[COPY] THERE IS SOMETHING ABOUT THIS PLACE I know it's going to make me write...
If you could live in one week of the year forever, what week would it be? I know mine...
The first week of May is over. I wish it wasn’t. The time of the Alexander’s, that smell, and the wild garlic, white as snow. I’d stay in that week forever if I could - strolling amongst the bluebells, standing under apple blossom listening to the hum and buzz of the bees. The earth coming back to life. Rebirth. The hedge rows are bursting with campion and buttercups. Foxgloves proud. All the Gems, all the highs, the lows, the sun shines - and wind blows. I’ve got to let it hold me, this time, this moment, all the colour and newness, the warmth of spring. The reawakening is upon us, and it makes life a little easier.
I’m making it all up again, starting each day like this: how do I make a day? Obligations first. Desires second. I’m stunned and confused. We are living with a friend in a village near Padstow. Just 7 or 8 miles away, in Wadebridge, my old life is right there, my home, my plants growing in my first ever garden. My cherry blossom tree heavy with armfuls of pink petals. Clementine Geums nodding. Roses budding.
Renting out your home is complicated. The thought of another family living in your home is strange. I am lucky. My tenant is a friend and a wonderful gardener. I want to go and see her but I just can’t make myself get there. She’s moving out in four weeks. That brings even more complex feelings - moving back in???? I’ve got unfinished business. There’s much processing to do. I know it because the dreams have started. I’m surrounded by suitcases and the stuff of life, packing, I’ve got sand in my shoes, the beach is on my doorstep, the boats going to leave, fellow islanders are surrounding me. This is what happens when you leave a life in a mad dash. It’s all gone so fast. I’ve been home 7 weeks and I’m living out of four suitcases.
‘How do you feel, Dad?’
‘Not too bad.’ (He’s never really asked me that question back. Not because he’s selfish but because he either can’t bear to imagine. And he knows I talk too much; he can’t face my longwinded answers. I have to remind myself to breathe and allow silence. Give him space to talk.)
How do you feel? There’s compassion and then there is empathy. How do we feel? Because I know that when I look at someone I can feel the weather in their heart. Dad and I have thin skin. We have reclusive tendencies because we feel too much. We need people but are boundaries are too low. The music in the care home is forcing his heart to open. I watch him singing along to the accordion and I could feel his chest and throat cracking; his soul reuniting with lost love, hidden joy.
With thin skin a falling feather leaves an impression. The sun lights up every cell, the cold wind blows and gets into our bones. I have filled dozens of notebooks for 35 years. At 3 am, for decades, Dad pushed his feelings into dough, kneading, kneading… and then in a warm place - leaving heart strings to stretch out, life grew in the yeast —and then, knocking back the air, pinning out the rounds, smooth, white and soft, he filled Cornish Pasties with his heart, safely sealing the edge with his perfect crimp, fold, pinch, fold pinch… PRIDE! Without it, what have we got?
I can see myself - there in my little green chalet on the island. A week before we were due to leave, to return home, to live part-time with Dad. I was up to my neck in boxes and tape. Filling the container. Four more days of work, training new staff. It was about 9 am when I got the text. Your Dad is in hospital. He was trying to leave the house in the middle of the night.
The mind, a place we think of as a safe space - we think we have a firm grip of it, of our sanity. We think we have our minds in order. We feel we know our way around in there, like we’ve got control, like we’d know if alarms were ringing. Like it’s all simple and clear as day; we are here, seeing, doing, being. But it’s not that way at all. A few cells out of place - and where do we go? My new awareness of the fragility of our senses is shocking. To see someone you have always had in your life suddenly, totally lost inside their own mind - you learn, that really, we have no idea what’s going on inside. But what you should know is this - a water infection can be utterly devastating. The bacteria, when you are weak, can cross the blood brain barrier and disappears overnight. Know the signs.
Only gardening brings me stillness. Otherwise I’m in the future, asking, What next? I am strange again, like something submerged, I am sponge coral, here in the current. I am not myself. Afraid of taking the next leap. I am a pot-bound plant looking for deep earth to put roots into. Four years, unbecoming a parent, but always James’ Mummy. Did I tell you, I took James’ art stuff, canvases and paints to Tresco. Watercolours, oils, brushes… They came back untouched. Why am I depriving myself of this playful past time? I must make time for ART. I miss those hours at the table with him. NOW, The brilliant and beautiful team at Dad’s care home ask me, ‘Does Malcolm have any hobbies?’ My mind is blank - Watching football and burying his emotions. But it’s ok. I know already that these people will find his passions. I’m telling you - There is something about this place, St Breock Care Home. It brings it out of you; Dad and I are crying and laughing, crying and laughing. I stay too long. Because when I leave I cry and where do I go? Walking into new gardens, new clients, taking a deep breath, gloves on, ‘What do you want me to do?’ Please others - that’s the way forward. I know why I love my job. Because it pleases people so much - to have their gardens loved when they can’t get to it.
Never think, WHY ME? Instead, think, Why not me? So here we go again. Into another new chapter. Fifth year, no James. How to start it? By throwing myself into more care and compassion, looking to how I can bring my passions to others. But also, giving myself my space.
THOSE THREE WEEKS have set me back. Emergency Department, sitting for hours in an ambulance with him… Watching DAD pacing those wards, begging to leave, he stood by the door, he couldn’t sit still, he barely slept. I have absorbed his trembling heart and I can’t shift the fatigue. I want to lie down. The fact that this coincided with the fourth anniversary of losing James is typical of life. (Never be a victim - just accept, life is hard.) On the day, the 25th March, I had no head space left. I went to his grave and sobbed. Felt a million times lighter. Looking at the grave summons two opposing states - an anger so fierce it scares me and at the same time, a feeling of infinite pride and love and relief - HERE HE IS. He is here, surrounded by magnificent trees. Without those six years I would not have a heart double the size it was before he was born.
And now, I must keep moving on. I am trying not to think about Dad too much. But it’s hard. Can you imagine leaving your house one day by ambulance, a house you’ve filled with your life, the possessions you’ve collected, the beautiful garden, the trees you’ve planted, the gifts, the pictures and most of all your wife and dog, leaving, and never going back? When I think of it, I cry. I am so proud of him. He could be miserable, feeling sorry for himself. But he’s smiling. I think he’s relieved to feel safe.
Now, I look at Dad’s little bed and it calls to me. If I could lie down right there, inside his quiet days and night-times, on the floor next to him, then I would. I want to stay with him, because the mother in me who cared for her sick child has reawakened. Needed again. But I have got to let him embrace this new life. I learned weeks ago when all this began that I am not capable of being his carer. After one failed discharge - 24 hours at home with him and then back to hospital - my attempt cost Dad another 12 hours in A &E before being readmitted. I really thought I could do it. But it was too hard. Time to let the carer in me go.
In this wonderful home, a simple structure of meal times and cups of tea-times lets the day unfold. An accordion plays and the musician’s daughter sings - I like to go a wandering - with a knapsack on my back! I glance at dad, his eyes are full to the brim, and the tears are rolling, his cheeks glistening with joy.
He’d forgotten JOY. But it’s not too late, and I’m right there with him. Without the heavy veil of a glass of wine, he’s exposed to the rawness of life. I remember the parties, the pubs, the après ski - the stamping of ski boots, the raising of glasses, singing songs in cosy cabins, Schnapps flowing, snow falling… And now, waiting on hold to find out if he’s slept well, a recorded voice says that they are, ‘Truly Enriching Lives…’ and from what I have seen in just one week, that could not be more true. I know right now, that this experience will fill my heart up to the brim. This place is fodder for writing. This place is where people sit to gather their lives, and say, look, there it is now, almost whole, almost a finished story. Perhaps we should not fear the care home. Dad looks surprised and more alive than I’ve seen him in years. This is new, a place to rest, no drinking needed. In week two he says, We have such a laugh! I quite like it here.’
AND HOW CAN THIS BE SO? Because he is getting so much social stimulation. For nearly 15 years the loneliness of retirement denied him his true inner being - as a real social being. Like a butterfly he flits down the corridor making everyone smile. He’d convinced himself he was the opposite - a recluse. Being out of work took his confidence and he forgot how much he thrives on other people.
So, now my son is in St Breock Cemetery; and half a mile from James, up a hill and down another, my Dad is in St Breock Care Home. This is messing with my dreamworld. Last night I dreamed it was James in the care home and that I was crying because I’d walked out without saying goodbye. I tried that with Dad at the hospital one day. The next day I arrived and he gave me a right telling off, ‘YOU LEFT ME!’ So now, as I get nervous when it’s time to go, I take a deep breath and put on my most assertive voice. I’m sounding like the parent now - ‘I’m off now, Dad, got to go to work.’ And with that, one of the angels puts an arm around him, and with a smile, he is captivated.
After a life time of just not having the tools to express his emotions, he is now surrounded by a heady mix of compassion, empathy and love. He has struggled to show this side of himself and instead shoved everything down. To me, he often came across as someone the opposite of his inner truth. To me he was far away. Someone I adored but couldn’t reach. I know now that everything was just too much; so he focused like mad on perfection. He grew his bakery business, Malcolm Barnecutt’s Bakeries. It was easier to please staff and customers than wife and kids. But when retirement came - loneliness and anxiety followed - who was he without all that daily effort and pride? While struggling to find a new identity in retirement, battling the anxiety that’s plagued him his entire life, early symptoms of Parkinson’s Disease made everything even more difficult. A glass of wine became his friend and then became his foe. The love of being VERY TIDY and the joy of watching football, has carried him through the hours, the years. And now what?
Dad is in a great shape now and at 75 looks too young to be there. He wasn’t taking his Parkinson’s Meds at the same time everyday and that seems to have made a huge difference. It’s acutely time sensitive. He doesn’t sit still much and is known to answer the phone on reception. He’s not quite fully here, but the oblivion looks at times like bliss on his face. On more lucid days he misses his wife and his dog; his bottom lip trembles and I feel his heart inside mine. I am almost certain he makes a sub-conscious choice to jump back inside the gentle fog. I left Tresco desperate to look after him. That was the plan. I would spend half my week with him to give my step-mum a break. But I was too late. Deterioration beat me. He’s detached, he’s drifting. His needs are too great. Into another way of being, he’s floating. Now, in his little bedroom, he sits in a large comfy chair, his mind having so cleverly left the most recent past behind, a weight has gone. He’s surrounded by people who were born to care, born with extra doses of compassion.
Where is Dad exactly? Not his old self but more like his young self. Playful, nostalgic, meandering through and making sense of his early life, the focus on his teenage years. “I lived in 30 Duke Street, Padstow, I remember playing football in the street, I loved it, I loved it so much…” The look on his face — it’s like he’s really there, he can feel himself in that street, 13 years old. He looks ten years younger and 20 years younger than the rest of the residents. He’s out of time and place, he’s drifting between the hours. His rich emotions tell me that deep down, he knows, he knows he can’t go home and that shocking truth is too much to face, so he jumps back to the safety of light cloud. He potters about being so lovely with everyone and I feel he’s remembered his love of being at work in his bakeries, part of the team, belonging to a large family. Walking into the conservatory I look at the soft, high-back chairs bathed in bright April light, and I think, I am ready for this. We pass a lady dozing in a chair, he pauses and gently taps her on the shoulder, ‘Don’t worry, my darlin, I’ll look after you,’ he says as a thick syrupy tear rolls down his cheek. The chairs welcome my body and I am happy to sit, like him, with no plan or immediate need. We can see the roof tops of the town below, we can see crows being thrown about by the blustery day. I put his feet up on my lap and rub them. He smiles and closes his eyes. ‘O’right Sausage? (He calls everyone Sausage.) We’ll go out somewhere tomorrow, shall us?’
‘Yes, Dad, that’d be nice.’
Thank you for reading, and of course, most of all, for remembering James with me. I must go now, to sit with DAD and James no.1, my brother, a beautiful soul who continues to make the business something to be so proud of. He brings Dad’s new favourite tipple, Ginger Beer. We’ll sit together, stepping outside of time and place… Dad says, ‘James, I want you to bring Hot Cross Buns for everyone and soon we’re going to have a Pasty Day, you bring the dough, we’ll teach them how to crimp, PROPER!’
(I think life is about knowing yourself and embracing that self. So if your heart is big, let it guide you.)
Thank you Jessica. Your writing, the way you share your heart, James, your gardens and now your father, always carries me into such a deep place in my own heart. I think of James often still, and especially remember his artwork. So precious and deeply inspiring. 💕🙏🏼
What a HEART , you DARLING GIRL❤️