Some respite from constant pain today permitted small forays into Life Goes On. Nice weather continues to ease this whole process. I’m starting to set small areas of the house straight. As I do that, I even spot small opportunities to rearrange things just a little differently, just a shade more to my liking. I don’t think this place is turning into a bachelor pad but I accept that it may come to lack quite the shine of a woman’s touch, in favour of pragmatism. Elsie has been remarkably pro-active about cleaning and tidying. An extremely good thing!
And then, as I look and move around the house, there are countless small reminders of Jane. Each one is a small elastoplast that must be pulled off. A small goodbye. And my body is covered in them.
Only two weeks ago, Jane sent me a text: “Honey – can you come home a little earler so I can buy you a nice dinner?”. We ate at Bologna, in Carlton Mill. I sat opposite Jane at a small table with a delicious dinner and wine. We looked into each other’s eyes the whole evening as we talked and ate. I remember thinking, and saying, I love you, I love you, Jane. At each moment, I could feel the fibres of love being spun between us, weaving and joining us, and I celebrated each one with joy.
I guess it is those fibres that I can feel being torn off now.
And yet, strangely I can go for several moments feeling ok. I feel a bit guilty about it. I look at other women differently now, and feel guilty about that. “Other women”. They aren’t really other now, as there is no-one for them to be other to. It’s just that, even though Jane is gone, our relationship feels far from over. In fact it feels only just begun.
Here is the poem, or excerpt from a poem, that Liz Bayliss (from from Whitireia Polytech) copied into the remembrance book for Jane:
The art of walking upright here
Is the art of using both feet.
One is for holding on.
One is for letting go.
Glen Colquhoun
Since Thursday, my good days have been alternating with my bad days. That means tomorrow is a bad one. The day I try to go back to work. Though I know to be gentle with myself, I know my work itself will take a lot of letting go, once it starts to engage me again. I know that I resent that Pit when I slide into it. And I know that the bottom of that Pit, nasty and lonely as it is, is a healing place.
One reply on “Holding on and Letting Go”
[…] On this night, one year ago, Jane and I were enjoying our last evening together. Listening to the “Be Good Tanyasâ€, as I am now, alone. Though so many have been torn away, the fibres of our relationship, our love that had only just (@#$%ing) begun, remain stretched from my flesh to the woman who wrote those diary entries. It just is. I don’t think I could do anything about it, even if I wanted to. One year on, I sit bolt upright and think “NO! That’s wrong. That hasn’t happened. Not that.†There is no panic, only knowing that it is not possible that Jane is dead. And then the creeping incursion of “actually, …†begins to battle my denial. […]