Ode to Keats.

Season of mists and mellow white socks.
Autumn, as a child, spoke of shiny shoes and possibilities.
Walking to school, kicking shiny brown conkers and sucking blackberries off the bushes. The smell of soft leather and the excitement of a new beginning.
Today I had a sense of autumn, when the rain came there was a moment of normality. England in the rain.
The sun came and went. Huge billowy clouds, the silver lining sparkling.
It’s two days until the old git’s memorial celebration. Flowers arrive and make make cry.
Autumn in the wind, purple Michaelmas daisie, breeze in the hibiscus.
Everything is the same and totally different. .
I woke this morning and heard a wild howling. It was me. I drove to breakfast, aware I’m the woman who now sits alone, the kids who serve me hardboiled egg with extra butter, hug me and tell me I look great.
They have been trained well.
A table of six women sat in front of me. Their pert bums hanging over the edge of the wooden bench. Coffee and chat.
Laughter and comraderie.
Six women with white hair and clean trainers. Six women, with disposable incomes and partners at home pruning the privet.
I climbed back into the car and cried. It’s not that I’m feeling sorry for myself, because I don’t.
There is a strange kind of freedom to the old mans demise. I can do what I want when I want. I play the piano at three in the morning and have the radio on – loudly – at random hours. I don’t have to worry whether he’s eaten. I don’t have to give a thought to his dentures or whether he’s showered. Would I trade him back for the last years of his life. I dont think so. Sounds heartless but his last/lost years were challenging for him and me. l
The loss of him is something else altogether.
I have a huge photograph of him blown up for the memorial table. he looks handsome and cool. if I get close up I can touch his lips. I can look into his Irish eyes. I used it as a screen saver and had to take it down it was too painful.

There will be a bunch of people who loved him but
Not Danny who is in Spain.
Not Grainne who’s in France.
Not Mary from Devon.
Or Nick from Billingshurst.
Not Bonnie who’s in Edinbrough and not Gerald who is ill in Northern Ireland.
But the folk that will assemble will eat the Yorkshire Tapas of sausage rolls and Yorkshire puds.
They will drink and share stories. The kids have put money behind the bar and old friends have paid for extra pints. Not being pub people we are following the example, or should I say ‘I’ am following the lead of the dawter and her beau who frequent pubs and make friend with welders and travellers, who are kind and available for handy jobs.

Most of the time I sit in silence.
A silence that is both comforting and elegiac.
I think I have alway enjoyed quiet, although my family didn’t afford me that kind of luxury.
I sit in the garden and watch time go by.
I wake at 3.00 a.m, sit up in bed, an wonder at my ability to do nothing.
It’s like I am sitting on the outside of everybody’s life. I have no need to join in, comment or participate. So this is grieving, I am told, but how long can I play that card?
I use it for the department of Welfare and Pensions.
I use it at the bank.
I use my ancient acting skills on the phone to anyone who annoys me.
But, at the moment, I prefer my own compnay. I do not have the energy for anybody else.
That’s grieving I am told.

So now, as the house starts to fill up with mourners, I’m having to adjust.
Barking dogs and scaredy cats. Hungry mouths and other peoples grief.
The process of life.
I had a healer once who told me ‘First the person has got to want to live’
So the first stage in healing is the need to get well.
Well I think I want to, I don’t think I want to die yet. I think I want to live, but it’s shaping a new way.
I have had a huge life with, and without, the old git.
Now I’ve got to be bothered again.
Autumn helps with it’s smell of opportunity and fruitfulness.