A Life in Wales

Frail

Like staring into a mid-December sun I am as feeble as the light it emits. So long gone from here and that was never my intention. Now, whole chunks of my life remain heartbreakingly treacherous so much so that I can not completely recount them for you.

 I left the blog at a time of an elderly parent’s slide into life threatening critical illness. At the best of times I can barely navigate my own ill health - there was then hers and the nurses the intensive care the doctors the surgeons the surgeries the infections the blood clots the scans the procedures the nursing home the bills and there in the maelstrom was me – the only child an ocean away trying to orchestrate some sense into madness while remaining too ill to travel.

 After this was all to pass it would have perhaps been wise to declare the remainder of the year a holiday but I have never been that kind to myself. I instead enrolled on a four month long meditation intensive. Sound peaceful? It wasn’t. When the cocoon begins to unravel what redemption is there from your own self? Lunacy! It is not possible, as least as far as I know, to stand naked in atonement when there is no redemptive state to be found within regardless of whether or not you have touched the face of God.

 Thus began where I am…… and my questioning of faith both lost and found.

Into Great Silence

 

I didn’t know that the study of Presence would lead me into such a place of silence, away from words. Yet it has while you have wondered where is she and when is she coming back.

 
But I’m right here however silent, watching as the world rages on.

At Year's End

The few posting I’ve been able to make here this year are another signpost of just how absent my energy has been. I’m not up for much. It’s taken a week to put up a small Christmas tree and even that is not completely decorated and I doubt it will be finished before it’s time to take it down. Even a year ago I would have rushed, or tried to rush, to have the flat decorated for Christmas and the fridge stocked for the holidays. Now I know I’m not going to finish even half of what I set out to. Oddly, I am at peace with this.

This autumn I became acutely aware of just how little energy I have left and how little time I have left to spend it. For some reason in accepting the limited I’ve had a glimpse of the limitless. I made changes, positive ones. Some of the changes I know have come as a surprise or shock to people in my daily life. But to those in my circle, to those who have really been listening to me over the past year, they understood, applauded and accepted the changes. But not everyone heard me and some continued to demand my time or energy even after I said I have nothing left in me to give you.

If I have nothing left in me how can I give to others? That makes sense, doesn’t it? Even this replenishment of self is part of process, a healing process and a return to flow. Why do we spend so much of our lives struggling against flow? Trying to do more and be more so our lives have “purpose” when really, our only purpose is to simply be ourselves. And right now who I am is a woman who is disabled who is working on being healthy. Reality is far from perfect but as I am learning: healthy does not necessarily mean physically cured of disease. Even this has become a positive touchstone in my life.

There are a great many positive touchstones in my life at the present. In each moment, by day and by night, I find myself immensely happy and celebrating being here. However, “here” doesn’t look like it once did, nor how I ever imagined it would look – but then I never imagined things could be this good. Funny how that works, isn’t it.

Streams of Silence

I’m still here, however slight. I have been living in the long months of utter exhaustion, surgery, anaesthesia, attempts at recovering and then the realising I will never be able to go back to the life I once had – the life before long term illness. For the first time in 12 years I may finally be coming to terms with that.

There may be no more Bethells beach, Mount Baker, or Kilimanjaro for me. Not in this lifetime, at least. I may never live my dream to walk the pilgrimage route across France and on across Spain, to Santiago de Compostela. I can only hold on to that dream as that: a dream. At one time I had the ability to follow dreams and make them real. Now I walk much slower through what is real.

I have to admit that I am not one to lightly give up on dreams and goals. So I am making compromises and holding them in a different place inside me now. Meanwhile I try not to look backwards at my abilities of 12 years ago, or 6 years ago, or even a year ago when I could accomplish more than I can today. The more my life becomes narrowed by illness the more I am finding what counts, while seeming small, is actually limitless – because what is left, after all, is something so precious it is without price – it is this – this precious present moment.

Gone Missing

For a month or more I have gone missing in that narrow place. That place which is ruled by illness infection antibiotics fever chills pain and the rest of the jailers. They dictate and control like a totalitarian regime. Wales moved from spring into summer while I wondered what happened to my weeks to my months to my year. For that time I had no space for wishes but then sometimes there was a hint of life and I wished then only for something shiny to hang my hope on, if only for a moment so I might know that this too has an end and that there are places beyond the narrow one.

The fevers brought on vivid dreams of bamboo forests and medieval cathedrals. In fevers I challenged duality to reason all is one – every living breathing moving particle is one is the absolute. Duality is an illusion, I argued. It must be if this narrow place contains the infinite. Only in a fever do I understand gravity and advanced physics. Only then do I understand that which is shiny, that which hope hangs on, is the shimmering effervescent realm of continual creation.

Now, without fever, to remember this.

Of Longitude

For a month now I’ve been listening to the shipping forecast and watching the shipping charts. I’ve been following the journey of one ship in particular. It has a German name, is flying a Japanese flag, is being piloted by a Greek company, and its last port was on the east coast of the US. Somewhere in that ship, in a large wooded crate, are the rest of my belongings.

In 1989 my then partner and I left the home we’d been living in for 8 years. It was the longest I’d ever lived in one place and leaving it set off a wave of panic attacks. I need solid ground under me and there is nothing solid about leaving the comfort of the familiar. Maybe in some larger plan there was sense to the following years because since then I’ve moved on a near yearly basis, sometimes twice a year. Rarely did I migrate in the same direction, or in the same country, or continent.

On each of these moves I shed more of my belongings, sometimes with regret. When my walkabouts reached global proportions what was left of my things went into storage. It’s been more than a dozen years since I’ve seen them and since then they’ve seen the inside of two storage facilities, a friend’s barn, and a friend’s cellar. I miss these things. Yes, I know they are “just” things – but what remains of them is more than memories. They are part of what I lost some time ago – the comfort of the familiar.

Chart courtesy of www.sailwx.info

The Grieving Place

I keep pacing back and forth in the grieving place. My head hurts and I need to do the washing up. This morning I ate my scrambled eggs with a spoon because all four forks were in the sink. There’s an assignment due next week and I can’t find the words to put to paper. I can’t find my watch either.

We had no unfinished business. She knew I loved her as my own mother and I knew she loved me as another daughter. That was her way and she helped me to find mine. What more could anyone ask but for that respect, that recognition, and that love. I am so fortunate, and I know it.

Even now when look inside I am full, not empty. Is grief supposed to be like that? When I hear the small still voice within I find great joy in that moment, even in the moments in the grieving place.

A Tired Heart

The funeral is this afternoon. I’ve been feeling down, for days. But this morning I am well and truly depressed. I wish I wasn’t going to her funeral. I wish I didn’t have to. Instead I wish I could call her up and have a good chat. Or go over for a cuppa. Instead, I am inside, waiting. The blinds are drawn. It is very dark both inside and out. Heavy rains.

I can’t concentrate on my work. Maybe I’ll write a letter to her. We always had a good laugh. Her smile was as wide as Wales. She never remembered to wear her teeth. Hate those teeth she’d say. Once they popped out in the middle of the co-op. We’d gone shopping. The teeth went flying and my elderly friend caught them in mid-flight like an acrobat. Takes practice she’d say. We’d laugh all the more.

The funeral isn’t for another 6 hours. What can I do now.

Shrove Tuesday

The cats could care less that it’s Pancake Day. They like Purina not pancakes and have anyhow spent the entire day asleep on the sofa. From hour to hour the view is much the same. Lulu chooses the back of the sofa, while Bella prefers the seat – and always under the window. They rarely vary. I love their habits. Well, most of them.

I know shrove comes from the word shrive, to confess one’s sins or to receive absolution. I have no sins to confess this day. Instead, today has been one of deep gratitude and deep silence. It was a year ago that I moved into this flat. It was a year ago last week that I was told, while in the council office, that I had been awarded the flat. I tried not to cry happy tears. But there were tears – tears of relief. And now a year later I am granted secure tenancy….. for as long as I live.

Today there were no tears. Today has been soft light without shadows, and as always the ticking of the clock in the hallway…. perhaps these simple graces are my absolution for years of wandering.

Hibernation

I’m still here. Winter, time of hibernation, isn’t it. Mine started early. Flu knocked me for six. Weeks of it. Then some dark days. Never before in my life have I been so happy to see the backside of the holidays. Usually they are a time of great celebration for me what with my birthday, Christmas, and the New Year all lined up in a row like three peas in a pod. But this year, for reasons beyond me, I didn’t celebrate until they were over.

And since then? Timeless and great beauty in a winter-sleep. My life grows, catching me sometimes in awe and in wonder. I love how things unfold. Everything happening as it is. Perfect. Even in days of difficulties. Or days of absolute joy.

There are: ideas, new projects, writing, photos, articles, journals, train schedules, and far too many time zones between me and those I love.

Spring is arriving and….. I am waking……. with more to tell you….. but first tell me – are you still there?