There are times in life you feel in control, and others where you feel powerless, inconsequential, insignificant, incapable.
My nature is to be positive, driven, energetic, but just now I’m riding the roller coaster of grief after my mum passed away a few weeks ago.
It’s difficult to focus. You think you’re on top of it, putting on your ‘can do’ hat first thing in the morning, then proceed to be distracted by the smallest unnecessary thing which gets in the way of accomplishing anything worthwhile. The worst thing is thinking. Gifting time to myself to think is undermining. I’m much better to be doing – vacuuming, washing, cooking, shopping, walking – anything to avoid thinking. So how to refocus when thinking, writing and the time consuming seemingly never ending e-mails are where my focus usually is most days of most weeks when not embracing the high seas, the peaks of the mountains, or the exhilaration of skiing or camping in stunning scenery with people you love.
At this time of the year I’d normally be onboard Sukama, our yacht and home for the summer, but even that isn’t to be. She’s out of the water for work to be done anticipated to be completed 2 weeks ago, now seemingly in the never never. So I’m land based, and miserable. Living inside is claustrophobic. I yearn for the wind in my hair, the constant running up and down the companionway steps involved in the natural rhythm of living on board, the soothing motion of the yacht even when sitting on the pontoon though infinitely better when at sea. Sukama offers me freedom. Liberation from land based life, where there is frisson in living. Not knowing how the day will pan out, what challenges you’ll encounter or need to rise to keeps us energetic, alive, engaged, forever open to the art of the possible, and recognising that there is no-one else with you, so rise to it you must.
But then conversely, what right do I have to feel sorry for myself, or even in the slightest discombobulated? I am incredibly lucky on so many counts, most notably to have good health, to be able to afford to live, to have choice about how and where that living takes place, and who I live with.
No-mans land between death and funeral drags. There’s so much to be done, but all is additional and not of your choosing or your making. It is inevitably draining, but we have it easy. There is no acrimony or animosity. The family is pulling together. We communicate, laugh, cry and commiserate together even though we live in a multitude of disparate places on the globe.
Elizabeth’s cows
Even in death she brought us together. Her death was beautiful in so many ways. She was the glue in our family, the heart who cared deeply who drew you in but didn’t know how to be close.
We owe so much to our mum Elizabeth. She was an altogether extraordinary person ahead of her time. Nothing was too big a challenge. Female emancipation thrived within her except when beaten by depression and finding herself at the mercy of the system which saw fit to constrain her on a psychiatric ward and subjected her to the barbaric act of ECG treatment. But she found her route to liberation through farming. Striving hard to garner knowledge and practical experience stood her in good stead to take the leap of faith to become a dairy farmer in her own right on her own farm in an absolutely beautiful corner of the Quantock hills in Somerset.
This is how we choose to remember her. Happy, fulfilled, affording exemplary loving husbandry to her herd of gentle natured guernseys.
We all have wonderful memories of those times which we will cherish forever.
We are truly fortunate. In time these days will pass I know, and the sense of loss will lessen.
A wheelbarrow, a skip, detritus, and here am I in floods of tears. Alone. A moment of reflection and solitude. This is where my mum would have been happy. And alone. By choice. Always.
I can feel her perched on my shoulder saying ‘bet they didn’t teach you how to load a wheelbarrow!’ smiling to herself as it toppled over depositing its contents of muck from the yard on the ground. I did learn. Fast.
I learnt from ‘doing’ and ‘being’ alongside my quiet, deeply thoughtful reclusive mum. She struggled so much and so long to find herself during her 94 years but the inner person was beautiful, unassuming, undemanding, spurning the trappings of the 21st century, but always welcoming with an open heart and mind. Sorely missed.