Weary

[D]o not be afraid to love, to open your heart to the world, even if it means risking heartbreak. For the sweetness of love far outweighs the bitterness of loss. And when the inevitable pain comes, find solace in the beauty of the world around you, in the simple pleasures of life, in the memories of love and laughter. For even in the midst of sorrow, there is still beauty to be found.    ~ Louise Erdrich

I am preparing for Rob's scattering on October 28th. He requested a particular forest near our French house. Michael and Isaac have arrived. Brendan, Jane, and Seb arrive late Friday night, and Gill, Derek, and Wilder arrive late Saturday. My quiet house will become a madhouse with toys scattered everywhere. I don't care. 

As there are not enough beds, I'll slip over to Mary's. 

I am still astonished that I am 75. How did I become so old? I grow more and more dependent on others' words as I cannot find my own. I'm a big fat mess inside and I tell myself to move slowly one step at a time. I flit from one activity to another.  Some form of expression is vital... Helen Luke writes. 

I will try to pick up my writing again but I resist. 

The tragedy of old age is not old but young. Inside this aging body lies a heart still as curious, still as hungry, still as full of desire as it was in its youth. I sit by the window watching the world go by, feeling like a stranger in a foreign country, unable to connect with the outside world, and yet, within me the same fire burns that once thought it could conquer the world. And the real tragedy is that the world remains so far and so elusive, a place I have never been able to fully grasp.       ~ Albert Camus

Birthdays

October 3rd 

October 14th... I posted the top picture on FaceBook for Rob's birthday and a film friend wrote "Rob should have been wearing a white cowboy hat in the photo above because that was the way you could tell one of the true good guys in a classic western. And Rob was one of the goodest guys it has ever been my privilege to know." Brendan photoshopped it. 

Anything I write and post on FB with Rob's name included is seen by all his film industry colleagues and so, for some reason, I tend to be reticent about expressing my feelings. They are still too tender. 

I posted: Happy Birthday to Rob Young - my fun-loving, gun-slinging man who was my solid ground. If you can, have a margarita in his honour. 

(N.B. the guns in-hand are toys. My guys and gal are pretending they are tough. In fact, all four of them are gentle, kind folk.) This photograph was taken on Rob's 70th birthday.) 

I wrote the N.B. as I have a gun-loving cousin and I did not want him to think that anyone in my family have a similar love for weapons. 

October 17th

For Gill on FB, I was reticent but a little less than on Rob's:

Happy Birthday to our daughter Gillian Young, born three days after Rob's 40th birthday. She is bright, kind, generous, effervescent, courageous, and the best daughter in the universe.

You are lovely, my darling Gill. 

"...  sometimes it is necessary

to reteach a thing its loveliness,

to put a hand on the brow

of the flower

and retell it in words and in touch

it is lovely

until it flowers again from within, of self-blessing"

I don't know why I thought of this poem by Galway Kinnell for your birthday. Perhaps, it is simply that everyone needs to be reminded of their loveliness and what better day than on one's birthday.

And then I sent Gill a private card ~ not too private that I cannot show part of it here:

Adrift

Adrift 

 Everything is beautiful and I am so sad.
 

This is how the heart makes a duet of
 wonder and grief. 

The light spraying 
through the lace of the fern is as delicate


as the fibers of memory forming their web


around the knot in my throat. The breeze


makes the birds move from branch to branch


as this ache makes me look for those I’ve lost


in the next room, in the next song, in the laugh


of the next stranger. In the very center, under


it all, what we have that no one can take


away and all that we’ve lost face each other.


It is there that I’m adrift, feeling punctured


by a holiness that exists inside everything.


I am so sad and everything is beautiful. 

(Mark Nepo)

My friend Marlene sent me this poem and it so describes my head and heart for the past year and nearly an half. I am only now pausing and listening to myself, observing what I choose to do without comment from the part of me that likes to criticize. 

In my email to Marlene, I wrote:

I have been struggling being alone, struggling with all the work it takes to run a household, keep myself alive. As well as my usual chores, I now have to shop, cook, figure out how things work - so many things that I would just call “Rob” and he would solve the issue. I never realised that he did so much...

I have been researching aging, trying to find the good part about aging. I turned to Simone de Beauvoir and her book “Old Age”. How depressing. I want sunshine. I want to understand why Ann Truitt said that it was the best time in her life. I thought of Helen Luke who said something like “to die a good death, you have to live a good life.”...  At every time in my life that I have been uncertain where to turn, a book has fallen into my lap. I am still waiting... 

I have led such an interesting life. I think now of times with grouchy old Rob and I am astonished and delighted at his words, his actions. And yet he was often a difficult man. And yet I trusted him to be there for me. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck. Where do I go from here? I intend to go somewhere.

I intend to go somewhere!

In the meanwhile, I am readying my house for my children and their families who arrive at the end of October when we will celebrate Rob and scatter his ashes.