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!

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.

 

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 -