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. 

A wife makes a home

There is no doubt about it, as far as I am concerned. After nearly a year since my wife died, I definitely agree with the old saying that a (loving) wife makes a home.

Women have the ability, that I think most men don’t have, to make a place “homely” – very difficult to define. There is a warmth, a comfort, an ability to arrange furniture, photographs on a dresser, how the cushions are arranged on a sofa, the tidiness in the kitchen, the look of a made up bed – little things – to make a place look “nice”. Certainly all different from the way that I do it on my own.

I am a reasonably tidy person but I don’t always see the incongruity of the way I do things. I mean I use one plate, one bowl, one cup, one glass, one spoon, one fork, one knife – these are kept on the drip tray after they have been washed. Why put them away in the cupboard or drawer? I’m just going to take them out again! But I do make the bed every day! I sleep on alternate sides for a week at a time - then I change the sheets. Aren't I good!!

And I do (really) close the lid of the toilet (water closet? - whatever) after use!

The house is clean (sort of). I do dust and I do use the vacuum cleaner but I am not regular in their use. I clean when it becomes obvious – not a really good practice!!

And cooking – most people’s taste buds would not have evolved enough to appreciate my cooking! Very basic - healthy with lots of vegetables and fish - but no “frills”. Not cooked with the loving care that my wife applied. I cook because I have to eat. Still, I am in good health apart from some age related problems (a few aches here and there) but I am taking no medication at all. Which is good for 76. No?

But still, without a wife (after 36 years of a close and very emotionally rewarding marriage) the house is most certainly not the same. It is a place to sleep and eat but not really a home like it was.

Oh well! Not much I can do about it is there? Life carries on regardless.

Note: I am going to add a big one - one that I, at least, didn't miss until it wasn't  there - social contacts. Women (and my wife in particular was very good at this) are good at generating and maintaining social contacts.
I am not!!

Uncompromised Love.

Love has always been the driving force of life. And by “love” I do not just mean passion though that obviously plays a part. I am talking about the love between friends; between husband and wife (or the equivalent partners) that develops after many years of life together; between parents and their children and love for Humanity. That kind of love – which IS uncompromised.

The power of love is recognized in poetry, in song, in novels and literature, in art and in opera - it is the power that drives us all. This cannot be just “chemicals in the brain” or hormonal juices, there is much more to it than that!

Now I loved my wife in a manner that I find difficult to portray in a meaningful way to others. Tenderness – yes; closeness – yes; deep understanding – yes; ability to communicate without necessarily speaking – yes; trust – yes; talking about problems – yes; sharing – yes; respect – yes, all this and more that I do not have the words to explain.

While neither of us was in anyway saintly, there was a fulfillment that seemed to make the two of us stronger in our own way. Magucha was an amazingly strong person, not physically strong (she was very small in stature) but emotionally and mentally she was spring steel. Her resilience, which defied all that the world could throw at her, astonished everyone with whom she came in contact.

This strength – which I, for one, found quite inspiring – is epitomized by the following poem by Alfred Noyes, and this is for her:

The Anvil

Stand like a beaten anvil, when thy dream

            Is laid upon thee, golden from the fire.

Flinch not, though heavily through that furnace-gleam

            The black forge-hammers fall on thy desire.

Demoniac giants round thee seem to loom.

‘Tis but the world-smiths heaving to and fro.

Stand like a beaten anvil. Take the doom 

            Their ponderous weapons deal thee, blow on blow.

Needful to truth as dew-fall to the flower

            Is this wild wrath and this implacable scorn.

For every pang, new beauty, and new power,

            Burning blood-red shall on thy heart be born.

Stand like a beaten anvil. Let earth’s wrong

Beat on that iron and ring back in song.