Garn Fawr - the big cairn - near to Strumble Head
Some subjects are too big for blogging.
For weeks - months, in truth - I've been in a sort of Sargasso Sea with my writing; thoughts swirling and circling as I ponder not so much what to say as how (and where) to start. Until the other day my son asked me if I had a subject in mind and I replied without hesitation, 'letting go': a response that hints at a desire to simplify and pare back to what's essential, important... immediate.
My father-in-law is dying.
Five weeks ago he suffered a stroke of sorts, or at least that's the simplest way to describe it. He's with us thanks only to tubes and the consummate care of his nurses. Occasional moments of lucidity are contextualised by his living in a delerium-induced world of hallucinations and fears. The prolongation of his life is undignified and not what he would want; the pain palpable to all who love(d) him...
We are selling our former family home.
And about time too in my view, but not in Jane's, who's taken eighteen months to come around to the emotional and physical connections its sale will sever. In terms of sentiment, I guess I'd cashed out early, but it's never that simple. We invest more than money in bricks and mortar despite our obsession with prices, equity and putative property ladders...
My son will soon be leaving.
In September, exam results allowing, my youngest boy will go to university — the same one I attended forty years ago; studying the same subject too. How life turns in circles I thought... Except I'm bereft at the prospect of his leaving; willing the wheel of his life to spin, yet yearning for a friction that would slow it just a little...
I'm getting older and feel it keenly.
Not so much in my body as my view of the future. When I left home at eighteen, my mid-twenties seemed an age away, retirement beyond any imaginable horizon. Now life's skyline feels closer and more focused; its infinite possibilities for the first time closing in. This is not a bad thing, nor one that I fear, but it involves making choices, not the least of which is the release of pretence as well as possessions...
We are here but an instant.
This week I went with Jane to Strumble Head, as elemental a place as any I know: the ocean, the wind, the neolithic hill fort and the spring squill on the path... Standing on its ancient rocks, you can see the curve of the earth and sense the juxtaposition of time's eternity and flux in every surge of the tide...
More than ever I'm determined.
Intent on navigating a course through the flotsam and jetsam of life's Sargasso Sea that I began with. To do so, I've realised, requires not a bucket list or some egotistical attempt at immortality — but a delicate balance of love and loss, of caution and creativity, of holding on and letting go...
As I said, some subjects are too big for blogging.