bereavement – Kathleen Jowitt

A freight train crosses the back of the picture on a grey day; in front of it, a narrowboat is moored on a river.

Drink red wine from a tumbler.

Add three spoonfuls of sugar to black coffee.

Write a sentence longer than most people’s paragraphs.

Talk to a railway man.

Quote some dreadful Victorian slush.

Try to persuade the nearest soprano to sing some dreadful Victorian slush.

Photograph some buses.

Tell everyone you prefer trains.

Look at three different maps of the same place, none current.

Take the baby to look at trains.

Take a beermat home with you. Take six beermats home with you. (Or: be pleased that the beermat collection has gone to someone who appreciates it.)

Join the Friends of King Alfred Buses. (I have been meaning to do this for ages and have at least/at last managed to print off the application form.)

Yell ‘Trolloper!’ at the cat. (I didn’t, because it was five in the morning and the rest of the household was more or less asleep, despite the noise of the cat/waste paper battle.)

Read the lesson at Mattins. (I get one opportunity per year. I am on the rota.)

Remember the date. Tell people why it’s meaningful on a personal level. Although probably not in those terms.

(Two years without Pa, six months, nearly, with the little one.)

(Thanks to Havi for the concept of SMOPL.)

An almost full moon straggling through light cloud.

It’s had plenty of them. The year began with my father’s death; then I caught Covid in March and was out of things for a good six weeks. Intense heat in the summer. And now, once again, the fatigue and lack of go that always affects me in the winter.

One constant, and perhaps the biggest challenge of them all, has been the absence of energy and motivation. Life goes on around me and it’s hard to keep up with it. My brain isn’t working as fast as it used to, but there’s just as much to be done. My memory isn’t as reliable as once it was, and I get maybe a couple of hours in the day when I can knock out tasks and cross things off lists. The rest of the time? Napping on the sofa, or staring into space.

In some ways, the problem is wanting to do it, whatever it is. I still have the ability, but I have to summon an awful lot of motivation to make it happen. The autopilot’s on the fritz, and doing it on manual doesn’t half take it out of you.

I know this isn’t a complete truth. Even quite recently I’ve managed to climb into the saddle and get some things sorted, when they wanted to be sorted. And things will shift, as 2022 moves into 2023, as the days get longer, as I regain physical energy. In the meantime… well, the things that want to get done will get done, and the things that need to get done will have to get done, and everything else can hang on another few weeks. And the challenge of 2022 is being OK with that.