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.

Ideal

Just in case no one knew this fact, I will repeat and emphasise that I really like poetry! The rhyme and rhythm the poets use deeply resonates with me. This was understood by ancient troubadours travelling from village to village to tell their stories or bring news. They used rhyme and rhythm to help them recall what they wanted to tell. Also rhyming poetry has a "beat" similar to that of the human heart, hence the "resonating" effect on peoples everywhere. 

So when music and poetry combine (most song lyrics are poetic) there is an emotional connect. At least I find it so. Now some years ago I heard the songs composed by Francesco Paolo Tosti (1846 – 1916). An Italian by birth his songs became so popular in Victorian England that he became a British citizen in 1906. He was actually knighted by King Edward VII in 1908 for his services to the arts. Eventually he returned to Italy in 1913 and died in Rome in 1916 (my reference is Wikipedia).

As I said, when music and poetry combine I find that, without being too melodramatic, I am "transported" to another dimension. And this simple and gentle Tosti song, Ideale, with the lyrics shown below, certainly transports me back to times in my life with Magucha. (It has been recorded by many artists but I prefer the old, 1951 version, with piano accompaniment, sung by Beniamino Gigli. It’s on YouTube) 

Remember that this is a translation and the original Italian poetic form has not translated well I don’t believe. I still love the sentiment expressed.

Ideale  (Ideal) – a translation from the original Italian.

I followed you like a rainbow of peace

along the paths of heaven;

I followed you like a friendly torch

in the veil of darkness,

and I sensed you in the light, in the air,

in the perfume of flowers,

and the solitary room was full

of you and your radiance.

 

Absorbed by you, I dreamed a long time

of the sound of your voice,

and the earth’s every anxiety, every torment

I forgot in that dream.

Come back dear ideal, for an instant

to smile at me again,

and in your face will shine for me 

a new dawn.

 

Lyric: by Carmelo Erico. Music: by Francesco Paolo Tosti in 1882.

 

You see, again, without being too melodramatic, Magucha was my "Ideal".

Sometimes.

Sometimes I may read or hear something and some passage I turn to or listen to will trigger a memory. It may be a memory of some time far back in my youth when still in Durban or, frequently nowadays, a more recent event of my life with Magucha. 

These are not always sad – often quite funny memories, recalling something relating to Magucha’s quirky sense of humour. But dates of celebration – birthdays, anniversaries – always bring some poignant remembrances. And what would have been her 68^th birthday is coming up soon – 9^th May, also as it happens, Mother’s Day this year.

I know that Magucha was no saint but with all the energy generated in her small body she seemed to shed a kindly light, like a glow. I truly believe that most people who came in contact with her benefited in some way. She was that kind of person.

Likewise I know the old saying that "absence makes the heart grow fonder" and after over five years of Magucha’s "absence" maybe that is true - that I now gloss over her all too human frailties. 

But I loved her you see and it has been said that love is blind. Maybe it is. Because I’m sure she ignored or at least learned to live with my, again, all too human frailties! 

As always I turn to poetry to express what I feel. I’ve said it many times before that poets seem to find the words that pierce the heart – certainly my heart. I miss so many aspects of our 36 years together. Little things, like what she referred to as her "pata" (Portuguese for paw), her little hand in mine as we walked or resting on my knee when I was driving. Just that simple close contact. I have now lost the sounds of both her voice and her infectious laugh – they have gone. But I can still see her eyes when I look at one of the many photographs I have of her. It was her eyes that attracted me when I first saw her. What attracts is indescribable – it just "is".

Quite a while back I came across this poem, from an anonymous composer, and it certainly resonated with me – it seemed to be very true. At least sometimes!

I heard your voice in the wind today.

I heard your voice in the wind today

And I turned to see your face;

The warmth of the wind caressed me

As I stood silently in place.

 

I felt your touch in the sun today

As its warmth filled the sky;

I closed my eyes for your embrace

And my spirit soared high.

 

I saw your eyes in the window pane

As I watched the falling rain;

It seemed as each raindrop fell

It quietly said your name.

 

I held you close in my heart today

It made me feel complete;

You may have died … but you are not gone

You will always be a part of me.

 

As long as the sun shines….

The wind blows ….

The rain falls ….

You will live on inside of me forever

For that is all my heart knows.

 

                                    Unknown  

 

We are just sojourners.

As always at this time of year many memories come flooding in. And I know, all too well, that they do fade over time even as I grope for more clarity. They lose much of their urgency and potency. This is a blessing I believe, bestowed on us mortals, so that all our days are not darkened by grief and other past matters.

 

For this I am grateful. But, as always, there is a consequence. If I want to recall the sound of Magucha’s voice and her sometimes (deliberately) mangled English – what we all knew as “Magucha speak”; if I want to recall the sound of her infectious laugh; if I want to recall the feeling of her “pata” (Portuguese for “paw”) - what she called her little hand - as it sought mine while we walked side by side, or resting on my knee while driving. I can’t. Those memories are lost to me now. 

 

But then, and maybe this is a good thing, I now can’t recall the sound of her angry voice either! Magucha had a quick fire Portuguese (Latin) temperament and was not easily crossed. And she didn’t mind who knew it!!

 

Also it matters not who we are, what we do or where we live, we are all, I do believe, just sojourners in this place. Or, if you prefer, wayfarers, on our journey through life.  

 

We meet wonderful people, as sojourners or wayfarers, and maybe fall in love and marry, as I did – rather, as we did - Magucha and I. For in us all there is a hunger for love, there is also pity in love, there is a power in love but also in a strange way, a kind of fear. To love someone needs courage. What will love bring? That is the unknown and the unknowable. Life is a grand adventure for the heart (always thought of as the seat of Love and many other emotions) but the end and what that entails is the mystery. I, however, also believe that love is eternal and is beyond knowing.

 

Behind all this philosophical conjecture the perennial, perplexing, questions remain – what is it that is present when someone or something is alive but absent when that same person or something dies? And why? What is the purpose of Life? We will never know of course, as it is beyond our understanding but, and I repeat but, I cannot believe that Life (however defined) appeared, ab initio, from stardust.

 

If, as is postulated, Life – or the bacteria from which Life, as we know it, is believed to have evolved – was deposited, carried by stardust, on the newly formed planet Earth over 3 billion years ago, the question remains, where did THAT bacteria come from?

 

I think I have always been an optimistic person and never been cast down for too long. Always have I tried to greet what Life has dealt me with a “what now?” rather that a  “why me?” It seems to work. For me at least. But sometimes it is hard. 

 

I have dreams and I can dream, can’t I, that in the “undiscovered country” to which we will all eventually travel, I will, again, see those whom I have loved? 

 

So, as always, it is poetry that I turn to for solace or, maybe, a better way to express the way I feel. Therefore, with no excuse or apology I offer the following by Max Ehrmann.  He, I do believe, must have experienced deep grief to write something as poignant as this:-

The Dead Wife

 

O thou whose lips I’ve pressed in hush of night,

Whose tiny hand has trembled in my own

Beneath the talking boughs the wind has blown,

Hid snuggly from the evening’s starry light –

O thou, my all, why hast thou quit my sight?

Thy straggling curls will no more touch my cheek,

Thy voice and smile are gone where’er I seek

With my watchful eyes and my strong passion’s might.

If all my soul’s deep grief thou now dost see,

If thou dost know the lonely inward tears

My heart hath shed along the saddened years,

Break through thy silent doors to life and me,

Who hourly watch and wait with trembling fears,

Lest in the realm of death I know not thee.

Dreaming.

We all dream – day-dreams or those scarcely remembered fragments of dreams while asleep. And while dreams obviously have a purpose, no one is quite sure what they are, or where they “come from”. I’m not talking about “nightmares” – they seem to be of a different order entirely.

It matters not – the fact is that we do dream and many derive comfort from what they “see” or “experience” while dreaming.  Similarly we all indulge in reverie at times during the day – thinking of what was or what might be. Like all dreams, however, these are impossible to control – they “arrive” seemingly without invitation.

But in the words of the song, from the movie, South Pacific, “If you don’t have a dream, how you gonna have a dream come true?”

But reality always seems to intrude and draw one’s attention to what is termed “reality”. But I wonder if it really is reality?

What is the “mind”, presumably the origin of dreams? A good example of the power of the mind is that strange phenomenon known as the “placebo effect”. This is when a patient is told the medication (a sugar pill) or fake operation (yes those happen) is the real deal and strangely people seem to benefit and even get better.

How and why? Know one has an answer.

As some readers of my ramblings might recall, I find that poets often expresses in verse what might take me a whole page to say in prose. Poetry is almost always about the human condition – love, disappointment, death and life’s tribulations in general.

The anonymous poet who writes under the name “Atticus” often has a short verse about many matters that are driven by the mind – what a person thinks and the power of thought. And some of his verse reminds me of my life with Magucha. Take this one for instance:-

“She was powerful

not because she wasn’t scared

but because

she went on strongly

despite the fear.” 

That fits Magucha perfectly – I never ever saw her frightened. Not ever.  

I’m not sure if she was ever told this but I truly believe that all, yes ALL, girls should be told this:-

“You are a bird,

my girl,’

her father said,

“shake the water from your feathers

spread those mighty wings

and fly.”

Also, in Magucha’s case:

“Her courage was her crown

and she wore it like a queen.”

Then:-

“The bravest thing

she ever did

was to stay alive

each day.”

And finally, because Magucha lived with such a precarious medical condition for the entire time I knew her, about thirty-eight years, I always tried to ease the weight of the burdens she carried. I hope I succeeded. 

Atticus wrote this, which is what, as best I could, I always tried to do:-

“He shielded 

her heart

like a flame

in a storm –

his back 

against the wind.”

As always the dreams remain and often surface with extraordinary vividness completely “out of the blue”. They are just there!

Always

A bold statement I know. But I will always remember Christmas Day 2015. Magucha was in hospital and, obviously, very, very ill. As you can see from the photo taken on that day, the valiant smile, the hollow eyes, and the “look” needed no words. They said it all.

I don’t think I am being melodramatic when I say that I think she knew the end was not far away. That the “uninvited visitor” would soon arrive to accompany her on her final journey to that “undiscovered country”. She always showed great courage and was never afraid of anything, least of all death.

Even though all this happened four years ago being with her in hospital every day until she died is something I will never forget and is a time I will always treasure. It was a very special time for me. 

Again I don’t think I will be revealing anything that others would not have done in similar circumstances when I say that I used to get to the Hospital at about 10.00 every morning and, when she was in the “high care” ward (she was in a single bed room), not in Intensive Care, one of the first things she wanted me to do was to help her shower – even though the nurses were there to do just that. That was my job, you see! She was very weak and needed assistance to get out of bed and into the shower where she would sit in the plastic chair provided while I helped her wash (later, because she became so weak, it was only a “bed wash”). And I always brought in a clean nightie for her to change into. Sometimes she also wanted me to feed her, which I found very touching. 

I loved her you see. What else could I do? 

Then sometimes, if she was in the mood, I would read to her – one of her favourite stories was “My family and other animals”, by Gerald Durrell. But that never lasted very long – she used to get very tired and fall into a quiet sleep. 

As some would know I am always moved by poetry – by the poet’s choice of words, their cadence and rhyming. In my mind I’ve always associated this poem with Magucha because of the difficulty I had in convincing her to leave Portugal and marry me. Our cultures were quite different and I spoke no Portuguese (apart from some swear words she taught me!) and while she was more or less fluent in English her use of words was unique (some she made up to “fit” what she wanted to say) and her odd pronunciation (which I’m sure was at times quite deliberate) was very much what became widely known as “Magucha speak”! Once married we both had a deal of adjusting to do but after a while things evened out and in the end I think we learned to work well together.

This is for her.

The Strange Music 

“Other loves may sink and settle, other loves may

loose and slack,

But I wander like a minstrel with a harp upon

 his back,

Though the harp be on my bosom, though I finger

and I fret,

Still, my hope is all before me: for I cannot play it

yet.

In your strings is hid a music that no hand hath e’er

let fall,

In your soul is sealed a pleasure that you have not

known at all;

Pleasure subtle as your spirit, strange and slender as 

your frame,

Fiercer than the pain that folds you, softer than 

your sorrow’s name.

Not as mine, my soul’s anointed, not as mine the

rude and the light

Easy mirth of many faces, swaggering pride of song

and fight; 

Something stranger, something sweeter, something

waiting you afar,

Secret as your stricken senses, magic as your sorrows

are.

But on this, God’s harp supernal, stretched but to

be stricken once,

Hoary time is a beginner, Life a bungler, Death a 

dunce. 

But I will not fear to match them – no, by God, I

will not fear,

I will learn you, I will play you and the stars stand

still to hear.”

                                                                        G. K. Chesterton

That last verse has special meaning for me:-

“But on this, God’s harp supernal, stretched but to

be stricken once,

Hoary time is a beginner, Life a bungler, Death a 

dunce. 

But I will not fear to match them – no, by God, I

will not fear,

I will learn you, I will play you and the stars stand

still to hear.”

I just hope the stars heard.

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.”

Life

It is strange how the human condition is perceived and recorded. Not necessarily the dry APA (American Psychiatric Association) style required for “research papers” presented by neuroscientists or psychiatrists in their appropriate “Journals” but the more human kind - nearer the “heart” of humanity. The best of these are good novelists and especially, in my estimation, poets.

The human conditions or emotions most recorded in poetry, song and novels are, I believe, love, birth, life and death – those important milestones in anyone’s life.

As I have stated many times before, poetry affects me in more ways than I can possibly say. Poetry seems to touch some hidden part of my soul. There have always been poets – often, in olden times, troubadours bringing news and songs to far flung villages. And it was discovered very early on that the best way to remember long stories was to render them into verse. The rhyme and rhythm was easier to recall.

The rhythm is often associated with the beating of the human heart and a good reciter of poetry seems to capture that as he or she reads from the volume or recites from memory. This resonates with the listener.

I can only read in English so everything I read is either originally written in that language or translated. Whether it is the flexibility and the vast vocabulary of that language I’m not sure but there is a massive treasure trove of English poetry.  

I usually include a verse or two from a poem that has made an impression on me but now I attach below, the whole of what I think is my favourite poem written by a man I greatly admire and who suffered greatly – the American, Henry Longfellow. He married twice but both wives died – the first after a miscarriage in 1831 and his beloved second wife died an awful death, burned in a tragic accident in their home in 1861, a death from which he never really recovered. He died in Cambridge, Massachusetts, at the age of 75 in 1882. A great poet and a great man.

The Day is Done

The day is done, and the darkness

Falls from the wings of Night,

As a feather is wafted downward

From an eagle in his flight.

I see the lights of the village

Gleam through the rain and the mist,

And a feeling of sadness comes o'er me

That my soul cannot resist:

A feeling of sadness and longing,

That is not akin to pain,

And resembles sorrow only

As the mist resembles the rain.

Come, read to me some poem,

Some simple and heartfelt lay,

That shall soothe this restless feeling,

And banish the thoughts of day.

Not from the grand old masters,

Not from the bards sublime,

Whose distant footsteps echo

Through the corridors of Time.

For, like strains of martial music,

Their mighty thoughts suggest

Life's endless toil and endeavor;

And to-night I long for rest.

Read from some humbler poet,

Whose songs gushed from his heart,

As showers from the clouds of summer,

Or tears from the eyelids start;

Who, through long days of labor,

And nights devoid of ease,

Still heard in his soul the music

Of wonderful melodies.

Such songs have power to quiet

The restless pulse of care,

And come like the benediction

That follows after prayer.

Then read from the treasured volume

The poem of thy choice,

And lend to the rhyme of the poet

The beauty of thy voice.

And the night shall be filled with music,

And the cares, that infest the day,

Shall fold their tents, like the Arabs,

And as silently steal away.

                        Henry Wadsworth Longfellow

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."

Silence was pleased

I always seem to be drawn to poetry for some reason – I can always find something to suit my mood.

While Milton is not a poet I refer to very often I do like some of his works. My copy of the Poetical Works of John Milton (9^thDecember 1608 – 8^thNovember 1674 – by which stage he was totally blind) is an 1889 edition once owned by my paternal grandfather. So it is a treasured volume.

Also I certainly have not read all the 222 pages that comprise John Milton’s epic poem “Paradise Lost” there is one small part of Book IV that I found and which has always touched me in a way that is difficult to explain.

“Now came still evening on, and in twilight gray

Had in her sober livery all things clad;

Silence accompanied; for beast and bird,

They to their grassy couch, these to their nests

Were slunk, all but the wakeful nightingale,

She all night long her amorous descant sung;

Silence was pleased: how glow’d the firmament

With living sapphires: Hesperus that led 

The starry host, rode brightest, till the moon

Rising is clouded majesty, at length

Apparent queen, unveiled her peerless light

And o’er the dark her silver mantle threw.”

It’s just two lines that somehow deeply affect me:-

“She all night long her amorous descant sung;

Silence was pleased:”

Especially I love the phrase, “Silence was pleased”.

It pleases me!

In relation to Milton’s blindness he wrote the following which I also find quite moving.

On His Blindness

When I consider how my light is spent

Ere half my days in this dark world and wide,

And that one talent which is death to hide

Lodg'd with me useless, though my soul more bent

To serve therewith my Maker, and present

My true account, lest he returning chide,

"Doth God exact day-labour, light denied?"

I fondly ask. But Patience, to prevent

That murmur, soon replies: "God doth not need

Either man's work or his own gifts: who best

Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best. His state

Is kingly; thousands at his bidding speed

And post o'er land and ocean without rest:

They also serve who only stand and wait."

“They also serve who only stand and wait” – again a line that resonates with me. 

                                                                        

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!