writing, not drowning

Well, er, look who's here . . .

The faithful Miss P

Where was I? Oh, yes, it was two years ago. How time flies . . . apologies for having apparently abandoned the dear old ageing blog; it wasn't intentional but stuff happens, doesn't it? Thank you to the kind readers who got in touch to ask what was happening; apologies if I failed to respond and I hope that this long overdue post will go some way to explaining what has been going on here in the Back of Beyond.

    And, indeed, a lot can happen in two years: good, bad, and somewhere in between, personal and political. But I'll keep off the politics and politicians, at least for a while. Too depressing. (Although I should award five stars to Hugh Grant for his depiction of Jeremy Thorpe in A Very British Scandal; extraordinarily accurate, as those who knew him will attest. I have my own particular recollections of the chain of events and shared many long conversations, at the time, with journalist chums who were covering the trial. But probably best not to go into details; you never know who's checking up on these things.)

    So, back to the stuff. Let's get the baddish bits over with; from pneumonia in May 2016, everything rather went downhill, health and energy wise. There were two rounds of eye surgery, then some rather scary bouts of sciatica, which left me with a numb left foot and leg. This in turn affected my balance, I took a mighty fall, and fractured my left ankle (the lateral malleolus for the medically minded) and then right-sided sciatica, which led to chronic pain for months on end. What a wreck. I am, however - and a long last - on the mend. Conventional medicine had nothing to offer me (the sciatica wasn't disc-related), apart from painkillers which were actually anti-depressants. Thanks but no thanks. In the end it was a combination of exercise, yoga and Pilates, plus acupuncture and homeopathy, that helped me to turn a corner.

    I didn't think anyone would be interested in reading about the tedious and frustrating chain of events and I didn't have the energy or the motivation to write, so I stopped.

    At the same time, I was watching my Loved Ones grappling with the tortuous journey towards adoption. A wonderful outcome, after a very, very long wait but, quite possibly, one of the most hideous and painful processes anyone can voluntarily put themselves through. It is not like this for everyone, thankfully, but the Loved Ones definitely drew the short straw in terms of the agency they went through and the professionals - bar one or two - assigned to them and to the Small Person (who had been let down at every stage of their very short life by people who should have been acting in the Small Person's best interests). But - and it really is a huge but - the Small Person is now a very much-loved member of our family; bright, blossoming, growing in confidence daily, happy, and outgoing, and a kind and compassionate young soul - truly a testament to the power of steadfast love, understanding and care. The Small Person and I have been building our very own special relationship and it is a joy. For safeguarding reasons there will be no cute grandchild pics on the blog, no names, nor anything that might identify the Small Person. Suffice it to say that the SP is safe, is loved more than words can say, and has a very bright future ahead.

    Of course, I could not discuss or write about any aspect of the adoption process, although I would very much like to have done, so shocking were the professional failures, inaccuracies, and general obfuscation at almost every stage. My job was to be Mama Rock throughout, so not being able to share what was happening was, at times, very hard. I often had to be my own shoulder to lean on and shed my tears in private. Actually, that is not quite true - the faithful sprollie has been here throughout and my closest friends have been everything that truly good friends always are. They are simply there for us; no explanations required.

    So, there we are and here we go. I am now in my seventies and a house move is imminent, so another big change. With luck and a fair wind, I hope to be here for a good while yet and if the house move goes to plan, I will be very fortunate in living somewhere that I have fallen in love with, just as I fell in love with my very old house and its hillside location and uplifting views twenty years ago. I had almost decided to be a sensible 70-something and move to the edge of a large village or a small town, with - you know - amenities, all within walking distance. But when the right house and garden (smaller, more manageable, Victorian and solidly built) suddenly popped up out of the blue, I realised that the tranquility of a rural setting is very, very important to me. We took the Small Person, who loves my current house very much indeed, to see the new house, garden and views, and what would be their very own new bedroom when they come to stay, and it was all given the five-star SP Seal of Approval. So that's all right then.

    Let the great decluttering begin. (One of the closest friends mentioned above popped round yesterday with a stack of packing boxes and tape to get me started. You see what I mean about friends?)

 

'Only remembered for what we have done'

So, that was January 2016. It will not be missed, unlike the people whose passing it marked. A strange, dark time, during which we seemed to reel from one unbelievable headline to another. There is nothing unbelievable about death; it is inevitable for each of us - but still we reeled. So many cultural icons felled within so few days. I avoided writing; there were words enough in print and in cyberspace and others, I kept thinking, had already found the right words.

My eldest nephew, now in his mid-fifties, had been a fan of David Bowie from the age of 14; he posted his thoughts on Facebook and his words were as eloquent and as moving as those of any of the professional commentators paid to write a eulogy for the broadsheets and elsewhere. But having lost his younger brother, a sister, and his mother within thirteen months of each other in recent years, my nephew is already acquainted with grief. He has the words. Then there were Bowie's own words, in Archive on 4, David Bowie: Verbatim, with the man himself, laughing, joking, and reminiscing about the Marquee, the Ricky Tick in Hounslow, the Craw Daddy in Richmond, Eel Pie Island, all the places that many of us of a certain age had flocked to in the 1960s  . . . for the music. He had been there too.

On the day that Alan Rickman's death was announced, I called a close friend who had once known him well and who had introduced me to him 40 years ago. (I wrote about that meeting here.) And we talked about the strange, difficult emotional hinterland we must occupy when someone to whom we have once been very close dies. (In that coincidental way, Woman's Hour touched on that very subject later in the week.)

And so the announcements continued until yesterday, the last day of the month when we heard, first about Sir Terry Wogan, then Frank Finlay . . . and suddenly it was 1966 again. I was 18, six months pregnant, and sitting in my Dear Old School Friend's father's mini-van; she driving round and round Parliament Square, trying to find the right traffic lane for Westminster Bridge. The Dear Old School Friend had just passed her driving test and we were on our way to the Old Vic, to see what was to become one of the definitive 20th century stagings of Othello: Laurence Olivier in the title role, Maggie Smith as Desdemona - and Frank Finlay as Iago. We arrived with minutes to spare, she hauled me up seemingly endless flights of stone steps to the gods, and we watched the entire performance sitting on hard wooden benches. (I did wonder whether my memory was playing tricks. had there really been wooden benches at the Old Vic in the 1960s? I checked; there had been, indeed, wooden benches in the 1960s.) I also found this page on Frank Finlay's website and could not agree more with Sir Anthony Sher's words about the exceptional acting that we saw that day. How very lucky we were. I told the Dear Daughter yesterday that, at the time, I had hoped that the experience would have some sort of in utero impact on my unborn baby. It must have worked: she has always loved Shakespeare . . .

By mid-morning, yesterday, I found I could listen to no more words on BBC Radio 4. (It might have been listening to Bill Gates's off-putting voice on Desert Island Discs that did it.) I switched to Radio 3 and the day became brighter at once (it was Folk Connections weekend on Radio 3).  I was adding pieces of music to my BBC Playlister, almost without stopping, until this song, which - in every sense - stopped me in my tracks: Only Remembered, words by John Tams. If you have seen War Horse, the song will be familiar and you can see John Tams performing it with the War Horse cast here. However, the version broadcast was this one, by Coope Boyes and Simpson, which I found on the No Glory website and which is where I discovered that Alan Rickman had been an early signatory to the No Glory letter. Alan Rickman and many others whose work - and words - I admire. Everything is connected. Everything and everyone. And we can remember. We do.

Where is love?*

 

I have been thinking about my mother a good deal in recent days, not because there has been a significant anniversary but because I have found myself longing to discuss with her the plight of the Syrian - and other - refugees.  

My mum was the most compassionate person I ever met. She didn't judge people on the grounds of their gender, sexuality, race or religion. She was forever helping people in distress, often simply by listening to their stories. Listening without judging, she believed, was one of the most compassionate things we can do for another human being.

There certainly was an absence of compassion in some of the posts I read on Facebook this week. To be honest, I'm a relative newcomer to Facebook, having been put off by much of what I read about it, and having therefore resisted for several years. But, eventually, it became apparent that this was probably the only way of keeping in touch - and keeping in touch simultaneously - with many members of my large, extended, and international family, not to mention several friends. Today, however, I came very close to leaving Facebook; instead, I simply 'hid' posts and 'unfollowed' people. 

I'm not sure what my mum would have made of Facebook; she would have been shocked and saddened by the vitriol and ranting that was pouring out this week but gladdened by the positive connections that people were making, sometimes with complete but like-minded strangers. She would have been moved, this week, by the kindness of strangers. She would have loved looking at photos of family and friends and hearing their news but would have had no hesitation about deleting anything that distressed or disappointed her.

My mum loved reading, wrote brilliant letters, and never had any difficulty finding the right word at the right time. If she were still alive, I think that these are the words she would have chosen to put on Facebook today:

*My mum, who was a professional singer and dancer when she was young, loved musicals; Oliver was one of her favourites and this, one of her favourite songs.

(And I put this post on Facebook . . . )

'And flights of angels sing thee to thy rest'

On Monday, my cousin, his wife and I made the same journey from the South West of England to Wales, to the same village church where family and friends had gathered little more than a fortnight ago to say farewell to my niece. And, just as it had on the day of my niece's funeral, the sun poured down on us but even more brightly. It was the sort of weather that one always wants on the first day of a holiday; we could hardly believe that we were now on our way to say farewell to my niece's mother, my dear sister-in-law, whom my cousin and I had known for almost sixty years, since we were children.

But the ancient church gathered us all in and gave us time and space in which we could both grieve and celebrate a long life, a life well lived and a life full of love. The four of us who spoke in her memory, each had our own particular and precious recollections but, without any prior conferring, we were as one in recounting her great loves: family, friends, home, dogs - and all animals and wildlife, music, laughter, jokes, cooking, parties and entertaining. The doors of her home - and her heart - were always open and, over the years, she had welcomed so many across the threshold of both.

One of the passions we shared was music and it was my sister-in-law who introduced me, when I was still very young, to classical music. Her great musical loves included Italian opera, choral music, and the tenor voice; she shared those loves with me, a gift that has lasted a lifetime. But she made music too: playing the piano was the source of much joy and was her escape from the demands of everyday life. 

This being Wales, the music at her funeral was very fine indeed, uplifting us and soothing us like balm: as a congregation, we sang Psalm XXIII, set to Crimond and that great Welsh anthem, Cwm Rhonnda, (Guide Me O Thou Great Redeemer). My sister-in-law had sung with the Monmouth Choral Society, many of whose members, including close friends, formed the choir who sang her to her rest - Mozart's Ave Verum Corpus during the reflection and, at the closing, the Sarum Prayer, God be in my head, set to music by Walford Davies. The simplest of words, centuries old, the profoundest of meanings. It mattered not who was a believer and who was not; the beauty of the music gave us a safe harbour for our shared tears and sadness and, above all, a setting in which to give great thanks for her life and for the love we had for her and she for us.

So, this, for my unforgettable sister-in-law, now resting at peace with the two of her beloved children who went before her.

When the unimaginable happens

I thought I might write something about my niece's funeral, which took place a week ago, about the gentleness of the words uttered in the country church where we said our farewells to her, about the sweetness of the songs sung in her memory, about the tidal wave of love that rose from those who had come to remember her and which, we hoped, would help to carry her children through the saddest day of their lives.

I would have written of these things if the unimaginable had not happened. On Tuesday, her mother - my brother's wife of more than half a century, the wife whose carer he has been for the past two years - died in her sleep. In the past year, my brother has lost two of his children and his wife.

Words do not usually fail me but, for once, I find myself struggling to find words to try to make sense of it all but there are no words; there is no sense to be made.

All I can do in quiet moments, is set down my memories of my vibrant, funny, loving sister-in-law, set them down before time begins to dilute them.