And Now?

Anniversaries keep coming round don’t they? Yep – 42 years ago today I married Maria Augusta Bandeira de Lima – better known to all by her nickname – Magucha. Now being married to someone from a different culture and language base has its challenges. And then throw into the mix the different personalities – me, tall (1.96 metres and 97kgs) and relatively phlegmatic, and she, tiny (1.52 metres and 50kgs), very pretty with a quick fire, Portuguese (Latin) temperament and sparks would often light up the environment!

 

She loved flowers, pretty things, small things, bright colours and mirrors – there are mirrors all over the house that I have left in position, not having the heart to move them. But then she also had a kind heart, was very loving with an innate sense of justice. She also was indomitable and absolutely fearless - I never saw her afraid of anything.

 

Another strange thing, which I call to mind, is that I never saw her cry. I’m sure she did – in fact when her father died, twenty years ago, I’m certain of it, but not in my presence. In that respect she was very private.

 

Being my wife, she could criticize me and point out my many faults but if anyone else tried that within her range of hearing she would fire up, almost vibrate with anger, and defend me with all her considerable powers.  I loved her for that. 

 

You see – I truly know that, if the situation had ever arisen, I would have defended her to my last breath. I have absolutely no doubts that she would have done the same for me.

 

Finally, however, with all her health problems and the pain she suffered, the “uninvited visitor” called and she went with him to that “Undiscovered country from whose bourne no traveller returns”.

 

She was only 62 years old when she died five and a half years ago on 21 January 2016. We were together for just over 36 years - and I miss her more than I can tell.

 

As always when my emotions run high I turn to poetry to best express how I feel. I offer the following which I have used before but it still resonates with me:-

  

  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. 

             Robert Louis Stevenson

The kindly years.

The years – time – sometimes deals kindly with us humans. I certainly feel privileged to have lived my seventy-eight years with the love bestowed on me, for my good health (thus far!) and the emotional strength I have garnered over the years. For that I am truly grateful. 

There are negatives of course. Life never progresses at a steady pace on a smooth, straight path from one end the other. On the positive side one meets many wonderful fellow wayfarers on one’s journey through life. Some, one learns to love, and they become very close, even as a wife (as in my case) or one’s children; others become good friends, others again, are acquaintances. But one learns from them all.

On the negative side is the inescapable fact that people die. And of course a whole raft of customs, religious “rules and regulations”, have developed around the process of dying and the aftermath. But is death truly the end?

As always in moments of intense emotion I seek solace in poetry. Poets more often than not seem to be better attuned to the emotional aspect of the human condition. 

This from 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 loves 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.

                        

Maybe it will be as Kahlil Gibran wrote in “The Prophet”:

“A little while, a moment to rest upon the wind, and another woman shall bear me”.

Or, to quote John Masefield again, from  “A Creed”:

“I held that when a person dies

     His soul returns again to earth;

Arrayed in some new flesh-disguise

     Another mother gives him birth.

With sturdier limbs and brighter brain

The old soul takes the roads again.”

So what will it be? Is Magucha’s soul, after “a moment to rest upon the wind” ready to be “arrayed in some new flesh-disguise” and so grace the world with her love, her indomitable spirit, her courage and feistiness and so be a loyal comrade to someone else?

It pleases me to believe that, one day, this will be so.