits courting in the crevices of the cliff face, at the winter-starved pipistrelle venturing from his sleepy hollow to catch a snack in the sun, at the flash of a redshank's legs.
Driftwood. Drift. Drifting..
One piece is long, round and smooth like a relay runner's baton, another is broad and rectangular, worked and worked by the sea until it is all but hollow. A third is long hard and spiralled, as if someone has taken each end and twisted and twisted.
They smell of wet sand and sea and seaside air and, fleetingly, of woodsmoke, and I collect them and add them to the pebbles, shells and stones in the rucksack.
Around the cottage we have eagles and otters, shiny, chunky rocks and water, water everywhere.
There is a stove with a creel hauled above it where we dry the tea-towels; there's a supply of too-damp logs, a torn, raggedy patchwork quilt on the lumpy bed, a bath with a spider in it and chairs that sag and tip you out.
Our home squats on a peninsula and we wander from window to window constantly - spotting birds, watching the snowline drift on the mountains - and at night we watch the flashes from distant lighthouses. By day we have it to ourselves and at night it is blacker than black outside and we hunker down.
Today the hills across the Sound of Mull are dripping with grey, heavy, slung-low cloud and on this side of the cottage - the sea side - the wind whips the water and every ripple is an otter's slick back or shiny snout or a porpoise fin. Light flinking and flashing, playing tricks on the eyes.
On the loch-side of the cottage, in the little harbour near the front door, the water is millpond calm and in each passing moment, the tide slides away exposing oily, pulpy seaweed.It's sheltered from the wind here and the long grasses springing from the deep muddy prints left by Highland cows are russet brown and dipping gently, heavy with raindrops...although the rain stopped long ago.
I brought you here once.
I don't know what you made of it. We sat together on the rocks on a beaming blue day and watched porpoise, scores and scores of them, rolling and rolling in the blue. The sea glittered.
Then we had a snack of yoghurt, bananas and juice on a rug at the foot of Ben More and we rode on the Mull Little Railway. You chuckled as it clattered on the tracks, as if you couldn't believe your luck.
It is one of my happiest memories. That special week, all of us together....Time moves differently here, more slowly.
Or perhaps we just notice more, second by second.
On the little pier near the cottage, the sea sucks, gloops and slurps.
Black-headed gulls hunt one last time before flying to roost. They lift on a bank of air, hover, spot something beneath the surface - and dip, settling briefly, before they paddle, paddle, paddle, feet pattering on the water, and up again.
A curlew lifts and makes his lonely, rippling call and a grey heron stalks the shallows. And as day turns to dusk the wind finally finds us and brings with it icy rain.Driftwood. Found on one of the days between days, between the day you died and the day you were born.
A week of anniversaries this. Lifted, lifted by the soar of golden eagles in Glen More, by the otters and their rings of bright water, by the mother and cub swirling and twirling together near the shoreline - the little one swimming for the beach and leaping and bounding as if for the simple joy of living.
 |
By oysters collected on a desolate, deserted beach; by a hen harrier dipping and looping, pausing and swooping over hillocks and heather-strewn wilderness.
By wild winds, driving snow, bitter cold and, on that one day, by a gift of spring.
A week of anniversaries, of memories of birth and death, of days before and days before that . Of a whole life lived and then lost.
And here, on our island sanctuary, the wind strengthens, the rain is hard against the window. A log drops down in the fire and the sea is a constant gentle roar.
And it is so very peaceful.
xxx
Sunday 16 December 2012
Spinning Spheres
Dear Thomas,
The tree hasn't quite forgiven me, I think.
It sits there, glowering - if a tree can sit and glower - and I'm sure it sulks. Wishing, no doubt, it was in some brighter, grander place, surrounded by twinkly things and candlelight and merriment...and people who might actually love it a bit.
Poor thing. It didn't deserve this. Hauled home half-heartedly in a pull-along shopping trolley where it remained for days in the hall before I could muster the effort to bring it into daylight again.
There's nothing on it yet. The baubles need threading, and lights..we need to buy lights. At some point.
Worryingly I found myself talking to it. 'Hi tree,' I said. 'I'm sorry. I'm not much good at this. I used to be good at it, I used to be good at making the effort to be good at it. But this year...' and then I run out of things to say. A new level this! Talking to a Christmas tree, resenting it, because it doesn't know you, because it has nothing to do with you. As I say, poor thing.
I'm aware this is a tad bleak for Christmas, but it's how it is. I'll always tell you how it is. And how is it? Too quiet. The more noise the world makes preparing for Christmas the quieter it feels in here. Not lonely, just quiet.
The radiators creak and the woman in the flat upstairs has started playing music: 'As Time Goes By' from Casablanca. 'Now there's an irony,' I say to the tree, realising this must look a bit like Shirley Valentine talking to her wall (only my accent's a Yorkshire one). 'You must remember this....except you don't, do you? You don't remember any of it. How could you?'
Boxes spilling over with shiny sparkly things, cardboard tearing as we strain to cram them through the tiny door leading from the eaves, trying not to inhale dust and dead spiders or cut our fingers on bits of wood broken off from the door frame. Teetering down the stairs and bursting into the lounge, arms overflowing: 'Look Thomas! Christmas!'
You bang the boxes with the flat of your hands, shake the jingle bells and snatch at the tinsel we put on your head. You get glitter on the tip of your nose and it twinkles as you move. We play your special Christmas videos and sing 'the wind goes whoo in the middle of the night' or ' here we go round the Christmas tree allll daaaay long!' and give you your favourite toy while we begin the construction job on the tree, usually with a glass of fizzy stuff or make-it-from-a-sachet mulled wine.
The memory is a shimmering vision - blurred at the edges - noisy and bright, a shining ghost of Christmas past.
The smell of a real Christmas tree seems to fill the room. You can almost hear it greedily sucking water from our old gaudy crepe paper-covered pot that's somewhere in a storage unit in Derbyshire..along with all our other Christmas bits and pieces. Boxed up, put away.
This artificial one knows it is a poor second best.
Oh, despite the music upstairs it is still too quiet. Classic FM should do it, but the DJs are simpering and saccharine and listeners phone in requests, recounting scenes of jollity: 'ooh, we're so excited....all in the car travelling south to see our six grandchildren! Can you play Oh Come All Ye Faithful?!'. 'Oh sod off', I say to them, to the tree.
But I don't switch off. There's 'Oh Holy Night' and 'Away in a Manger', and as they play I sink where I stood for a moment, on to the hard parquet floor in this far away flat and I give in for a while, give into the music.
And I know I'm not alone in this, in remembering a past life, an overwhelming moment when the loss is too great. There are so many like us. It's my comfort, that...not being alone.
But let's not pretend our Christmases were ever everything we'd imagined they'd be Thomas. It was never easy. So many things defined your difference.
I would feed with envious eyes on the stories of 'normal' children. The letters to Santa, the hand-written cards, the imagination, the excitement, the advent calendar, the magic, the mystery, a filled pillowcase, frantic, excited: 'He's been! He's been!'...my own memories of it.
Christmas Day made you grumpy. Fancy...A child who doesn't like opening presents! But it's true. All the excitement, the noise, the flying paper, all those bright shiny new things to cope with all at once, picking up one thing, dropping it in a hurry to look at the next.
Too much for you.
And sometimes one of us would have to take you away and read you a favourite book - The Gruffalo, Bold Little Tiger, Guess How Much I Love You (to the moon and back again, by the way, in case you were wondering) while everyone else got on with trying to make it all...normal.
We racked our brains over ways of making the days special to you. No point in talking about Santa; if he ever popped round - a school party, a 'Santa steam special' - he'd be surrounded by children with shining eyes, and then there would be you, my angel, giving him an unimpressed, cursory glance. Who knows what you thought, but there was no wonder in your eyes. You saw right through him.
We'd pretend it was different, of course. 'Look Thomas, look, it's SANTA!' and we'd hold out your hand for him to shake and you ignored him, found something more interesting to look at, turned your wandering gaze to the flashing lights of a little boy's hi-tech trainers instead. Santa feeling a wee bit awkward, we could tell, not quite sure what to do. Us having to explain. The toy always something hugely inapproprite for you.
And the concerts and the nativities? The little ones, those who knew what they were doing, saying their lines; the towel-headed innkeeper, concentrating on his role, pointing angrily at Mary and Joseph: 'There is no oooom!'. The angels with wobbly coat-hanger halos; Mary, holding a Tiny Tears baby Jesus by the hair. And you, purple velour cape hanging off one shoulder, a teacher holding your hand to stop you huffily pulling off your crown (you never would keep a hat on), and holding on to your gold, frankincense, myrrh or whatever because you kept dropping it. You were a king, they said. But you didn't know it.
It broke my heart. There. I said it. Year after year after year...my little square peg in a Christmas-shaped hole............them, us, all of us, pretending.
The music upstairs has stopped. It's getting dark and the Christmas tree looks grumpier than ever. Outside, above the chimney pots and tiled rooftops, above the flat, grey concrete summits of office buildings, the eastern sky is a sharp, clear, piercing, bitter blue. There is one bright shining star.
It's barely gone four but the birds are roosting. Flocks of gulls and pigeons rise, fall, twist and about-turn. The white bellies of the gulls flying west are a dusky pink, reflecting the setting sun.
I hear shouts, look down, and on the street below a man and three children are lugging a huge net-swathed Christmas tree. The children, who must all be under 10 are plump, like little roly-polys in their puffer anoraks, bobble hats, wide scarves and too-big gloves. Their breath comes in sharp whispy blasts.
It's a large tree. Must be for a large room with a high ceiling, I think. Cornices, chandeliers, maybe a huge roaring fireplace swathed in holly where they'll be roasting chestnuts; there'll be halls decked and a piano in the corner around which they'll gather and sing carols. Maybe not. Dickens has a lot to answer for.
Had I forgotten how much you loved a Christmas tree? You would look and look at the lights. And you'd potter over..and plonk on to the floor, crossed legs, amid the already falling needles, right where the branches were thickest and longest.
I hang the heaviest, biggest, brightest baubles there. And you catch them between thumb and fingers..and twist them one way and then flick them back and spin them and spin them..and watch as they spin first this way, then that way, catching the light. Faster, faster; the glittery ones sprinkling a dust of gold or silver around you..and then slower and slower until you spin them again.
And if you a bit get too exuberant, and we move you away, you sit on the settee. And you gaze at the tree, taking it all in.
What are you thinking, Thomas? Those impenetrable nut-brown eyes with a glint of something that seem knowledgeable, wise, humouring. What do you know that we don't?
I must remember this Thomas - that your Christmas was special; filled with music, twinkly lights....and spinning spheres. That it was candlelight, snuggling up with a book, a party hat that never stayed on, a seat at the head of the table, the first plate to be cleared and always room for more. That on the night before Christmas I crept into your room as you slept and I would sit, watching you, and I would think about how, just at that moment, you were like any other child and I like any other mum.
Classic FM plays 'In the Bleak Mid Winter'.....to the proper tune, on a trumpet. It would be easy to sit here as night falls, and do nothing....wait until the tree in the corner becomes a dark, unhappy smudge.
But I think of you. How your joy was in the smallest, simplest things; how you were amazed by the shining baubles turning, turning....
There's a small, bright, gold, twirly-patterned star in a brown paper bag next to me, bought several days ago from heaving, chaotic, bursting at the seams Maison Du Monde. As I lift it out it drops glitter into my lap.
In the twilight I hold the bare branches of the unloved tree and, as the music switches to the gentle piano melody that is the beginning of 'Walking in the Air', I perch it on top.
A star for a star.
We can do this, I say.
xxxxx
The tree hasn't quite forgiven me, I think.
It sits there, glowering - if a tree can sit and glower - and I'm sure it sulks. Wishing, no doubt, it was in some brighter, grander place, surrounded by twinkly things and candlelight and merriment...and people who might actually love it a bit.
Poor thing. It didn't deserve this. Hauled home half-heartedly in a pull-along shopping trolley where it remained for days in the hall before I could muster the effort to bring it into daylight again.
There's nothing on it yet. The baubles need threading, and lights..we need to buy lights. At some point.
Worryingly I found myself talking to it. 'Hi tree,' I said. 'I'm sorry. I'm not much good at this. I used to be good at it, I used to be good at making the effort to be good at it. But this year...' and then I run out of things to say. A new level this! Talking to a Christmas tree, resenting it, because it doesn't know you, because it has nothing to do with you. As I say, poor thing.
I'm aware this is a tad bleak for Christmas, but it's how it is. I'll always tell you how it is. And how is it? Too quiet. The more noise the world makes preparing for Christmas the quieter it feels in here. Not lonely, just quiet.
The radiators creak and the woman in the flat upstairs has started playing music: 'As Time Goes By' from Casablanca. 'Now there's an irony,' I say to the tree, realising this must look a bit like Shirley Valentine talking to her wall (only my accent's a Yorkshire one). 'You must remember this....except you don't, do you? You don't remember any of it. How could you?'
Boxes spilling over with shiny sparkly things, cardboard tearing as we strain to cram them through the tiny door leading from the eaves, trying not to inhale dust and dead spiders or cut our fingers on bits of wood broken off from the door frame. Teetering down the stairs and bursting into the lounge, arms overflowing: 'Look Thomas! Christmas!'
You bang the boxes with the flat of your hands, shake the jingle bells and snatch at the tinsel we put on your head. You get glitter on the tip of your nose and it twinkles as you move. We play your special Christmas videos and sing 'the wind goes whoo in the middle of the night' or ' here we go round the Christmas tree allll daaaay long!' and give you your favourite toy while we begin the construction job on the tree, usually with a glass of fizzy stuff or make-it-from-a-sachet mulled wine.
The memory is a shimmering vision - blurred at the edges - noisy and bright, a shining ghost of Christmas past.
The smell of a real Christmas tree seems to fill the room. You can almost hear it greedily sucking water from our old gaudy crepe paper-covered pot that's somewhere in a storage unit in Derbyshire..along with all our other Christmas bits and pieces. Boxed up, put away.
This artificial one knows it is a poor second best.
Oh, despite the music upstairs it is still too quiet. Classic FM should do it, but the DJs are simpering and saccharine and listeners phone in requests, recounting scenes of jollity: 'ooh, we're so excited....all in the car travelling south to see our six grandchildren! Can you play Oh Come All Ye Faithful?!'. 'Oh sod off', I say to them, to the tree.
But I don't switch off. There's 'Oh Holy Night' and 'Away in a Manger', and as they play I sink where I stood for a moment, on to the hard parquet floor in this far away flat and I give in for a while, give into the music.
And I know I'm not alone in this, in remembering a past life, an overwhelming moment when the loss is too great. There are so many like us. It's my comfort, that...not being alone.
But let's not pretend our Christmases were ever everything we'd imagined they'd be Thomas. It was never easy. So many things defined your difference.
I would feed with envious eyes on the stories of 'normal' children. The letters to Santa, the hand-written cards, the imagination, the excitement, the advent calendar, the magic, the mystery, a filled pillowcase, frantic, excited: 'He's been! He's been!'...my own memories of it.
Christmas Day made you grumpy. Fancy...A child who doesn't like opening presents! But it's true. All the excitement, the noise, the flying paper, all those bright shiny new things to cope with all at once, picking up one thing, dropping it in a hurry to look at the next.
Too much for you.
And sometimes one of us would have to take you away and read you a favourite book - The Gruffalo, Bold Little Tiger, Guess How Much I Love You (to the moon and back again, by the way, in case you were wondering) while everyone else got on with trying to make it all...normal.
We racked our brains over ways of making the days special to you. No point in talking about Santa; if he ever popped round - a school party, a 'Santa steam special' - he'd be surrounded by children with shining eyes, and then there would be you, my angel, giving him an unimpressed, cursory glance. Who knows what you thought, but there was no wonder in your eyes. You saw right through him.
We'd pretend it was different, of course. 'Look Thomas, look, it's SANTA!' and we'd hold out your hand for him to shake and you ignored him, found something more interesting to look at, turned your wandering gaze to the flashing lights of a little boy's hi-tech trainers instead. Santa feeling a wee bit awkward, we could tell, not quite sure what to do. Us having to explain. The toy always something hugely inapproprite for you.
And the concerts and the nativities? The little ones, those who knew what they were doing, saying their lines; the towel-headed innkeeper, concentrating on his role, pointing angrily at Mary and Joseph: 'There is no oooom!'. The angels with wobbly coat-hanger halos; Mary, holding a Tiny Tears baby Jesus by the hair. And you, purple velour cape hanging off one shoulder, a teacher holding your hand to stop you huffily pulling off your crown (you never would keep a hat on), and holding on to your gold, frankincense, myrrh or whatever because you kept dropping it. You were a king, they said. But you didn't know it.
It broke my heart. There. I said it. Year after year after year...my little square peg in a Christmas-shaped hole............them, us, all of us, pretending.
The music upstairs has stopped. It's getting dark and the Christmas tree looks grumpier than ever. Outside, above the chimney pots and tiled rooftops, above the flat, grey concrete summits of office buildings, the eastern sky is a sharp, clear, piercing, bitter blue. There is one bright shining star.
It's barely gone four but the birds are roosting. Flocks of gulls and pigeons rise, fall, twist and about-turn. The white bellies of the gulls flying west are a dusky pink, reflecting the setting sun.
I hear shouts, look down, and on the street below a man and three children are lugging a huge net-swathed Christmas tree. The children, who must all be under 10 are plump, like little roly-polys in their puffer anoraks, bobble hats, wide scarves and too-big gloves. Their breath comes in sharp whispy blasts.
It's a large tree. Must be for a large room with a high ceiling, I think. Cornices, chandeliers, maybe a huge roaring fireplace swathed in holly where they'll be roasting chestnuts; there'll be halls decked and a piano in the corner around which they'll gather and sing carols. Maybe not. Dickens has a lot to answer for.
Had I forgotten how much you loved a Christmas tree? You would look and look at the lights. And you'd potter over..and plonk on to the floor, crossed legs, amid the already falling needles, right where the branches were thickest and longest.
I hang the heaviest, biggest, brightest baubles there. And you catch them between thumb and fingers..and twist them one way and then flick them back and spin them and spin them..and watch as they spin first this way, then that way, catching the light. Faster, faster; the glittery ones sprinkling a dust of gold or silver around you..and then slower and slower until you spin them again.
And if you a bit get too exuberant, and we move you away, you sit on the settee. And you gaze at the tree, taking it all in.
What are you thinking, Thomas? Those impenetrable nut-brown eyes with a glint of something that seem knowledgeable, wise, humouring. What do you know that we don't?
I must remember this Thomas - that your Christmas was special; filled with music, twinkly lights....and spinning spheres. That it was candlelight, snuggling up with a book, a party hat that never stayed on, a seat at the head of the table, the first plate to be cleared and always room for more. That on the night before Christmas I crept into your room as you slept and I would sit, watching you, and I would think about how, just at that moment, you were like any other child and I like any other mum.
Classic FM plays 'In the Bleak Mid Winter'.....to the proper tune, on a trumpet. It would be easy to sit here as night falls, and do nothing....wait until the tree in the corner becomes a dark, unhappy smudge.
But I think of you. How your joy was in the smallest, simplest things; how you were amazed by the shining baubles turning, turning....
There's a small, bright, gold, twirly-patterned star in a brown paper bag next to me, bought several days ago from heaving, chaotic, bursting at the seams Maison Du Monde. As I lift it out it drops glitter into my lap.
In the twilight I hold the bare branches of the unloved tree and, as the music switches to the gentle piano melody that is the beginning of 'Walking in the Air', I perch it on top.
A star for a star.
We can do this, I say.
xxxxx
Tuesday 30 October 2012
49 Minutes.....
Her name is Charlotte Grace.
Have you seen her Thomas?
An impatient little girl she is, always running, running, chasing rainbows, catching them! A clever girl, a mischievous girl, pirouetting through the refracted crystals, swooping and diving among the colours, singing, giggling, chattering.
A noisebox, just like you!
Can you hear her?
Sometimes you can catch a flash of her, the essence of her, in the rainbow's sweeping arch across the skies, in the sparkling dew of a summer morning, in the twinkle of the brightest stars.
But only if you pretend you're not looking.
You can hear her tinkling voice (such a chatterbox!) in the birds' evening chorus, in the babble of a sunlit brook, in the frittering of leaves on a silver birch...
But only if you pretend you're not listening.
She's a flighty one, she is! Swift of foot and as cheeky as a sprite, you'll never, ever, pin her down, never quite catch her - this busy, busy girl with moonbeams at her heels.
Little Charlotte, who wouldn't wait, who couldn't wait....
Forty nine minutes she stayed. No time at all - yet time enough for a girl to make her mark, to change everything.
A tiny child, of hope, of dreams, of love. A masterpiece. Perfection.
Peaceful, serene she remained, even as the world around her convulsed, contorted, spun, wheeled and turned in on itself.
And then... placed gently in her mother's arms.
And all was still......and in the quiet, in the calm, they took their little girl back to themselves again.
Dressed in pink cotton and wrapped in a blanket, and snuggled alongside her a yellow teddy bear - small, yet so big next to her tiny frame.
They loved her, wondered at her, stroked her feet, traced her button nose, her rosebud lips, caressed her miniature nails, her hair dark on snow-white skin.
They absorbed her, enveloped her, smelled her. Their baby girl. And it was so right and it was so wrong and it was desolate and utterly cruel. Yet she was there, so it was truly beautiful.
They felt blessed and cheated and desolate but above all they felt love, such love Thomas.
And their love spun like a thread around her, the warps and the wefts, an invisible blanket cocooning her – and them – forever.
And sometimes when they think they can’t remember her, when her mother wonders whether she imagined those firm little kicks, she reveals herself. A gentle breeze blowing the crowns of the tallest trees: ‘it really happened’ she says. And she is there, playing peek-a-boo, a blink away, above, below, all around, swinging, swinging, throwing her legs into the air, back and forth, crooning made-up songs, higher and higher.
Oh she has taught them so much and they know her well. She is a girly girl, a daddy's girl too. The two of them, conspirators, mischief makers, secret keepers! They know this. She is a happy girl, a laughing girl, a skipping girl, light of foot with the cheekiness of a sprite. A mischievous girl, a poppet in pink pyjamas.
Little Charlotte Grace...you left such a big legacy for such a little girl. And what lessons you have taught! How to love with a fierceness that consumes all, how that love endures, how a heart really can be broken but how it can start to mend itself too, though never quite losing the hairline cracks that will forever remain.
How it is the very worst. But how willingly the pain is borne for the blessing of having had you at all, for being you, for being theirs now and always.
49 minutes...but forever.
xxxx
- Published for and with the permission of Claire and Steve in memory of their darling daughter Charlotte Grace to commemorate Pregnancy and Infant Loss Awareness Month.
- http://www.uk-sands.org/
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