Sorrows Come

"When sorrows come, they come not single spies, but in battalions." - Hamlet.

There are so few people to run to when your heart breaks. At least for me.

My first thought, like a homing pigeon, was my sister. And she's out, wherever, whatever, 'tis the season.

Then my best friend.

Crazy that last thought. For my heart breaks for her. I can't run to her anymore. Or she to me.

I haven't written about her in a while. I wanted to live in my fantasy world where all would be well and she would be miraculously cured and we'd be back to the world of our daily emails with our lives laid bare to each other.

I had a long conversation with her husband today.

And it's dreadful news indeed.

The waiting game has started.

A tiny part of me knew this but I'd look at her picture on my wall and say: "Not you. Never you."

"Her life was writ so large!" said her husband a few hours ago.

Yes, it was. Like yesterday, I can still recall her running beside me as I biked home from school. In our over 65 years of friendship I don't recall us once having a fight or disagreement. We traded clothes and boyfriends and would comfort each other in the early losses of our mothers. We acted on stage together. We sang together. And on. Far, far too much.

So here I am blogging.

I don't feel there is anywhere else to turn to at the moment.

December 9th

The voices in my head are particularly loud today. Invited voices, I hasten to add. Voices of the past, a child's voice, her 9 year old body hanging upside down from a tree in the back yard at a heart stopping height. A fearless child. A child never without bandaged knees or split skin somewhere on her face. A child who would insist on wearing different coloured socks. "One matches the sweater, the other matches the pants", she would say to me, rolling her eyes, as if to ask what was wrong with me anyway. A child who wore baseball caps and a leather cowboy jacket until they just about decomposed on her body. A creative child who painted black snow and blue trees and red grass.

I write of her every year on this day, her birthday, my estranged daughter. There is a balm in the writing of it. I know I am not alone. Each time I write someone comes forward and says, yeah, me too. It helps.

I was lucky enough to find her on Twitter. So I follow her quietly, not every day as I did in the beginning but every week. Modern technology: I am so grateful for bringing me my precious child but also a couple of very old friends who were lost to me. Estranged Daughter is a film-maker in England: Avant Garde films. Indie films. And also a social activist much like her sister and me. She is also a creative knitter (!) and writer. This much I glean.

And leave her be.

Happy birthday, dearest daughter!

That Alternative Universe Thingie

It's like this. I casually check up on an old boyfriend on yer Googley machine. I do this now and again. Throw a name of an old lovie-dove into the big G and watch it spindry for a while and regurgitate an old Himself into something new and shiny or sodden and sad. It's fascinating. Everyone does this, don't they? No? Oh, c'mon! I'm the only one owning up to it then?

The odd one has an obit, I'll tell ya that can weird me out a bit. And in case you think I've been around the block a few times, well I have. But not as much as you're thinking even though I'm flattered that you would.

Well I did this with one the other night. And guess what, if he's not making a big name for himself in politics. Really big. All based on his honesty, open-mindedness and transparency. A manifesto, like. All printed up on his website like an old papyrus document. And a picture of Himself beside it, all blue-eyed truthiness with a matching sweater.

And I sit there gob-smacked.

Maybe I wasn't looking when we were madly in love a decade ago or maybe those qualities are like bunions – you grow them later on in life. But I remember the last sorry week of our relationship when it became evident he had done nothing but lie to me for the two years we were together.

And broke my heart.

Heartbreak & Irish Bread.

It's a sick feeling. Like something green and slimy sitting in my stomach slithering long tentacles into my bowels. I can't see stuff right in front of my nose. Where's the big yellow bowl, I yell at the dog, it was right here under my nose, I took it down off the shelf and now it's gone. Look? Where is it? And I knock other stuff off the counter looking for it. And it's right there, after ten minutes I see it, the stupid thing, yawning its creamy shiny insides at me, teetering on the edge of the sink.

My reality is gone sideways on me, I keep trying to put it upright. Every bloody thing is an effort. I have a brunch tomorrow with a lot of people coming and I have to prep for it which is a very good thing as it keeps my mind off IT.

I make couscous and my Irish brown bread and my strata dish with eggs and ham, broccoli and cheese and bread and mustard. I made my hummus - which is very special as it has Irish chili sauce in it, and I make Irish crepes which have potato and onion and mushy peas stuffed inside. And IT pounds into my brain and pierces my heart from time to time.

Was it the bible, was it my father, it doesn't matter, who said there is nothing worse than an ungrateful child? And by that I don't mean an endless litany of thankyous but the disdain and the verbal abuse and the you've never done enough for me kind of thing that keeps getting thrown at me over and over again. Until my heart breaks yet one more time.

All I know is I did the best I could with what I had, I loved them dearly and too much it seems for the pain to be this great today.