VPR - Here and there

Two months ago, to the day, my wife Veronica died. My initial reaction was one of guilt; we’d looked after each other during a 66-year marriage and somehow my caring hadn’t been good enough. The house was full of dark corners; my fault.

Some saw Guilt as inexact; how about Grief and its five stages: Denial, Anger, Bargaining, Depression, Acceptance? I tried to fit these states into a mind beset with loneliness. They didn’t work and, in any case, there were caveats; the time-span for each of these five compartments can vary inordinately. Conceivably I was still denying death even though the box containing Veronica’s cremated ashes said otherwise.

So I turned to that part of my consciousness which, for others, is occupied by a religious faith; as Faulkner might have put it: continuing the creation of a wordy contrivance that had never previously existed. Progress was slow, sometimes non-existent. Never say writing is an easy way out. Not so surprising given that when the gates finally opened the view ahead bore very little resemblance to what had been covered in the preceding 80,000 words. Well, as we all know, Saul differs from Paul.

I wondered how Veronica would have reacted. For her entity still exists here and there. At the other side of our king-size bed. In the kitchen where, unlike her, I prepare unimaginative food. On the patio, waiting for something white and chilled. Listening to the Wotan–Brunnhilde dialogue. Squinting at small-type product labels in Tesco. Watching The Wire for the n-ty n-th time. Sighing at the weeds in the gravel garden. Daring to search the sky for the SAS helicopter. Waiting on Stanbrook for the free bus (thanks to the pensioner’s card). Taking a delivery  from The Wine Society. Presiding over Beef Wellington at Christmas. New Zealand. Cologne. Birmingham Symphony Hall. Somewhere in France in the Scirocco.

Memory, now even more precious.