A special day.

Today – the last day of August – is always a special day for me. It is the anniversary of our wedding. Magucha and I. That was in 1979 – so today would have been our fortieth. 

Not long, I suppose, in the great scheme of things but long enough for there to be many memories. Fond memories. Memories of deep friendship; memories of close companionship; memories of quiet evenings together when each knew that they were loved. That is the important part.  The love.

I try not to dwell on the end – I mean death does come to us all. The “uninvited visitor” calls at His own time and place. I like to dwell, rather, on the strength we each seemed to give to the other and on the many important, if seemingly relatively minor, events that shaped our life together.

But above all I recall Magucha’s strength of character and her courage. She was utterly fearless and met all that Life (and the Fates) threw at her with a courage and fortitude that I found inspiring. 

She never complained. Each day, every event was a new adventure and I never once, not ever, heard her ask “Why me?” Her slowly declining health was certainly a sore trial for all concerned but she always met each day with a smile of good cheer and always with plans afoot. She seemed always to shine a kindly light, which was appreciated by all and drew many into her orbit.

I know that Magucha has gone on ahead, that she is out of sight. But, to me, she is still there and I know, just know, that one-day we will reach out and hold hands again.

I am certainly not the only one who holds such beliefs – many over the millennia have said the same. So I don’t think I am all that wrong!

As anyone who reads what I write will know, I have always loved poetry.  Now the poet who writes under the pseudonym  of Atticus seems to capture my mood very well, and with some humour:

“Angels must be warm to fly –

That’s why she always 

Slept in socks.”

And it is true Magucha always (well nearly always) started off with very loose socks, inevitably discarded during the night!

But this poem, by the Bengali poet Rabindranath Tagore, just titled 87, from a little booklet called Gitanjali always affects me:

“In desperate hope I go and search for her in all the corners of my room; 

I find her not.

My house is small and what once has gone from it can never be regained.

But infinite is thy mansion, my Lord, and seeking her I have come to thy door.

I stand under the golden canopy of thine evening sky and I lift my eager eyes to thy face.

I have come to the brink of eternity from which nothing can vanish – no hope, no happiness, no vision of a face seen through tears.
Oh, dip my emptied life into that ocean, plunge it into the deepest fullness. Let me for once feel that lost sweet touch in the allness of the universe."