It feels a long time since I posted here. I thought it was about a year, but it’s actually only 4 months since the posts I wrote in Lent. Sometimes writing about a long struggle is just too boring for words and trying to find a positive take too hard: it’s easier to stop trying, curl up and hide, give up excavating words of explanation and intent, take a rest from the ‘self-improvement’ journey. Which is perfectly valid and necessary and doesn’t mean I’ve failed, I tell myself!
I can always use pictures instead – which is actually why I originally started my photoblog A Lover of the Light in 2012 – to showcase my many photographs without needing to use words. After all, my life isn’t up to me, it’s not even about me, but I am about life and that Life is at work within me whether I pay attention to it or not, whether I work or rest – maybe especially if I rest?! If I stop writing, blogging, sharing, nailing things down, documenting everything it doesn’t make life any less: it is still happening, worthwhile, meaningful, subconscious...
I had to learn a big lesson about this obsession with documenting and understanding the journey when I lost a whole load of photographs in a burglary in May 2017. My laptop was stolen from the house while we were away on holiday, along with the back-up disc that was nearby. I suddenly, catastrophically, had a huge 5 year gap in my photo-record, which stretches back to birth in albums all the way up to 2008 when I went fully digital. It’s actually the years of Sam’s cancer that went missing – 2009 to 2015 were on my beloved Snow Leopard Macbook which was pre-iCloud. I’d just written the poem No more looking back when it happened: now I literally cannot look back at those years. It’s SO sad and very frustrating – I’m still doing my best to find copies where I can, on Martin’s hard drive and facebook and checking through old diaries for the missing events of those years. But the lesson is valid and I can actually let myself off the hook I’ve hung myself on: I don’t have to record everything and hold onto life for dear life – none of us can. I’ve stopped taking my camera with me everywhere since then – though there’s still the phone of course…
Talking of photographs I just found myself thinking of this photo below of an old shoe – separated from it’s partner, intended use now impossible, colonised by alien life from it’s new surroundings, all washed up – decorative perhaps, but an anachronism. Maybe it’s a picture of how I’ve been feeling in my grief and the loss of so much more than ‘just’ my son… No words necessary.
Anyway, today is 1st August and here I am sitting in front of a blank page again!
We’ve recently returned from our summer break in Brittany and another milestone birthday and I’ve realised there are only 4 years left until I am 70! The need to live life on purpose and make these years count comes into ever sharper focus! Who knows how long is left?! Although I’m still asking the questions about what this last stage of life is about, I do actually feel more encouraged after a good rest, lots of fun with friends and a fab birthday weekend. I’ve felt very loved, which is the foundational issue for me.
Taking a step back to see the bigger picture always helps too. When it was 7 years since we buried Sam I was ready to move on, really hoping I would come back to life. But BAM – in the meantime Covid had struck and we were all imprisoned for months and months. I am not the only one who’s mental health went downhill – further downhill. My dear hubby’s lockdown running led to severe arthritis in his left hip due to an old Achilles tendon repair that had, unknown to us all, compromised his gait. Living with pain for all those months before the operation and 5 months afterwards while the muscles recovered turned my cheerful man into a misery: I hadn’t realised the effect that had on me until this summer when he was able to sail his dinghy again pain-free and his happy humour was fully restored! PHEW!
So – I feel better. The questions are still there: what to do with the time that is left to me. Who am I now and what can I give myself to? Boiling it all down, I know one thing: I AM A WRITER. True storyteller: words and pictures. Yes, I am a good photographer and a beginning abstract artist. I am very happy that in my later years all this creativity that was blocked and buried is finding outlets as I learn to relax and play. I’ve always taken photos, as I said above – it’s knowing what to do with them all! And I do love tidying up, putting things in place to look nice, which is a factor in all art, picture-making and gardening. But I am primarily a wordsmith, so I had better get writing and see where it leads me. Out of the rest and grace I have received.
After all, my life isn’t up to me, it’s not even about me, but I am about life and that Life is at work within me whether I pay attention to it or not
Write on, Sally*
*actually the name of my last blog that kept me going from 2018 until I started this one but wasn’t very user friendly
Heart Space 