Today, I'll mostly be watching the birds and the little pots of gold in the grass... being sad isn't too hard to master

For half an hour a Magpie has been flying diagonally between two points, from the garage roof to the branches of an elder tree...

I have allowed the Forget-me-nots to take over the garden. I remember returning home from the hospice for the last time, without James. We walked into the garden — all of the beds were covered in a blue blanket of these beautiful flowers. It was a warm welcome home.

25th March 2024 - Candlelit scribbling

I suspect it’s not the rising sun that wakes the birds, but the birds that wake the sun. At a quarter to five, still dark, a chorus of Wrens, Tits and Blackbirds started the day, calling the sun to rise, singing it awake. And now, at 6.30, back and forth it goes - the Magpie - I can feel it watching me eat my toast, from two points, from one side of the garden to another, back and forth, the flash of white, it’s trying to tell me something. I’ve been followed by Magpies daily since James died. A family of them now live in the Elder on the boundary. I’m hoping they turn up in my new home next month.

I should be writing about the Art Of James show we put on at his primary school on Friday. But I feel so stunned by the exhibition, going back there, seeing his friends, that I am not ready to write about it and the anniversary, like a predator, has swallowed me hole. It’s just a day. It’s just a word. Is it really necessary to allow this to happen?

What is an anniversary? Just another way of counting time. Three years. I like to pick words apart, to get behind the everyday sound of an everyday word: Anniversary. Too long, too many syllables, barely time to utter it. The marking of time leaves me numb. We say things like, ‘It was this day three years ago that this thing happened…’ Our phones throw memories at us. We’re products of our past and we like to remember what made us the way we are. I’ll google the word:

Etymology: 13^th Century: from Latin anniversārius returning every year, from annus year + vertere to turn

Am I returning every year? Or am I getting further away? The answer must be both. I suppose it’s not me returning, just the date…. The best thing to do here would be to delete the paragraph because if I’m confused then you must be too. But I did not lose him three years ago. I have lost him everyday. I feel like I am supposed to feel something, some monumental sense of a shift in time. But there is nothing but anger towards time; as it dares to go on without him. Anyway, apparently, I am stepping out of what is known as ‘early grief’, years 1-3.

Today, from my kitchen window, I’ll mostly be watching the birds. I am looking over towards the wind farm on the horizon. Long arms spinning, round, and round. Crows and magpies seem to be circling the house. They do this. They gather around me, blowing kisses in the air with a screech, stealing my worms, zooming past the window. Today, mean weather for a mean day, pushy winds are bossing my tulips about. (The deeper you plant them, the stronger their stems. How deep are mine? Haven’t a clue, can’t remember planting them.) I am glad of these grey skies. Blue and sunny? No thanks. That would have been an insult today. Under low cloud, in a sudden gust, the crows are forced to fly on their sides. It’s a daring show — The Black Arrows.

The sky is full and heavy, waiting to let go. I imagine the wind and the rain as enemies. One wants it wet, the other wants it dry. The rain prefers stillness, it wants to be left in peace to fall, straight down; the thick, drench-you-in seconds kind of rain. The wind is a bully. I feel the rain’s pain, all it wants is to do its own thing. But the wind like a fist catches it in the air. The fall is fractured. The drops are blown apart into fine particles, diminished before reaching the ground. What on earth am I going on about? This is what happens when you can’t face the kitchen sink. Writing is the strangest thing. Words take me, as if on a train through landscapes made of letters, Up the mountains of the Mmmm’s, on meandering paths of Sssss’s, up the towers of T’s, and right around corners of all the Rrrrr’s.

Last night, going to bed, I wanted the long night to take me away; I craved deep sleep, a General Anesthetic sleep. I wanted to be dead to the world. The full face of the moon was leaning into the window. The black of the ceiling was laced with a strange glow that I can’t put my finger on. Not gold, or silver, just the indescribable feeling of moonlight. An electric charge. I thought of the blood red tulips ready to take to the grave in the morning, I thought how in the morning we will walk Ernie there, down the lane, up through the Hellebores in the woods, past the emerging bluebells... (I must go more often because soon I will not be able to.) So, wanting to be unconscious, I took a sleep aid, the ingredients of which are basically what is in antihistamine, some awful long word that isn’t worth me typing. I also took one paracetamol and two Progesterone pills. This is supposed have a sedative effect. I said I would never take HRT. What did I know? Nothing. I assumed, I’ve got through the worst thing, so surely early menopause would be a breeze? But now, desperate for anything to help — with tiredness, stiffness, hyper-sensitivity, thick brain fog — now I am willing to try anything! My body feels like an old piece of furniture. Brittle, unsteady. Some say I will feel amazing. I just want to feel better. So I am giving my body back some of the things it has lost; it has lost enough, without yearning for hormones too.

I am hoping I will stop the losing now. I have lost so many things, a favourite scarf, a beautiful pair of hand-knitted wrist warmers, a brand new coral-pink lipstick, my garden fork! FFS - that’s too big to lose you might think, but no, that too has gone. Life takes, takes, takes. Life is saying, Let go of things. But I love things, and I am looking at my shelf of little trinkets, jugs and vases, wondering how much I can fit in the little green shed on the island?

The first time I took Progesterone, only four days ago, the morning came to me differently. Not as it’s usual extension of the horrid restless night; the day-destroying light sleep, like after wine and processed food. NO, THIS WAS DIFFERENT. This was bliss. I woke as if I’d been dead. I came back from somewhere. The hormone pill was like a solid anchor for my body, lying on the sea bed; my bones felt heavy, my blood, thicker. It was so profound, tears pricked my eyes. This is what I have been missing for a long time. Proper, deep sleep. The day was a separate world — where I could get things done, think straight, and not cry my eyes out at the thought of dressing.

I have prints of this one left over from the exhibition. £8.00, all profits go to Art Supplies for Wadebridge Primary Academy. Size A4. Some quotes I used in the art show:

“It took me four years to learn to paint like Raphael. But a life time to paint like a child.”

“The world does not make sense, so why should I paint pictures that do?” Pablo Picasso

A poem I wrote: Let Sadness be your Master

Being sad isn’t too hard to master

Be sad now, be sad faster

The brave face?

That’s the real disaster

Let sadness in, let it be your master

Sit down today— and be sad

Let it  in, let it be

Let your sadness run free

With your sadness you can be

quietly

you can be

YOU

Stiff smiles will not do

Being you isn’t hard to master

To not be true — that’s the real disaster

Lie down. And be sad

Do it now, not later

I promise, you’ll be glad

Being sad is not too much to ask for

The art of sad is not too hard to master

I will never feel clever enough to call myself a poet. Most of the poetry I read I don’t understand. I wrote this after reading a poem I do get, The Art of Losing, by Elizabeth Bishop. I have blatantly stolen her rhyming scheme. I can’t remember writing it. It was in the very early days of losing James. I think it’s ok to copy. I shouldn’t allow poetry to make me feel inferior but I get frustrated when I don’t understand. Again the voices of self-doubt comes shouting, ‘YOU CAN’T WRITE POETRY, who do you think you are?’ But then, I thought, sod it, someone wrote the first ever “poem” and that person didn’t have the rule book. That person, said, ‘Look, here’s this thing I have written, I don’t know what it is, but what the hell, here you go, this is me…’ They trusted their instincts and didn’t care what people thought. And perhaps, partly because they didn’t show weakness, the audience accepted it as good enough.

The Lighthouse, Sold out at The Art of James show.

I am looking at The Lighthouse painting on the wall. It seems now that James’ old soul was painting the future. To the side of the tower is an old shack, painted a dirty olive-green. It appears to be surrounded by the sea, lapping waves, swaying dunes - an island scene with another land far off in the distance. James has become like that lighthouse to me, a beacon of glorious light. And now, here we are, moving to an island that faces a lighthouse on the island of Bryher. He painted other scenes with houses on high hills. The roof tops were in the heavens. On another small canvas he painted a path that led from a garden up to the sky.

His gaze, it seems, was fixed on the horizon, the place you can only look at, only dream of, and never reach. I remember helping him with the roof on the Lighthouse shack. I suggested the white paint inside the door to make it look like a light was on. I helped him with the red sections. In fact I think we painted the whole thing together. Daddy drew the initial outline of the tower. He put the waves on the water. James did the sky and clouds completely on his own. We painted together a lot. I regret the bits I helped with. I was interfering, teaching too hard, thinking I knew best, that we must make it look like something - proper. I can be over-bearing. I know it. He liked us doing it together. But was NOT SHY of telling me to go away. Now, most of all, I love his nonsensical, entirely-his-own pieces. Right now, looking at it more closely, I notice that it looks like there is a hole in the roof, a light shining outwards.

Yesterday, the 24th March- was the last full day that James was alive, three years ago. But I am aware of the danger of thoughts like this. Don’t give them room to lay down paths. Take away our human-invented clocks, our rules and obsession with measuring and counting and marking. Take away the relentlessness of time, even takeaway language, and what do we have? Pure existence. The sun and the moon, the light - these things shape the day. The weather tells you what to wear. Life cycles itself around, in a forward motion. Not backwards. I am here now. I am not back there. James, in the form of his living human body, is long gone. Writing that made me feel like I might be sick. I can suddenly feel my heartbeat, a thud in my ears.

The battle continues: He is here. He is not. Life is full of dual realities. The answer is that both statements are true. I must make peace with that. Life is never one thing. The self is never one thing. Nothing is ever one thing. He is not here and he is here: Look around you, Jessica - you are surrounded, inside and out, by him. James is not in the past because the past does not exist; it is not a place or a thing still sitting there. The past is only ever something in our minds, something we make up every day. And so, everyday I am making him, again and again, re-making him.

So what to do on such a day? Just now, when I got up and went into his room, I pulled up his blind, and out of my mouth came the strangest thing, as though it was not me who said it: ‘Happy Deathday Jamesy.’ You’re right, somewhat unhinged. But honestly, I believe for James it was sublime, like nothing else on earth. The look on his face, when he escaped his broken body, I knew he was somewhere so peaceful, a place so beautiful, a place beyond the realms of human comprehension. I think of it often and it gives me relief.

My circulation is stopping now. Ernie is whining for a walk. My hands are stiff like ice. I must get moving. The rest of the day will be quiet pottering, bathing, Comfort Food, egg, chips and beans for dinner, candles lit.

Later in the evening… I was right about the heavy sky. It has been pouring, straight down, hard rain, for SIX HOURS. A fast stream is running down the garden path, flooding the tulips, coming to a stop in a muddy pool under my pots on the patio. It feels as though it will never stop. I was washing-up (a rare sight), Simon suddenly came from the front door with a beautiful bunch of flowers sent by post from an old friend in London. The smell filled the empty kitchen. He has a full-time demanding job and twin boys who are nearly 5 years old! I don’t know how he does it; he always remembers to post me things on every occasion, and sometimes, for no reason at all. I am rendered speechless by the many acts of love and kindness that we receive daily. I wish I was the type of friend who posts stuff. I’m the type that sends the lame birthday text incomplete with stupid emojis. How does he get round to it? There is a saying, I think, ‘Want something done? Ask a busy person!’

Next morning, 26th March… a bright sun-shiny day, just like three years ago, the day after he died. I woke with a hole in my chest. For the entire seven days previous, as James lay sleeping, it rained, a soft silent rain, steady and slow from a lid-like sky. In the morning, once returned to Mother Nature, James’ spirit, set free at last, had filled the sky with gold.

Nana always said when I picked him, ‘He was as good as gold.’

NAPS ARE WONDERFUL THING: Finally I am sharing this BCC Sounds Music and Meditation podcast. I fell asleep listening, woke up feeling brand new! Link: Embrace Vulnerability

Little Pots of Gold — Spot all the Dandelions (Taraxacum Officinale) in the lawn! They are the Bee’s first food source in spring. James said, if he wasn’t HUMAN he’d be a BEE, so I’ve had to embrace them! See here for Medicinal Uses

Thank you for reading about our brilliant Jamesy. You can’t know what it means. Words can’t describe it. Warm wishes, Jessica xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx