Leaf of absence

Just filling you in..

I know I have been absent some weeks. This year got off to a good start. That said, I would have planned it differently if I had that kind of power. But of course I, we, have none. I am a mother of three gorgeous grown up children but I am not their owner, or their manager and I have as much chance of controlling them and how they lead their lives, as I have of getting my daughter’s sheep dog to stop trying to catch the waves on the beach.

By September I invited my daughter to a long weekend for her and I to disconnect up the coast and found an astonishingly good hotel. Booking had told me I was lucky to get the last room and I thought that was logarithm bullshit but after spending time in S’Agaro I think Booking was right. Our room was so close to the beach you could hear the therapeutic rhythm of the waves in bed.

My daughter had worked seven days a week, in a stables teaching and working in forty degrees of heat, for weeks. She was about to start a new job in a children’s hospital in the city as a dog therapist. I thought it would be good for her to have a break in the last possible long weekend before her new contract would begin.

What an amazing job it is. She comes home with the most moving stories. I’m hoping she will put pen to ink and tell her story some day. She can write well too, so I’m looking forward to that. If she doesn’t I will! Though I think I only get a quarter of the full picture of course.

We left the coast that day as I got a call from my sister that my Mum was sick. They called an appointment for the doctor. One day later, she’s in a hospital bed. Two days after that, they say it’s cancer. I travel to the UK as fast as I can. We hold her hand. Talk to doctors in a variety of coloured uniforms. It’s difficult to keep track of who does what. Twenty days later she passes away while none of us are in the room with her. Then we are left with no choice but to plan her funeral.

It’s the first time in my life I talk at length with a funeral director (and what a weird job that must be!). It’s the first time in decades I talk with a vicar. We have to register her death. They get the surname wrong online and Dad can’t upload to the state system. They correct it eventually.

He goes to the bank with my sister for support (she’s been amazing). They close Mum’s account with her death certificate and her will in his hand. But someone online in the system gets it all the wrong way round. This morning he gets up to go out and notices his bank account online won’t work. He ends up driving to the nearest branch, which is now twenty miles away, because they’ve closed thousands of branches and sure enough, nothing works. He is locked out of his own bank account. He’s over eighty, seriously grieving after 68 years seriously happily married together and he has to sit through two hours of emergency paperwork. It appears that someone had registered him as dead and all his money had been put into Mum’s account.

The account is finally corrected and an apology given, but all that stress! His credit card remains useless so no doubt there will missed renewals and things online in case he needs a little more stress and so that’s why I haven’t been writing. These last few weeks have been hard. I haven’t even mentioned any details about Mum or the huge storm of emotions we’ve all had chucked at us like a tornado and of course many of you are familiar with too. Losing a lost one happens to us all.

‘We have to keep moving. If I stopped now, I knew I would never be able to start again’. - Alexandra Bracken.

I have been for walks at dawn this week. I have sighed at the rich autumnal sunsets. I am coping and coming to terms with this ton of stuff, or not? Maybe not. I think I might be shelving my feelings to be able to write the eulogy. The funeral for some reason isn’t for another two weeks but I think I have it written.

HOTEL ROOM VIEW IN S’AGARO

So maybe now I can start to let go. I hope you’ll bear with me. I am starting a new section called ‘Good Grief’ where I will learn to handle all, or some of this. It will be behind a paywall so if you only want to hear the peaceful stories of Vineyards Tales, no worries, that’s exactly what it will continue to be for.

EMPTY HUSKS IN LATE SUMMER SUNSHINE

‘Every person’s life ends the same way, it is only the details of how they lived and how they died that distinguishes one from the other’ - Ernest Hemingway.

I can’t help but notice the word ‘only’ in the middle of Hemingway’s quote. Five very heavy letters.

Lots of love.

If you are looking for some peaceful, nature inspired snippets on SubStack this week, try

Susie Mawhinney

’s (In)glorious days… or

Whitney Barkman

’s When the Forest Calls. Here they are:

(In)glorious days…

AND

When the Forest Calls