New Year's Eve 2015

Water, the New Year and the similarity of their forms.

I woke up on the 31st December slightly muzzy-headed from a 2:30am finish the night before and used the brightness of the day as a reason to get out for a walk.  I'm not a walker; it is too slow for me and my hands swell up, but my achilles tendon was tender which prevented me from running and I was keen to get outside.

The great hinge of New Year's Eve was approaching, accompanied by predictions of the direction the new year may bring.  Time to look back and look forward.  However, I felt annoyed by any self-imposed pressure to set something up for the new year - it will be what it will be; I didn't want to put anything in place right on the 1st January.

In the last few weeks the rain had veered between deluge and storm; many parts of the country were either under water or washed away, and the climb up the field out of Long Ashton gave some evidence of that, with grass pushing up and away from waterlogged soil.  I slipped and slid to the top, the sun offering a temporary and welcome respite from the rain that was forecast yet again.  I picked my way down to the stream crossing known to me as the gate with the rams, after a summer when two enormous sheep blocked the gate for weeks on end, like a reversed Billy Goats Gruff.  I stopped and watched the stream for a few moments.  It was flowing strongly and the water bounced and curved on and through, disappearing into the trees.  It was like the opposite of white noise - a sort of dark noise; each splash, gurgle and twist was unique, no rhythm, no repetition and no order but instead of irritation the water gave an opening of peace.  This brought on a sort of melancholy; I stared and thought, my heart sagging; pulling backwards.  The old year, the year gone, had brought loss and confusion, and the new year to come also offered no structure, each day unique and formless.  No plans, no resolutions, just a following of gravity; the pull of nature.
 I was stroked by the cool curves of the rivulets as they wove and twisted around each other, the water calming the murmurations of thoughts as they swirled and buzzed inside my head.

I walked on and up to the Jubilee stone; here too the puddles lay wide and obstructive.  Any bare soil was coated with a slick of mud that threatened my stability as I zigzagged toward the road, trying hard not to muddy my boots too much - I inherited them from my dad and they are getting old now and letting in little seeps of moisture.  The wind was stronger up on the hill, and the resulting drop in temperature and appearance of clouds caused me to speed up.  The trees harboured a good number of birds and each branch seemed to hold a worried blackbird or an angrily chirping blue tit.  One field contained a buzzard standing on the ground and looking rather puzzled to my fanciful eyes.  I have seen a lot of buzzards do this - I don't know if they have just caught something or actually land on the ground for a rest.  I often startle them when they are in trees and they take off in their muscular way, crashing through the branches and over to another perch away from this intruder.

My phone rang - my planned evening was cancelled.  New Years Eve was now to be a solo affair - an unexpected change.  How to make this positive?  Why not make a point of being on my own; write all evening, think about the passing year, wonder about the coming year.  Which direction?  I warily walked through a field with a bull in it; luckily he seemed more interested in grass than in me which was good because my pondering slowed me down to the point of catchability.

Another stream, this one a ditch really; it flows through a field and under the main road out of Bristol, through a culvert that also houses the footpath.  Out in the open, I stood and looked at the stream; someone had chopped and cleared all the trees around the water and exposed its course.  Branches lay around in piles, and planks had been wedged just above the surface of the water as if to catch any material kidnapped by the stream.  I wondered if this was a way of managing the speed of drainage; there has been a lot of talk recently of flooding being caused by water being channeled off the land too quickly.

Back home, just in time.  The rain suddenly appeared; lashed sideways and then turned into hail.  The relentless drive of the weather forced people to change what they were doing; cars even stopped briefly until they could see where they were going.  Everything got shaken up in the vortex; plastic bottles flew out of the recycling boxes, people ran into places to shelter.  The sun of just an hour earlier was forgotten about as something that happened in the distant past, barely memorable.

What would I have done on New Years Eve in the past?  Karin and I usually ended up with friends; it seems to be the way many of us acknowledge the changeover of the year.  It usually felt like a normal evening with friends until the very climax of the evening; deep embrace, eyes touching. A connection that said 'look at us being together, look at us, we came from that direction and we are heading in this direction'.  The flow of time which is formless and unstoppable has now left this behind and is instead dragging me along the course on my own - there is no point in looking where I am going because I can't affect the direction and it is obscured by twists and turns, branches, banks.
I decided to stay at home on my own - see what happens.  A way to break out of the rituals that threaten any individual interpretation of the evening.  Out of the groove, and then when out, find what I really need at this time.  After all, when have I ever spent New Year's Eve on my own?  Never.  It is a new experience.  Ride the flow.

At Anne and Gary's house New Year's Eve 2014

Christmas 2015

Christmas Eve; the morning has fallen out of the night with a deluge of rain.  Wind is pushing untethered objects around the garden and the gutters are discharging their contents with noisy splashing;  I suspect this year will be remembered for the flooding and unseasonably warm weather.
Christmas eve - surely a day to be roasting chestnuts on an open fire, not scurrying down to the Coop with a waterproof hood flopping over your head.

So this is Christmas

And what have you done

Another year over

And a new one just begun

Indeed.  A reconfigured Christmas, a variation on the usual confusion about precisely what we expect this festival to offer.  I have the children here - this ticks the 'family' box very confidently - and it is both lovely and exposing to have them here; exposing in the sense that we are thrust into a recognition of Karin's absence.  Emotions, feelings and positions are pushed to the fore.  

I have a sense of rebalance of roles - the bits that Karin contributed to family events are either taken up by someone else or discarded. The day has a different smell about it.  Of course all Christmasses are bound to be different but this one has much more - like looking round a corner.

 It's all very well talking about how things can be different, but there is so much change that there feels like nothing stable to act as an anchor.  It feels more like I am floating around; no expectation, no framework in which to place myself.  It is as if the floods outside have engulfed me so I am supported all the way round by water - but nothing solid to push against.  I must find my rocks, the constants.  My main rock isn't here now, so I need to identify the other ones that provide a stability, enabling me to keep moving forward.  Certain people, running, cycling, the woods on the hill, the house - a man needs a hearth.  And an established time for solitary reflection - a newly recognised comfort for me.  Push against these things to set off into the water.

Kain said last year that she was pretty confident that it would be her last Christmas.  How does anyone process the enormity of that statement?  How on earth did she process each landmark as they approached?  Her fortitude in recognising and accepting her situation became a characteristic of the last two years, and I don't know if I could have achieved the same if I was in her position.  

Nick told a story at the funeral of Karin laying cards out in a line to map out major events in the future and she was clear and accepting of the shortness of the timeline: quite calm.  I wonder what the other people in the group felt about this unequivocal and brutally functional statement.  How honest; and in that honesty, what a gift for the others to be made aware of the fleeting flash of life.

A gift then, a legacy.  The knowing that for each of us the future doesn't stretch forward for ever; it is framed at either end by a birth and a death, and this section of time itself is a tiny, measureable piece.  To me this feels easy to say but difficult to feel or understand;  Karin had the wisdom of knowing, really knowing, and gave us a little of this understanding.  What better time to receive a gift than at Christmas?

So, I start to identify new understandings, new anchors; objects to push against.  A new one is knowing how long I have - like all of us it isn't long and it is finite.  Having established that as a certainty I can see a little more of the picture through the sheeting rain and swirling waters that threaten to destabilise our lives and our thinking.

One more gift, as a post-script.  Laughter.  I am sure there is more to be written on this, but how to find joy in what you have is another lesson freely given to us by Karin.

Womens duathlon 2011

I found this - Karin rode a women's duathlon in 2011, and this was the entry on her Justgiving page - oddly devoid of punctuation but typically entertaining!  I have never seen anyone enjoy running and cycling so much in all my life.

ok, so here's the story:

in an excess of enthusiasm after i got my new bike, i boasted to ally that i was going to enter this duathlon.  then she said i should do it in aid of the harbour (see all about this most excellent charity on the left there).  so i said oh go on then.  then she came over all excitedly unnecessary and said she'd do it too.  then i said well if i'm going to raise money i should really do the longer event.  then izzy said oh well if you can do a duathlon so can i, even if i never run and only cycle 8mins to school a couple of times a week.  and i said go on then clever clogs.  so she did and ally did

and that's how we got ourselves into this blimmin' mess

so i'd be very grateful if you could spare a few of your hard-earned readies for the harbour - THANKS! xx

Merging

At what point do photo albums merge?  When a couple get together they bring their own collection of family events; birthdays, holidays, shaky action shots of the dog or flat landscapes that in no way resemble the steepness that inspired the camera being pulled out of the bag in the first place, and put them on the table like a hand of cards.  I’ll show you mine if you show me yours.

When I met Karin I had one full album and another that had just been started; both blue and both made of those strange tacky leaves that you tack the pictures underneath: over the years the transparency becomes as dirtily opaque and obscuring as the fading memories.  In the first there was a picture of Portishead power station chimney falling as they demolished it, another of someone’s boot apparently hovering over Lulworth Cove on some holiday, and an image of us all standing at the foot of Cheddar Gorge the time Uncle David and Auntie Kay brought their children over from Canada. Through the lens of youthful optimism I thought I looked quite muscular without my age twelve shirt, but the picture in its brutal accuracy evidences just a stick-thin childishness.

Album two was later, obviously, because everyone knows photographs need to be in chronological order.  Moving into teenage interests; cycling, a couple of girlfriends (not, I hasten to add, at the same time, my teenage loins would have exploded; one at a time was plenty), a field trip to Sand Bay where the wind howled sand into our eyes all day – a huge price to pay for the lasting knowledge of plant succession. A school trip to Germany captured a good few pages.

 And that was it, very few images for twenty odd years of existence; more a sampler of the many other images sitting in the loops and folds of my brain.  The album is a treasure box but the memories are an archive: you don’t take pictures of mundane day-to-day existence (at least you didn’t then; the ubiquity of cameras on phones now capture every uneventful moment) but memories hold everything, all of it.  All that experience piles up and shapes you into who you are, and here I was, skinny, an anger that contrasted with my angelic complexion, and with enough restless energy to burst through the drifts of photographs to create a new understanding of the world.

Karin’s album seemed to be similar in structure but different in content; still the spiral binding that held those clingy pages together inside a padded cover, but the inside was sparse in landscapes and rich in people.  Parties; a satiny purple top that zinged against her autumnal hair like kinetic art; Yorkshire terriers, so many things that just wouldn’t look right in my album.  Different grandparents, people I didn’t know and some I was destined never to meet because they had died.  All labelled with whimsical comments on thin strips of blue paper. I had the chance to look upstream where she had come from, and she did the same with me, seeing the connections and influences cascading over rocks, until we sat at the confluence together, staring up, then down into the future.

Except of course, there is no future.  The future surely doesn’t exist until you get there, and then it changes its name and function to the present.  The future is a fiction, and I certainly couldn’t see it when I sat there in the watersmeet.  I couldn’t see the children, the houses, the melding of two people into a couple; all the things that were to come.  I can see them now of course – I can cast my eye all the way back from where I am now to where we were then, and see the whole journey laid out in a long and sometimes jumbled set of photographs; sometimes organised into albums, other times still in those card envelopes that came from Boots and more latterly, Bonusprint, still clinging onto the transparencies as if they are the origin of the image itself rather than the experience.

Our blended photographs started with serial rows of my stuff and her stuff, side by side – parallel lives, until bit by bit the odd picture migrated across – I had a picture of Karin in my set, she had one of me, then someone gave us a picture of each other, a mutual friend.  My closest friend Paul came to stay, and then he was our friend and the pictures and experiences united us.  I actually created our first mutual album many years later; the pictures had sat around in loose piles until I couldn’t stand it any longer and bought a whole set of albums with pockets in rather than the clingy static pages that failed to cling a few years later.  Karin couldn’t be bothered with photographs, and she certainly couldn’t be bothered with filing or displaying them.  Everything was about now; the past was gone and dwelling on it was a waste of time. 

The pictures started to increase in number when Elly was born – here was something to capture, something worth locking in.  Karin started to put some pictures on the wall in clip frames; she argued that at least they were used then instead of just sitting in boxes.

And so the records of her life and my life became the record of our life, and in our absence they stand as a publically open record of our experiences.  And in Karin’s absence many of them stand now as the only record.  However, Karin’s challenge to that was, what is the point of preserving a memory that belonged to someone who has gone?  The pictures I have serve as a time, a long time, where Karin and I shared our lives, but from now on photographs will have different content, different people; adding to the long thread of captured moments that stretch back.

Tales from the hospital, part one

I think it is time to break out some of the Facebook tales Karin wrote while in hospital.

We went to Hay on Wye for a four-day break, but had to leave early as she was so weak she couldn't even get to the toilet.  I went out running for an hour and when I got back I found she had fallen on her way to the bathroom.  So I packed our stuff in the car, made our apologies to the very concerned couple who owned the chalet, and headed for the oncology acute ward.

Over the next three weeks, they fiddled with her meds until some stability and strength was restored.  In that time, Karin's ipad got a good amount of use as she sat in bed and watched the world pass by; covertly writing down these little pieces of entertainment.  So here is the first one;

Tetchy Woman in the bed next to mine has adopted me as her pet hospital project.

This is a little strange, considering the day before yesterday I screamed at her for insulting the nurses - calling them slow bitches. "You're in a fucking hospital, not a hotel. Don't you order these poor women around as if they're your slaves. Wind your insult bearing neck in, pal."

I was ready to engage in a fisticuffs contest. Had my fists clenched and Mr Bishop my karate teacher’s instructions ringing in my ears - if it ever comes to the crunch, don't bother with the impressive stuff, just bash 'em right on the nose and skedaddle right out of there - like I was going to skedaddle anywhere...

The nurses formed a phalanx (I think) in front of me, with the tiniest one right out front and centre, giving Tetchy Woman The Look. I took time to admire the mother who had taught her. Perfect technique.

She raised a finger to the nasty woman and said quietly, "I don't appreciate you calling me and my colleagues slow, not to mention the other insult you felt it necessary to employ." she then turned the wagging finger on me. "Whilst we thank you for support in this matter, there is more than one side in this business that should be winding its insult bearing neck in."

Well, bugger me and all I was trying to do was beat up the bully on your behalf.

Anyway, now I am Tetchy Woman's best friend. Every time a nurse comes in, she shouts at them and tells them they should be looking after me because I'm much worse off than her - her, with her Chrons disease, metastatic kidney cancer and pneumonia in both lungs.

Even weirder is that she believes I have no left foot - it comes off and stays in the boot when I take it off, apparently. Also, because of the eye patch she believes I have no left eye. Even though I only wear the patch 70% of the time. She's also decided I clearly want to be a pirate because I wear black.

Ray Davies

Desert Island Discs is a perfect programme to drive to, and knowing that I had two days of driving to and from the university through lanes with poor radio signal, I set up my portable speaker with an SD card containing a number of podcasts of Desert Island Discs.  Unusually, the radio reception was pretty good, so I bowled along listening to radio 4 instead.  To my great surprise the one programme I had time to listen to during my journey was Desert Island Discs, with the psychologist Marjorie Wallace as the castaway.

Rain drifted from the side as I bowled through the countryside - the roads were coated in a soup of water, mud and  crushed leaves that threatened to disturb the stability of the car, but I happily splashed through, quite distracted.
Driving is so much easier when absorbed by an interesting programme, and I travelled unthinkingly while absorbed in someone else's life.  The traffic bissected the countryside and the rolling hills encroached on either side; the brown and gold of the leaves rich enough to be a verb rather than a noun.

However, I was halted in my easy flowing commute, because just as I was just thinking my way into the approach to the campus she introduced 'Days' by Ray Davies.

'Thank you for the days
those endless days you gave me'


The enormity and purity of the words matched the character of my recent journey and interlocked with my own thoughts and memories, creating an honest and clear reality that pulled tears from my eyes.
I sploshed into the nearest layby, wondering how someone could write a message so pure that it can find and draw out the emotion of loss in every person.

'I won't forget a single day, believe me'

Oh, the ache of the past!  That dull pulling, tugging.  Not forgetting means being dragged back and losing that carefree free-flow that characterised our years together. Backwards time standing still, photos next to each other but 10 years apart; like eating food you can't taste; pulling rawness out like a machete that only cuts when it isn't there.

The cars continued to shoot past me; the splashing wheels cutting through the matrix of leaves.  I was sat, still, timeless, static, just taking in the words.  But on the cars went, relentless; progressing despite the knowledge that most of them would repeat the journey tomorrow and the next day and the next.
I couldn't join the flow until I had finished the message, the message that Ray Davies was sharing with me - he was talking to someone else but I was picking up the message as if it was for me.

Drive on, sniff, draw the back of my hand across my eyes - will people see them red?  Spasmodic breathing calms to a gentle depth as I enter the campus - up the tediously long drive where I usually look for people I know but never see anyone, so by the time I am ready to get out of the car the retch of grief had passed.  Deep breath, shake myself out, meet and greet.

Facebook

Karin was the undoubted queen of Facebook (I think George Takei is probably the king) and it would be a terrible waste if some of her more entertaining comments were shared again.  There are quite a lot - when I could see that she was writing some very entertaining pieces I started saving them, but this was really only for a short period of time.  Obviously the time she wrote most on Facebook was when she had left work but was still able to construct sentences artfully.
So, to kick-start things, here are the first two on my list;

Public Advice Notice
I have just been given a Muller thick and creamy 'strawberry' yogurt to eat. 

If you are ever tempted by one of these, beware! They are the most artificial tasting and feeling yogurt I have ever had the misfortune of eating. Colour is an unappetising dirty pink; the texture is horribly reminiscent of Angel Delight (now I love Angel Delight, esp butterscotch flavour, but yogurts should be yogurts, not Angel Delight) 

My advice? Just don't go there.

Ingredients:
Yogurt, Strawberries (8%), Water, Fructose, Modified Maize Starch, Gelatine, Flavourings, Citric Acid, Stabiliser: Pectins; Sweetener: Aspartame; Beetroot Juice Concentrate. 

Mr W is something of a yogurt specialist, having worked in the Yeo Valley yogurt and cream dairy in his youth. His view on the ingredients above and what they mean for the manufacturing process is that basic yogurt is taken and stirred into a virtual liquid, before being 'stabilised' into a creamy mass - unnecessary ingredients for a yogurt include modified maize starch, gelatine, stabiliser and beetroot juice concentrate (which is supposed to make the yogurt look like it's got strawberries in it, which I suppose it has, all 8% of them).

Avoid avoid avoid!

and number two;

Clever clever body!

Had to go back to the Oncology Centre to have more needle sticks - boo hiss - but the lovely Fallon got a vein second try! Man,that was a relief.

Even better, my blood counts were stellar - white cells, Hb, neutrophils, platelets had all improved incredibly over just the past 24 hours. Well done, me. (I believe the secret to improved blood counts is half a perfectly ripe avocado mashed with a big dessertspoonful of mayo and a splash of Thai sweet chilli sauce, eaten for lunch with a teaspoon and with Carrs melts crackers.)

Clutching evidence in hand, off we, my dearest Ingrid (actually my only Ingrid, but she'd be my dearest if I had a football team of Ingrids to choose from) and me, trot to South Bristol Community Hospital for day 1 chemo. Welcome, Carboplatin - duck billed platypus drug - and Gemcitabine - pretty jewel drug.

Again, a suitable vein found on the second try. Nice cup of tea from the little cafe and a really lovely talk with MDI. Two and a half hours later, off we jolly well go; steroids, anti-emetics x2 and poo medicine in hand.

The whole experience about a million times better than I'd expected.

The first one a throwaway reflection, but the second one I think catalogues her clutching at positives in a sea of negatives.  Loving the company of a friend, reflecting on a pleasurable meal, her body's positive response, and one thing only Karin could do - be entertained by the names of her chemo drugs; all of which hurt her.

But also, the dread she felt at having to undergo chemotherapy.  The certainty of knowing that there will be sustained and constant discomfort - how do you deal with that?  How would you deal with it?  I don't know how I would cope, but looking at Karin's strategy of identifying and celebrating the pleasures in her daily life, now that is to be celebrated.

I don't understand - where is she?

Joni vs KD

When I think of Joni Mitchell and KD Lang, I think of the song The Valley and imagine the two of them separated by altitude and attitude - 'I live in the valley, you live in the hills'.  Who lives where is unimportant, except Joni lived in a canyon so maybe she should be the valley dweller: although possibly her ethereal warbling is more suited to being up on high.  When we went to see KD Lang, she took off her shoes and sang rooted to the ground, earth-connected.  Well, who cares; the point is they are very different and we both had our favourites. And The Valley was written by Jane Siberry, so neither of them.

Karin loved KD Lang.  She loved her more than I love Joni Mitchell because she loved the person as well as the music, their shared initials were surely beyond coincidence.  She loved KD's raw honesty about herself, her rabble-rousing self-confidence, sexual identity, veganism, even her hair style.  And her singing - a sound that seemed to grow from the earth like a forest, and made of a natural purity that rejected any artifice.   Lyrics that told deep stories about real people; people who sat and loved each other, properly.
New CD's were brought into this house as soon as they were released and played over and over, then added to the rotation of all the other KD CD's.  Any singers similar to KD Lang were instantly dismissed as unpalatable (an exception was made for Bonnie Raitt): and as for Joni Mitchell, well she just put her dirty laundry on display and sang with a voice that could break glass. Oh well.

The Canadian heritage of both these singers (not to mention Jane Siberry) give a hint of the icing on the cake - a connection that began and ended with our family self-definition as neo-Canadians: new settlers in a country that is still trying to understand the impact of the previous incomers.  The timing of KD Lang when she entered our consciousness at the turn of the millenium - a new age for us - was perfect as we headed toward Toronto.   So KD Lang's songs became incorporated into Karin's character, like adding a herb to soup; and by default into our family identity.

A few months before Karin died we discovered a KD Lang song we didn't know: Barefoot.  Its lupine chorus, reflective words and guitar accompaniment beautifully matched the sheer bleak cold of the film it was used as the soundtrack for.  We sent off for the film; what with that track, and KD Lang playing one of the main characters it just had to be watched.  I may be wrong but I think it was the last film Karin saw; with a glass of wine and the curtains drawn we were taken to an arctic place where no life existed outside a parker jacket.
The film felt like a film-school piece with oblique sideways glances and long atmospheric shots, but no matter - we had bought into the whole thing.  The triangulation of music, actor, country, generated a whole that reinforced what was in our mind - KD Lang is very cool.  She is very cool because she talks the language of the earth; there is an honest purity to her music and life that pushes up against other disingenuous characters in the media.  Karin liked that - no affectation.

(image taken from http://www.cinema.de/bilder/salmonberries,1296734.html)

Beady Belle

The circle game

I remember walking around the hospital when Elly was born - empty corridors, with just the occasional cleaner freshening the place up during the lull of night, ready for the messy hordes the following day.  The floor shone in the low level security lighting and the warmth of the day finally gave way to a gentle dark stickiness. We were satellites; operating independently of the rest of humanity and in a world, an existence, of our own.  The occasional intrusion of another family, evidenced by a panicky moaning from behind one of those wooden varnished doors, or someone wandering around to find the toilets or leaving the building for a cigarette, seemed to me to be wrong - how dare they be in our hospital?  The staff were surely just for us - they had led us to believe that anything we wanted could be given to us.  Shared gazes focused inward onto one spot.

The same went for the oncology ward and the hospice.  Sucked into being individuals and leaving society behind, it was dislocating to find someone else there living out the same experience.  I would meet another relative hovering by the kettle or trying to work the remote for the family room tv, and wonder how they have blundered into our universe. One woman in the hospice talked to me most days.  I went there every day for just over two weeks - my incarceration was completed on 11th July, but hers kept going.  Her uncle had hung on for 23 weeks and she went in every single day, wandering round the corridors and getting to know others passing through.  When she had seen I wasn't there, she told me she knew what had happened and wished me all the best in the rest of my life.  And with that and a quick hug from a fellow sufferer she released me back into a world of cars, shops, people, noise and connections.

The odd thing of course is that it was all an illusion: people are being born all the time.  The hospital was filled with rooms that held women in the feral act of childbirth - exposing flesh and behaviour that is normally so locked away.  Animal noises, warm pale limbs, bare feet.
Couples will walk out in a steady stream, one by one so they don't see other couples, clutching soft bundles or hard plastic car seats. Women wearing slippers more suited to the bedroom than the street, walking slowly with exhaustion and bed culture; new dads with swollen eyes from lack of sleep and blinking back unaccustomed tears.
 And the hospice - families leaving, not with a newborn baby but a plain carrier bag that may contain a washing kit, more slippers, a photograph: precious little compared to the amount of objects we magpie together over the years and that clutter up the mantle pieces and shelves of our lives.  Every day, families walk out like this and every day the beds are cleaned and remade, ready for the next person.  We did not have a unique experience - it is being played out in multiples in this city right now.  The miracle of birth and death is made mundane by its ubiquity.

I went back to the hospice the day after Karin died to organise some clothes and after an interview with the nurse I went through to thank the doctor for her care.  As I passed the staff many said hello to me, but they had stepped off the path.  They were caring for someone else now - all that focused compassion was redirected.  The doctor hardly recognised me despite us having had some quite intimate conversations in the last few days.
The individual act of dying - or being born - takes place parallel to similar journeys undergone by countless other individuals.  Any sense of Karin's death being unique is dashed in a moment's refection.
Was her death unique?  Are all deaths unique?  What makes us think that our experience is noteworthy?
Three months later I am still reconsidering what happened and what is happening; but six miles from here seventeen families are sitting drinking tea while the low sun streams through the window in dusty shafts.  Laundered cotton sits in smooth piles, blankets gently slip to the floor, someone cuts the grass.

Mindfulness and compassion

Last Sunday I attended a course offering an introduction to mindfulness; Karin was a regular at the organisation's weekend retreats and I rather felt that I wanted to continue our relationship with a group that had contributed strongly to her positive approach.  I don't know whether she had a talent for mindfulness lying dormant that was triggered into action when she became ill or that she was suddenly receptive to these ideas given her circumstances, or more likely a mixture of the two, but she seemed to take this approach and weave it into the fabric of the end of her life in such a way that mindfulness provided a meaningful structure and integrity.

The morning dawned with oxygen-rich mists and pavements increasingly scuffed with brown leaves curled like shells.  The silence of the day provided space that was pegged out by birds making the best use of the absence of people.  I walked to the venue to save fiddling with a bike and arrived warm and alert, well aware that if Karin had been around she would have attended: hugging old friends, pulling out home-made brownies and flooding the room with sparkle in a way only she could.  She sure could work a room.
This didn't help me much, and as we settled for the first session I felt the air silently filling with a melancholy that seemed destined just for me.  The very furniture seemed to include her vocabulary - cushions for meditating on, wicker chairs and blankets for those with cold feet. The introduction of all the people around the room drew out her presence and I was really finding it hard to keep functioning; but like lancing an infection, when I introduced myself and my reason for attending, the pressure was then relieved and the rest of the morning developed into a calm well-suited to the themes of the day.

Short sessions, plenty of talk, tea, cool autumn sun pushing through the window; the day progressed in a relaxed manner, until quite suddenly it was the very last meditation - Metta Bharvana; a loving-kindness meditation.  The irrepressible spirit of Karin finally beat its way through all the closed eyes, herbal teas, bells and cushions.  I suddenly remembered a facebook entry she made about this meditation and from then on struggled to avoid giggling.  I have reproduced it below, but if there is any chance that you may be carrying out this meditation some time in the future please don't read it, as I promise the last line will haunt you and appear just when you hope it won't.  In one facebook comment Karin managed to destroy a 3,000 year old buddhist practice.

Hmmmm. I don't know that I'm really suited to mindfulness. This morning I did my yoga, very nice indeed, peaceful in fact. Then I sat for 20 minutes with the intention of doing a metta bharvana meditation.

Stage 1 - feeling loving kindness towards myself - was okay, tho I found it hard not to be critical of myself. Stages 2 and 3 - feeling loving kindness towards a good friend and feeling the humanity of and loving kindness towards someone I don't know well/have neutral feelings about - went better.

Then came Stage 4 - loving kindness towards someone I dislike or feel is an enemy. Oh dear. 

I just wanted to kill that person. Stab stab stab. Oh dear. Didn't make it to the end. Oh deary deary me.

Just remember, the spirit of Monkey was.... irrepressible

 

Who we are

I just found this picture in my hard drive.  I was trying to remember when it was - Karin still had hair and those beaten-down slippers that slowly slumped to earth as the fabric lost its integrity.  It was in our summer house and I could trace this back to the exact time; but I don't want to - what is the point?  Here is a moment: when the moment occured isn't relevant; it's not as if I am methodically constructing an archive like meticulously prepared specimens pinned into a glass cabinet with hand-written labels, dates places.

I can see it in her eyes, but I don't know if you can.  You might just see a woman, relaxed and thoughtful.  I, however, can see the world being sorted out, the interconnectedness between people, the act of sitting in your own life.  I can see that because that was in her mind - that took up her mind.

In tidying up her work stuff this morning I found an old CV.  Was that who she was?  Or was it a constructed other-ego that was made for a purpose.  The public, the private, the solitary, the unconscious, all combine to create a distilled overview of the person.

I knew the fierceness of loving one, just one person.  The all-consuming richness that gave strength to existence; and of course I knew the feeling of receiving the same back.

Karin

Karin and I were a couple for over thirty years – we started going out the first night we met. We have owned three houses, three children and hundreds of cats.  I was always into cycling and running and Karin was always into books – over time our interests blended, like a Venn diagram where the circles are moving together.

Oddly, Karin always claimed that after she left school she convinced herself that she wasn’t sporty: bad mistake marrying me then.  As she got older her physical vocabulary came back, starting with karate in Canada then progressing to running on the road, followed closely by my favourite hobby; off-road running.  We also bought her a nice road bike that she could use to go to work on as well as recreational rides.  She was pretty strong; I have a very clear memory of her riding in a duathlon and riding round grinning and laughing the whole way to fourth place in the cycling section. 

The last two years have seen us sharing the burden of cancer. Karin was the one who had to endure tests and scans followed by chemo and radio-therapy.  She vomited, had seizures, and lost the feeling in her legs. Her headaches lasted months, not hours, and her hair was scorched off her scalp, but she very rarely complained.  No, she planned holidays, parties, visits, she identified what she wanted to make the little life she had left as pleasurable as possible.  She wrote and published a novel and filled countless books with ideas. She planned and had special moments with our children to provide meaningful complete memories for them. She insisted, insisted, that I buy a titanium bike (a real chore for me). People became very important, to the point at which Karin’s strength was only in evidence when friends or family were around – often when they left she just collapsed into exhausted sleep. 

What did I do? Cooking, cleaning, counting the medication out, being company, working, writing this blog, staying in touch with people, and latterly, organising everything.  I also went running – Karin told me to.  She said it was important I had some ‘me’ time and it would help me unravel my head.  And I was her partner.  Not as a passive state but active, like two people pressing their foreheads together. We sat and just existed.  We went to the supermarket and actually enjoyed it, we talked, drank prosecco together. We sat in bed until far too late in the morning and drank tea made by the Teasmaid. She liked toast in bed, one with marmalade and one with jam or occasionally marmite. I loved it; I could care for her and we would connect deeply.

When I went running I always had to have my phone on me just in case she had a problem.  Now when I go out I have to check my reflex and leave the phone at home – no-one will phone me.

Karin’s energy ran out three weeks before she died.  She knew how close she was to the end but still spent her time making sure everyone was ok.  She still sent me out running, although I was scared to go for very long.  I took my running kit to the hospice but never felt confident enough to change and get out, despite being very close to Blaise estate.  The staff in the hospice looked after her while I tried to sit and understand the changes that had occurred in us.  They recognised the journey both of us were on and provided the care and guidance we needed.

We all get pestered constantly for contributions to this or that charity, but it is only when you need the support of one you really know their value.  I knew what hospices did but I didn’t know what that felt like.  I had no idea that a nurse would see me sitting on my own and come and chat with me for 30 minutes. I didn’t know that the care extends beyond the death of the patient, or that relatives who live a long way away can access counselling skills from other hospices; this means our children can still be supported even when they are away at university.

Please consider making a donation to the St Peter’s Hospice.  I want to give back the care we all received during Karin’s time there so that someone else can have it.  Everybody deserves a dignified death.

Click on the link below to go to my fund raising page;

 http://uk.virginmoneygiving.com/fundraiser-web/fundraiser/displaySomeoneSpecialPage.action?pageUrl=KarinDixonWilkins

In Memory of Karin Dixon Wilkins

Last week I cycled through the top field at Ashton Court in the evening. They had left the grass long for the flowers to complete their cycle and the field was lank and rich with life.  Orchids were standing alongside moon daisies; flies and moths hovered above, and the air was full of swallows etching the sky; their peeping calls bouncing back from the silent woods.

How do you buy a wedding ring for a singular person?  For Karin’s ring we trawled the usual sterile chain shops but found only two possibilities; an overly expensive vintage ring in an antique shop or having one made, which we ordered. The resulting ring was perfect and defined Karin accurately – quirky, unique and classy in a way was unique; a sine wave; gold with a twist.  

I lost it at Ashton Court festival in that same top field, after having offered to put it in my wallet for safety.  I must have dropped it in the grass amid the conspicuous rejection of plain living, the wine hidden in kids’ juice bottles, sweet illicit whiffs of cannabis, colours, eclectic images, sounds, tastes.  Those bright colours sat well on her. 

But now, the clatter of people had gone and the predominant sound was the gentle hum of nature. Over the years the field has changed; trees that I remember leaning over the path in the past have since dropped large branches that feed fungi and creatures.  The field has the same shapes, same indents and bulges but now there is a small new path that mountain bikers use to thread along the top. The bottom path that led out of the field is gone, buried under nettles and brambles. Karin’s ring is in the field somewhere, sat against the bedrock, maybe for millennia, maybe for eternity.

Two years ago we stayed in the Alps.  We packed loads of water to counteract the heat, a cold pizza folded in half for food, and a map, and set off jogging up a steep path that was toothed with rocks.  Plenty of walkers stepped aside to let us past – some made encouraging comments in French which only Karin understood; she was good at languages.  In fact she was good at all communication and thrived on contact with others.  I sometimes felt guilty at taking her up into wild places away from people and subjecting her to the physical discomfort of steepness and wind, but she would do these things for me.

After two hours of running we hit a plateau followed by a final climb to a cliff face that offered a startling view of Mont Blanc.  We felt we could reach out and touch it; its implacable face blinding in the sun.  People cluttered the spot and Karin was taken by what they were up to.  One family had a full picnic, complete with a jar of jam and a baguette.  Another man was reading Le Monde; neither seemed appropriate up a mountain but she thought this was excellent – people thumbing their nose at what you are ‘supposed to do’.

As the afternoon came to an end we started running back down the path.  It’s harder running downhill, the gradient burns your thighs and the temptation to speed up is controlled by fear of roots that could trip you up. The high plateau and Mont Blanc were left behind, still there but out of sight. 

That run was when the landscape entered Karin’s soul. We had travelled into the land and gained some understanding of how we fit in the world. The consistent cycle of days, rocks, impermanence, the annual cycle of orchids, the sun setting. We are mortal, even mountains are mortal. The only way to understand the different speeds of change is by sinking gradually into the land, the great breathing of bedrock.  Since that holiday Karin changed dramatically; her terminal diagnosis pushed her into thinking about how she fitted in her life and how her life fitted into time. Karin’s approach to her own mortality has given us a new template, one that understands that in a thousand or a million years none of us will be here; what we have right now is what we have. This is a gift from her to you.

Karin was scared of running up mountains; she hated heights and was cautious of going somewhere that was potentially dangerous.  What leads a person to give in to the desires and interests of their partner, despite being terrified? Only I know how much she struggled up there; I could read the body language as the ascent and descent both brought their challenges. Karin was prepared to face her ghosts head on and her reward was a final two years that were rich and meaningful.

I bought her a new ring.  The jeweller that made the first one still had the original design but despite a couple of attempts just couldn’t recreate it.  We bought their best effort; a lovely ring but not the same.  There is no trace of the original, no photos, nothing.  Except it sits somewhere in that field – it has gone but is still present.