WISH

WISH

That word: it is soft, wispy. I can still imagine a wish being the fluff of dandelion blossom; drifting in the wind on the slightest of summers breezes bringing smiles and laughter and close hipped cuddles.

I can also; now that the years have passed by me so many times; hear it as the delicate fall of leaves in the autumn when I take the dog out for his night time wee. That slight clatter in the forest as the rooks shift in their nests, the bats jink and flitter, somewhere the owls screech and elsewhere the foxes slink through the gardens.

I have no hesitation in saying what my wishes are but I have to qualify; to explain somehow and maybe, in the explaining, I will learn something for myself.

I am just back from walking Dash. As usual we were at Ardmore. The day today is grey and windy and rainy. In the night the wind did that roaring sound in the gaps in the windows and Dash, for some reason, prowled through the house barking in the early hours until I got dressed and took him outside. But today, I pulled down the hood from my waterproofs and let the wind and the rain onto my face and into my hair. My clothes rattled and the raindrops pattered. At the point, the cormorants stood motionless, except for one dark shape that took off and flew away low down on the water. I could hear the oyster catchers and the curlews; see the gulls whipping away in the wind and I thought to myself;

This is autumn and it is utterly beautiful!

The red leaves of the brambles, the hawthorn berries, even the blackened rosehips besides the path. The slow, slightly, lonely joy of walking through the puddles; knowing the family are warm and cosy at home, now that we have turned the heating on for winter.

I had been thinking of them early this morning after Dash had settled last night. At first, as may be common with autumn and the passing of the years, I felt regret.

I could not name it properly and neither could I name the same contradictory joy within the regret. I was angry with myself; asking how I could have allowed myself to grow so unfit, so that my breath wheezes even when I sit down and I pant when I walk to the top of the stairs. I look at my body and ask how I managed to let my stomach swell so much with so much food, that it is easier to let my shirts hang loose than try to tuck it in under the bulge of it. I worried about the gallons and gallons of whisky I have drunk in recent years; so much whisky that even my skin reeks of it in the morning.

I pondered and felt talons of something unnameable clutching at my spirit and my joy. I cannot name it because I am not sure what it is. Sometimes I think that in coming to terms with death and the death of my father, I have let myself bid farewell to life. Increasingly I look for the point of oblivion where there is nothing and I am at peace from the pain of my thoughts. Increasingly I realise that even if I leave a legacy in policy or in words or even in love, it will be even more momentary and transient than life and increasingly I realise that humanity itself is just a frantic flash of the smallest instant of the smallest instant. I thought for a time that this was a reckoning and the coming of acceptance but now I fear that I have been saying goodbye too early; getting used to finality before I have even begun.

I fear that the hooks of the past; the memories I hesitate to have faith in have taken their lazy hold of my flesh. I fear that the medication or the illness or whatever it is has finally taken the most savage reckoning of me with my inability to live, to feel joy and lightness.

I woke with that. I woke with that but also with the glimmer of something brighter in my mind. And when I found myself splashing through the puddles at Ardmore, realised that I do not need to bid farewell and that there is the chance of something bright and that there always was.

How to tell? How to describe my slow smile when, yesterday, Wendy got me to practice smiling and told me that she thought I had never exercised my smiling muscles because all I could do was grimace in a faint parody of joy. How to talk about opening the door to Charlotte’s room where she and Orlaith were painting the most beautiful pictures while the rabbits stared curiously from behind their mesh curtains? Or this morning; drinking coffee; me sat in my chair, Wendy sitting up in bed, Dash on his back with his paws dangling in the air above his face. The smell just now of a Halloween cake baking downstairs. The last dramatic six years of living despite the intense difficulty that provided. The geese in the fields, the children chattering and scowling. Wendy laughing, being rude, being loving and resolutely untidy; holding the family on a raft of wonder and periodically wondering why she sometimes gets so tired only to say;

“Ah! That is the reason!”

I seek to tear those talons I mentioned earlier that distort my memory, my zest, my astonishment that, for nearly a decade now, I have been in the sort of relationship I would never ever have dared dream was possible for me.

And for once I will celebrate the small steps I am taking to learn to stop imposing darkness on my thoughts. The delighted recognition I have had recently that I am no longer hazy with whisky by nine at night and that I wake after a deep sleep and can face breakfast now with hints of zest and brightness in my mind.

My autumn wish? Such a subtle one; all I need to do is blink to make it true. Learning that, though I pant at the top of the stairs, even though I snore so loudly I have to sleep alone; there are shreds of delight on even the dullest day and that when it is sunny, which it often is, I wake finding the dandelion blossom is still drifting in the wind, ready to drop with a soft greeting on your shoulder saying;

“I am still here and I still smile and I still love despite my lack of practice at it. Despite my fear that I will never get it right!”

(Photo: Bird bath in our garden Oct 21)