Sometimes of an evening

Sometimes of an evening – usually rather late of an evening I sometimes have a rather other-worldly idea that I am not alone. I am of course and have been now for the more than six years since Magucha died in in January 2016. 

 

I know full well that this is my, possibly, over active imagination wishing that it was true. Because you see I really miss the companionship – just having someone to touch. Whenever I see couples holding hands I can “feel” Magucha’s pata (Portuguese for “paw”), what she called her little hand, creep into mine. 

 

But then close to 36 years of a, sometimes, tumultuous marriage leaves its mark. Magucha’s quick fire, Latin temperament, meant that there were moments of high drama but we seemed to get on well together. A bit like Yin and Yang – interconnected opposite forces I suppose. But I loved her dearly and sorely miss her mischievous sense of humour and her intelligence. I’ve now lost the sound of her voice and her infectious laugh – I can’t “hear’ them any more. She was never a “hugger” – accusing me, in her sometimes deliberately mangled English, of “strafogating” her if I hugged her too tightly. She never objected too strongly, though, to a kiss. And that I miss too. 

 

Grief is so strange – I know that everyone is different and “one size” certainly doesn’t fit all. With me grief seems to come in “waves” but it’s in the evenings that I miss her so keenly. Someone to share the day’s experiences with, a goodnight kiss and knowing that if I stretch out I can touch her. Now just a dream of course.  

 

That is one reason why I write things down – and I always have. High emotion is difficult to express and keeping it “in”, as it were, something I never agreed with. I used to keep hand-written journals – plenty of those – but now it seems to be digitalized! Not quite the same as holding a pen and putting my thoughts on paper. That has a more cathartic effect I think. But it’s what I do now. 

 

This may sound as if I’m sorry for myself! I’m not. You see we had a very rewarding life together.  But living in the past was never something I did. At least I don’t think so. So I’m going to end, as I often do, with a poem, a bit of a wish, I suppose, by John Masefield:-  

 

The Word 

 

My friend, my bonny friend, when we are old,

            And hand in hand go tottering down the hill,

May we be rich in love’s refined gold,

            May love’s gold coin be current with us still.

 

May love be sweeter for the vanished days,

            And your most perfect beauty still as dear

As when your troubled singer stood at gaze

            In the dear March of a most sacred year.

 

May what we are be all we might have been,

            And that potential, perfect, O my friend,

And may there still be many sheafs to glean

            In our love’s acre, comrade, till the end.

 

And may we find when ended is the page

Death but a tavern on our pilgrimage. 

This time of year

The 21^st January 2016 is not a date I will ever forget. That was the day that my wife Magucha died - six years ago this 21^st January 2022. But that is life isn’t it? We will all die one day!

 

Looking back to the time that we lived together many memories are fading – as is natural of course. The sound of her voice, and her infectious laugh are lost to me now but I can still see her eyes – always windows to the soul. I will admit that I do miss her, grievously miss her. I miss the feeling of her little hand in mine – what she called her “pata” (Portuguese for paw). She was not a “touchy feely” sort of person – she would squirm in my arms if I hugged her, saying in her wonderfully mangled English (Magucha speak!) that I was “strafogating” her. 

 

Magucha was not someone easy to categorize. It was not possible to say she was this or that kind of person. She was in many ways an extrovert – had a very large circle of friends and got on well with people in all walks of life. At the same time she was a very private person with an astonishing depth to her character. She was highly intelligent, very perceptive and seemingly attuned to the inner needs of people she knew. And she was also a wonderful mother with an amazing understanding of a child’s needs – and was certainly deeply loved by both children and her 4 grandchildren.

 

Furthermore she was definitely not the sort of person one could “tie down”. There was a strong rebellious streak in her make-up that I learned about very early in our marriage. To accommodate this I quickly learned to adopt the old maxim, “If you love something, let it fly free. If it returns it’s yours. If it doesn’t it never was.” 

 

Maugucha always returned. Not that she was ever “mine” in the ownership sense of the word but I truly believe she found peace, even solace, in our relationship. That is not to say that peace always reigned! Living with someone who had a strong Latin (Portuguese) temperament and a strong will of her own was not always conducive to “peace” in the accepted sense. Many were the tempestuous scenes that arose seemingly out of nowhere – though I soon worked out that they were, in many respects, a reaction to the rather fractured relationship she had with her mother. I was often the unwitting “victim” of pent up frustration.

 

I loved her you see and knew that there are two sides to everything. One has to know one to appreciate the other. How can on one know harmony with out first experiencing disharmony; happiness without experiencing unhappiness; love without first experiencing lack of love? 

 

You notice that I haven’t yet said that Magucha loved me! She never told me that she did – not in so many words. But she was very attentive to my needs and was very generous in what she gave me – and others have told me that she knew I was her “rock”; that I would always be there for her. That was just her way of expressing love. 

 

We were together for just short of 36 years.

 

As always I resort to poetry to best express my emotions – there is always a poem I can find. This is one I have used before – by John Masefield.

This is a photo taken on our 3^rd anniversary – and our first in Australia – 31^st August 1982 – that is, to me, a perfect visual expression of the poem below.

 

Beauty 

I have seen the dawn and sunset on moors
and windy hills,
Coming in solemn beauty like slow old tunes of
Spain;
I have seen the lady April bringing the daffodils,
Bringing the springing grass and the soft warm
April rain.

 

I have heard the song of the blossoms and the old
chant of the sea,
And seen strange lands from under the arched
white sails of ships;
But the loveliest things of beauty God ever 
showed to me,
Are her voice, and her hair, and eyes, and the 
dear red curve of her lips.

John Masefield.

 

 

There is another date that I don’t forget – 1^st June 1977 – the date my first wife Frances died. We were married for just under 7 years.

Trying to understand

I know that I have written about this before but it is a subject that certainly engages my attention – what, actually, is LIFE – that essence, that vivifying factor that makes something alive which is absent when something that was alive is now dead? This is the ultimate in pointless questions I suppose, as I don’t believe we will ever know. It may be that we are never supposed to know.

And yet I try. And I’ll keep trying. Always.

The various forms by which life expresses itself is astonishing. Take for instance the very small black ants that I find in my kitchen sometimes. They are no more than, possibly, a millimetre long and yet they are aware of danger and will scurry out of the way if they see my thumb, or the shadow it casts, descending on them. They are alive and sensitive to danger and aware enough to try and remove themselves from any threatening situation as quickly as they can.

I find this extraordinary – that something just one millimetre in length has (possibly) the same awareness of danger as I have. But that is Life. Yet it puzzles me still – it always has.

This, by a rather circuitous route, gets me to consider another aspect of Life - my feelings -my sense of loss and grief. This is certainly not a new topic for me but that doesn’t stop me from always seeking answers.

There is a difference, I believe, between mourning and grief. Grief to my mind is more than a deep sorrow. To me grief is similar to a deep knife cut. It hurts. But the wound can be bound up and healing will begin. The wound may heal but the scar will always remain.

There is also a time element associated with grief. As the poet Rainer Maria Rilke wrote about grieving and loss in his letters, “Time does not console, as people say superficially, at best it assigns things to their proper place and creates an order.” After the great stillness that accompanies death, life gradually becomes normal again. The hours and the days, that had been so disrupted by the death of my wife, Magucha, seemed to swing back, slowly, into their habitual rhythms. I had to eat; regain some regularity in my sleep; greet the world and its people. Life continues.

Mourning on the other hand has a connotation, at least as I think of it, with lamentation. Now I did lament, not outwardly but in my heart it was a different matter entirely. But no one can lament forever. Lamentation is necessarily rather brief. 

One deep lesson I have learned, however, is that death, and the realisation of death, especially of someone we love, never exceeds our strength to bare its burden. Death does after all “bookend” our life – where there is a birth, there will ultimately be a death. Just the way it is.

I am sure that through love and through death we, all of us, learn that Life entails the loss of others and the abdication of any ideas of “control” over events that we may think we have. A true awareness of this gives us a greater understanding of the pain needed to reconnect with the life we lead. We need this pain to explore, as difficult and confronting as this may be, in what specific way our loss has impacted our life. This can and possibly should be, a transformative moment. 

As always in moments of high emotion I resort to reading poetry and prose I find emotionally enriching. From a small book called “Fruit Gathering”, by the Bengali Nobel Prize winner, Rabindranath Tagore, I offer the following simply entitled “LIX” – 59 in Roman numerals:-

“When the weariness of the road is upon me, and the thirst of the sultry day; when the ghostly hours of dusk throw their shadows across my life, then I cry not for your voice only, my friend, but for your touch.

There is an anguish in my heart for the burden of its riches not given to you.

Put out your hand through the night, let me hold it and fill it and keep it; let me feel its touch along the lengthening stretch of my loneliness.”

A letter.

9^thMay, 2019.

My dearest Pardalito,

I write this message of love on what would have been your 66^thbirthday, on this level of existence. So I am not sure exactly how to proceed. 

That you are aware of my love and my grief, I am certain. That we are parted by what is called death, is self-evident. At times you seem close yet at the same time I know you are very far beyond my touch, beyond speech, beyond anything I can do except express my love.

Because love conquers all (that I truly believe) – because love transcends time, distance and death - this letter is for you, my little one.

Happy Birthday!

There are so many things I would love to tell you (but I hope and believe you are aware of them in any event); so many things I would have liked to do together with you on this day. You always loved the combination of trees and water – be it next to a stream, river or lake. And flowers. I would have liked to take you to those places we have been to, many times before.

Also it is only now that I can appreciate the amazing “green thumb” that you had. I have to work hard to get any plants or flowers to grow at all. Anything you planted and tended always thrived. I believe it was the love you expressed for all living things that the plants seem to understand and which they returned, with interest, with their beautiful flowers and scents.

And the sea. I have spent some time today, eating my lunch on the South Mole, in Fremantle. You loved that spot. Remember when we used to go there every Saturday for our lunch? We had the children with us then – Rob and Caroline. They were much younger of course, in those far off days, and used to spend much of their time clambering over the large blocks of concrete that made up the seaward side of the Mole. And chasing the seagulls! 

I miss all that, I really do.

I always loved the way the gulls soar in the currents of the euphemistically called “sea breeze”. The “Fremantle Doctor” often blows with almost gale force!! Today though, it’s quite calm – in fact a really beautiful day.

It’s always the little things that I remember – they linger - long after. Like in the mornings when I was up, always before you, preparing my breakfast and I would hear a plaintive little voice from the bedroom, “Is any one home?” or, occasionally, “Nobody loves me!” That would be the signal for me to prepare your breakfast.

I miss the sound of your voice, I really do. And, of course, your (hard earned and seldom given!) hugs and kisses too!! 

But always I return to a longing for the touch of your hand – your “pata” – in mine as we walked along, or resting on my knee when in the car and I was driving. Just that touch.

I miss that too, I really do.

I could go on, and on – but I know that you are, in that “special place”, fully aware of what is in my mind – at least that is what I fondly hope and believe.

So I will now end this letter with a poem - this is really for me, expressing, in a small way what I have to do, even though it will not easy – from a little book of poetry compiled by the late Field Marshall, Earl Wavell, called “Other Men’s Flowers”:-

Wisdom? 

“For this is Wisdom; to love, to live,

To take what Fate, or the Gods may give,

To ask no question, to make no prayer,

But to kiss the lips and caress the hair,

Speed passion’s ebb as you greet its flow, -

To have, - to hold, - and, - in time, - let go!”

            From “The Teak Forrest” by Laurence Hope.

So once again – Happy Birthday my Little One.  And thank you for all the wonderful memories.

I love and miss you. Lots.

It is still there.

I suppose it will still be there until I too die – one day! My grief that is. I know I have written about this before but we will all, all, at some stage of our life experience the searing knife cut of the parting, of the death of someone close, be it child, partner, sibling or parent. It is just part of life. If there is a beginning there needs also to be an ending. 

But this physical ending of someone close – as anyone who has experienced it will testify, lasts and lasts, and lasts. Of a certainty no one will experience my grief, just as I cannot experience theirs. It’s so personal. 

My way of coping with grief varies from day to day, even hour to hour. Sometimes I go for a longish bicycle ride; sometimes I read, either a book or poetry; other times I write; sometimes I listen to music – I like both classical and country and western. I do, however, with one or two exceptions, find it difficult to talk to others about my grief. They might not understand my way of expressing my grief, and I don’t want to belabor or otherwise impose on their emotions with my, possibly uninvited, feelings.  

I find that poetry, music, of any kind and books, fiction and some non-fiction, all contain sentiments of love and parting, either through death or in other ways. Always love, a meeting and a parting. This is not so strange as love is the most powerful emotion there is, and I don’t just mean the eruption of hormones that all experience at some stage of their life. I mean that unquestioning love, that deep knowledge, that trust, that comfortable companionship that develops with time together.

Of course the passage of this love, this knowledge, this trust, to arrive at the place of comfortable companionship is never smooth! That is not the way it works. We will all stumble on our life’s journey and we will all have misunderstandings. But that just makes the arrival point more worthwhile.

I can testify, with some feeling, that life with my wife, Magucha, was often tempestuous. But it was never dull, never boring. Her quick fire Portuguese temperament and my (relatively) slower and less emotional temperament meant that we both had to work hard at our relationship. I know she found me very frustrating at times and would spare no criticisism. She could do that but no one else was allowed to! She would fire up, almost vibrate with anger in my defense if anyone dared criticise me in her presence! I found that very touching and, in a strange way, deeply moving.

But it was all worth it.  I for one had thirty-six wonderful years with a dear friend; with a loyal companion on our journey through life; with a staunch ally; and with someone who I know loved me, deeply. Just as I loved her, just as she was, deeply loved her. 

I of course, cannot now speak for her, but I believe there was nothing, short of some criminal intent, that we would not have done for each other. I know that I would have defended her to my last breath.

This is why I, for one, have found her death so hard to bear; the apparent severing of the physical bonds, so difficult to come to terms with. I will never believe that her soul – she most definitely had a soul – died with her physical body. It is there somewhere. And I know, just know, that sometime, somewhere, we will reach out and hold hands again. 

Saudades!

Love - the greatest gift of all

I know that I have written on this subject before but it is still something that, as I get older, is of interest – grief, mourning and the cause. There is after all only one end to life. But this subject, for some reason, is studiously avoided. So while I’m not sure how to introduce this I find that grief has many facets and is very puzzling. We are, after all, mortal beings. Trying to make sense of death, however, is very hard. We will all, at some stage of our life, have cause to grieve and mourn. 

There was, in my case, the death of my wife Magucha whom I dearly loved.

Then there is, now, the harsh reality, still not fully absorbed, that my life will never be the same. Her love, her intelligence, her insight, her emotional support, her wonderfully infectious laugh, her mischievous quirky humour – is now all gone.

Then, now for me, there is the settling into a new way of life that is part acknowledgement of her memory and the way we used to do things together and part acknowledgement that from now on I’m on my own without her at my side. This is still a work in progress.

Then there is most difficult part of my day, not so strange really I suppose, difficulty in actually going to bed. I defer this necessary function until the last possible moment – 12 mid-night, even 1am. Then I might read for a few minutes before I “crash”. Once asleep I sleep well. It’s just getting the “courage” to actually go to bed. Bed is not the same now, you understand.

Then there are my own questions. But I do believe in something that is above and beyond us all to which we are “attached” by the essence that common to all living things - Life itself. Call this God if you like.  And then where did my Life come from – the same place it will return to? It makes sense to me, that death is a “transition” from this life to the next – just as a birth transitioned me from “that place” to this. This is a subject we, all of us, usually avoid, ignore or change the subject when it is introduced. Why?

Then there is the problem that we humans are unable to imagine “God”, or conceptualise “God”, so we bring “Him” down to our level and imbue “Him” with human attributes that we can understand – passion, hate, vengeance, anger, jealousy and such like. Reduced to this level we now need to propitiate “God” and get “Him” to agree to our point of view – hence the requirement for sacrifices (hopefully symbolic). Is this because humans are all supposed to be born sinful (because of Adam and Eve)? With a sacrifice, it is posited, we can attach our “sins” to whatever, or whoever is sacrificed, and so be absolved of “sin” and be “cleansed”.  

Surely, surely, any God who can be “altered” by anything men do or say, or by the sacrifice of an animal or human (even if symbolic) cannot be a perfect God? God, surely, doesn’t need a reward? God, surely, cannot be bribed? Why load, even symbolically, some poor animal or human (that God created in the first place) with the wrongs that we commit?

But personal sacrifice is a different matter. Is this what grief is – a form of personal sacrifice? That the more we love the more we grieve?

I believe there is a Spanish proverb that goes something like this: “Take what you want from Life, says God. Take it, and pay.”

And so it should be – we reap what we sow! The Law of Cause and Effect applies to all. This is justice and by my book, this is Love – maybe tough love – but Love none the less.

I like to think that this place, this planet Earth, is but a school for what comes next. We all need this school, to learn to Love – and to forgive.

All this, of course, gets me no closer to understanding what Life is; that “essence” that is present when something is “alive” and is absent when something that was “alive” is now “dead”.  

To me “God” is pure Love and understanding - this is “His” greatest gift of all, even if it is the most difficult to accept.

This is all rather circular and brings me back to the point where I started. I still grieve.

We are the Pilgrims, master; we shall go

    Always a little further; it may be

Beyond that last blue mountain barred with snow,

    Across that angry or that glimmering sea,

White on a throne or guarded in a cave

    There lives a prophet who can understand

Why men were born; but surely we are brave,

    Who take the Golden Road to Samarkand.

                                                            James Elroy Flecker

A very personal view of Life

To write from the heart; to write what I really feel is sometimes difficult. It is so personal, so private that I hesitate to put “pen to paper” as the saying goes.

For instance I don’t know where I came from – I mean did I exist, somewhere, before I was born? Will I exist, somewhere, when I die? Is there a great “collective unconscious” – some inexhaustible well of “Life”, or energy, that is drawn upon with a birth and replenished with a death?

Is this what God is?

Trying to understand all this (and please don’t correct me!) I have concluded that God is not “my” God. God is not personal, has no gender and I do not think that God cares one way or another what we do or why we do what we do. We reap what we sow – that is the Law; the only Law. This Law is immutable. This Law is Universal – literally. It is the Law of God. And like any “basic” law it is very simple. This is our “lesson” to learn in life. This great “collective unconscious” grows as we grow in understanding. This is why we were born.

This brings me, by a rather circuitous route, to grief. Grief (in my experience) is the searing, tearing, hopeless dawning knowledge that what was will no longer be. It is almost – and this may seem very unfair – that the greater the love, the greater the grief. But this is the way the “Law” is expressed – what I sow I reap. And love is a necessary, a vital part of Life. All life forms need love (nurture) and express it according to their kind and is why there is “Life” (or so I believe).

Together we were strong, Magucha and I – each supported and nurtured the other and the bond was a loving bond.

This, however, is only about my feelings, my love. What about, in my case, what about my wife Magucha? What about her love for me and her children and grandchildren? At the moment of death did she grieve that she would no longer have me at her side or see her children, her "babies" again?

All I can remember is that she turned her head – slightly away from me – and then 'ceased to live'. But what did that mean? Was she turning towards something; turning towards something she saw or sensed? Or was it as I suspect, that she turned away so that I would not see her deep (if unconscious) relief that she was now released from the bonds of life and (possibly) a recognition that her love would now return to that from whence it first drew life – and therefore help replenish it. Replenish it with her knowledge, her wisdom, her emotional strength, her insight and her love that had been gained through the harsh furnace of pain and illness that she had endured and overcome.

I rebel against and cannot contemplate the concept that at the moment of death a person is “purified” and will lead an “unblemished” life in paradise. That does not fit with the Law! When we die we take with us our whole baggage train of deeds – good, bad and indifferent. It cannot be any other way – the Law states that we reap what we sow.

All this of course begs the question of whether there is “life after death” or whether “the old soul takes the road again” and is reborn. I don't know!

It comforts me, however, to believe that Magucha’s indomitable spirit has made us all stronger because it has rejoined, has replenished, the great “collective unconscious” from whence all life is derived.

Farewell my love! Fare thee well. ’Till we meet again. Saudades.

I’ve edited this post by changing the poem:-

Emily Dickinson wrote this (with her unique punctuation) –

The Heart asks Pleasure – first

And then – Excuse from Pain –

And then – those little Anodynes

That deaden suffering –

And then – to go to sleep –

And then – if it should be

The will of its Inquisitor

The privilege to die -  

Can or should grief be medicated?

It is with dismay, bewilderment and some disbelief I read that grief has now been medicalised and been classified as a “pathological” condition. Grief is the most natural emotion or feeling experienced when someone they love dies. I mean even swans grieve (or at least show signs of loss) when their mate dies and will remain near the body of their mate.

Humans have suffered grief and have mourned since they first walked the earth – some 1.5 million years ago so why is it only now in the last few years that it is considered in the same category as a “mental illness”?

Now (as “defined” by the American Psychiatric Association – APA, in their Diagnostic and Statistical Manual version 5, DSM 5) there are Major Depressive Disorders (MDD); bereavement-related major depressions (BRMD); Later Bereavement Disorders (LBD); also - possibly - an Adjustment Disorders (AD) – adjusting to the now changed circumstances. Then there is also apparently research into the validation of intense lengthy grief to determine if this is a “pathology”, (in other words a biological “illness”) - a pathology called “prolonged” or “complicated” grief (PG or CG). Validation, I understand, rests on the risk of “future harm” – thus confusing the (possible) risk of a “illness” with an actual “illness” – if you get what I mean! Or even (gasp!) that grief has been “derailed” and become “frozen” or an “interminable” grief!   

Furthermore, apparently, those who determine these things have decided that grief should only last for two weeks. Any longer and it then becomes depression. Once it becomes depression antidepressants may then prescribed.

One is left to wonder if these “experts” have ever grieved or mourned.

It has been written that: “Grief is an automatic reaction, presumably guided by brain circuitry activated in response to a world suddenly, profoundly, and irrevocably altered by a loved one's death.”

There is one HUGE assumption in that statement; the presumption that grief is the result of brain function. But is this really the case?

In my case it was my “heart” that felt the pain of loss – a gut loss - like a wrenching, a tearing of something. My reasoning – my head – tells me that my wife is dead but it is my heart that feels it, that feels the emotion of the loss. Her love; her companionship; her emotional support; her intelligence; her sense of humour are all now absent.

And I still feel the loss – eighteen months after the “event”. But do I need to be medicated; am I depressed; am I suffering from a “frozen” or “interminable” grief?

Apparently, and totally unconsciously, I have adopted an ancient method of coping – writing and reading about grief and grieving. I certainly find this helps me.

But I know that I will always miss her.