What next?

oooooofffff....

I keep hearing on the radio, in conversations, on the telly that we don’t talk about death enough. Seems we talk about not talking about death quite a lot, so why are we still offering blank eyed resistance to its actuality.

As I stood before my bathroom mirror this morning and pulled out a chin hair or two, one eye out the window on the rooks who have no truck with such nonsense busy as they are with mending their ramshackle homes, wondering to myself how long it would be before my chins melted into my neck, before altogether much more important thoughts crept in and my vanity, while not abandoning me completely, took a back seat.

Here I am, age 62. It’s not an age I ever considered being, although if pushed I might have agreed it was a distinct possibility that I would be it, one day. My mother is 97 years and 11 days old. She is extremely unwell and as one might expect at that age she wonders if this is ‘it’. We (my siblings and I) are also wondering that. Then I find myself splitting down the middle as I look pragmatically at the situation - old lady, had an incredible life, married a genial acloholic, gave birth to 10 children and raised more, has countless grandchildren and great grand children, wrote 50 odd books, lectured around the world, created four beautiful gardens three of which fed a lot of people, set up two different communities based on radical hospitality in two different countries, found a new late life partner in a woman, lives (lived?) independently… it’s not a bad time to shuffle off the mortal coil is it? The other side of me is nine years old and clinging to her and saying don’t go, don’t leave me here, I’m not ready.

And yet. I am ready. I am ready to make that space in my heart where she will live on. I will wear the ring I had made from her engagement ring and feel the stone’s warmth, my touch stones. I will make room for the inevitable grief, the feeling of loss beyond compare.

Isn’t this what life and living is about? A fellow sub stacker, Lily ‘pull-up-a-chair’, mentioned in her weekly round up of reading and food recommendations a man called Simon Boas who, at 46, has been diagnosed with terminal cancer. He wrote a letter to his local paper in Jersey titled ‘A Beginner’s Guide to Dying’ which struck a cord with many people, either in the same boat, or as the ones left behind, or just as one of those ways to begin a conversation about death and how to flip the sadness into gratitude and let’s-talk-about-death-baby. Simon is an uncommon person, no doubt about that, but my Mum was, and possibly still is, a big fan of the Pollyanna books and I think on balance would agree with taking a positive view on things as far as possible. I’m not Pollyanna, and I am not a Stoic although reading a little on the subject makes me think it’d be a good choice of philosophy.

I am leaving now to go up north with home made cookies (baking is what I do when I feel at a loss), a copy of Under Milk Wood (a beautiful folio version that my Mum gave me) which I may or may not read to her and some forget-me-nots stuffed, roots and all, into a jar. It’s a habit I seem to have, to take ‘stuff’ to people in these kind of circumstances who will have very little use for them. But there it is, the day I manage to not do that will be the day when that someone does want them. So anyway - this stack is being cut short as I must go. More soon.

Keep my grande dame in your thoughts. Love and peace.