731 days – of “no sharing”

Tomorrow – January 21 – it will be two years since Magucha died (2016 was a Leap Year, one extra day, hence 731). I don’t want to make it into anything other than another day. But to me that date will always be very special.

That day introduced me to a “condition” that I was unfamiliar with. I don’t think there is a word for it but the phrase “no sharing” will have to do. I have always been a relatively solitary person. I have never been averse to my own company. But now? This is different.

It’s not loneliness. I don’t mind being alone. This is a “no sharing”.

This “no sharing” was revealed to me in a stark fashion the other day. Whilst in a local shopping centre that we, together, used to frequent, I sat down at a table in a little café where we had both been before. I had my coffee and a slice of apple strudel and looked around me. I was the only person on my own. All the other people were either in couples or in family groups with children.

I had no one to share the experience with. Not as a couple; a loving couple; a close and intimate couple; a couple that had grown together over many years of caring and friendship; a couple that had grown close through overcoming adversity; a couple that while together, never crowded the other; a couple that always allowed space for the other.

Magucha was my “pardalito”, my little sparrow. Always curious and inquisitive; always flying off on some errand – but always returning home.

I will quote words from Kahlil Gibran’s “The Prophet” that fitted our relationship:

“Love one another, but make not a bond of love:

Let it rather be a moving sea between the shores of your souls.

Sing and dance together and be joyous, but let each one of you be alone,

Even as the strings of a lute are alone though they quiver with the same music.

Give your heart, but not into each other’s keeping.

For only the hand of Life can contain your hearts.”

Now it is different. While I certainly have my (our) children and grandchildren whom I love dearly, it is not the same. There can never be that intimacy – the deep memories of times past and of moments shared.

Of course I have friends and many of them were her friends – but no longer “our friends”. It is not the same and, now, can never be.

So tomorrow will be a sad and reflective day; also a day of fond memories.

As some will know I find solace in poetry so I will end this post with a poem that I have used before, that captures my feelings and love for Magucha, with words that I deeply understand and are more meaningful than anything I could ever write. A poem by Robert Louis Stevenson.

My Wife:

Trusty, dusky, vivid, true,
With eyes of gold and bramble-dew,
Steel-true and blade-straight,
The Great Artificer
Made my mate.

Honour, anger, valour, fire;
A love that life could never tire,
Death quench or evil stir,
The Mighty Master
Gave to her.

Teacher, tender, comrade, wife,
A fellow-farer true through life,
Heart-whole and soul-free
The August Father
Gave to me.

Saudades. My Pardalito. My little one.

 

Totally alone.

Now that I have experienced “aloneness” for the 14 months since my wife died I have a deeper understanding of the devastating effects that losing one’s home, possessions, country, and for children, their caregivers, must have.

When I read, see and listen about the human tragedy that is unfolding in the Middle East and North and East Africa I have some difficulty in comprehending the enormity of the devastation and the inhumanity of it all.

My imagination fails me when I try to put myself in the place of a child (particularly a girl) lost with no one to turn to for the normal care that would be expected. Having to scavenge for food, shelter, clothing and for just the basic necessities to live, must be absolutely traumatic. 

Add to all this the dawning realization the child must accept and the gnawing fear experienced, that there is no “family” to provide that most basic of human needs, nurture – Love.

To be in such a situation is almost incomprehensible. Not to have the emotional support or nurture that is so necessary for any child’s development is beyond belief. Not to ever get a hug or a kiss.

The long term effects will be etched on the child’s psyche and affect how they react to others and the World in general for the rest of their life – where ever that happens to be.

And we – the people of this world  - are the cause. Why? A “belief” that I am better than you? A belief that my “God” is better than your “God”?  A belief that money is the only important thing?

While I, as a mature adult, have my adult children to support (for their loss of a mother) they in turn support me. This is as it should be. We are, as human beings, social animals and are “wired” to support each other.

As the English poet and sermonist John Dunne wrote in the 1600s:-

“No man is an island, entire of itself; every man is a piece of the continent, a part of the main; if a clod be washed away by the sea, Europe is the less, as well as if a promontory were, as well as if a manor of thy friends or of thine own were; any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind; and therefore never send to know for whom the bell tolls; it tolls for thee.”

- Any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind -.

Indeed!