The dawn chorus

On Coping #37

I am awoken at 5 by the dawn chorus outside our bedroom window.

.

Lying on my side of the bed where I still sleep

I begin my new ritual morning meditation.

.

But barely a minute passes before I am distracted by a magnificent rare yellow breasted bird high up in the trees behind our house.

I watch wondering what on earth it is

this unusual sighting.

.

I congratulate myself for marvelling in gratitude at the natural world of which I know so little and have up until this point under-appreciated.

Then the creature takes flight.

And I realise with no small degree of disappointment

that it was just a pigeon in particularly good light.

.

I sit up at 6

and in the first quiet hour of the morning

as I am nowadays wont to do

not least because of the four foot photo now adorning our bedroom wall

I think of you.

.

Today

I decide to start reading your diaries.

.

I was so well behaved before.

Never touched them while you were alive

despite strong temptations.

.

All respect for privacy aside

part of me feared what I would find there.

.

It’s Sunday.

The kids are all at sleepovers

so the street

and the house

are quiet.

.

I flick past the first few entries and land on a page where you have written

.

So nourishing spending time with friends. We went for a swim at Tankerton which might have been one of my favs so far. George joined. Nothing like a hug in the sea. 🤍

.

I turn over a few more pages and a couple of days later you have written

Fuck this is bleak.

.

I close the cover and put the diary back on your bedside table.

.

I get the dog up.

Feed the cat.

Put the kettle on for hot lemon.

Dissolve a Berocca in spring water.

Grind beans for coffee.

.

Then I walk into the garden and ground myself

as you taught me

pressing the soles of my feet

into our patio.

.

I take off my pyjamas

and plunge naked into your ice bath.

.

It’s full to the brim with last night’s torrential downpour.

It is excruciating and exhilarating.

.

Back in the house

brewing coffee

a friend sends me a song.

.

I’ll work hard to the end of my shift

and give you every second I can find

and hope it isn’t me who’s left behind

.

It’s knowing this can’t go on forever

It’s likely one of us will have to spend some days alone

maybe we’ll get 40 years together

but one day, I’ll be gone and, one day, you’ll be gone.

.

I get back in bed.

Another friend messages

How are you feeling today?

.

I start to type a reply but find that I can’t.

Because I can’t begin to do justice to the magnitude of what I feel

with these inadequate

words.

.

I feel hugeness

hollowness

profundity

pointlessness

depth

dread

magnitude

mundanity

longing

disbelief

unbearable

excruciating pain

exhilarating love.

.

And as soon as I box that into a whatapp message it makes it feel too small.

.

Because

okay

fuck it

it’s not ego speaking when I say

this is big

right?

This is the big stuff

isn’t it, baby?

.

To watch the love of your life die fast and slow in front of your very eyes before being gone

forever.

.

And okay if I really think about it there are worse things

and if I really really think about it there is no better or worse

no metric measure of misery

of badness .

.

But to have love and lost

to have adored

to have

yes I can say it

to have chosen a mate for your soul

and be chosen in return

and then for that to have been ripped asunder

is

it’s

.

And just because it happens to people all over the world every second of every day doesn’t

does not

make it

make it any less

any less.

.

I stood in that church

and I knew

for that moment at least

that

to love and be loved

is

.

Or else what is this pain telling me?

What would be the point of this utter

What would be the point?

.

I don’t know.

.

I pick up your diary again and open another page.

.

September 4 2022.

.

Our 12th Wedding Anniversary. We went for dinner last night in Margate and it felt so good to get out and about. Didn’t expect to be dealing with this cancer shit 12 years down the line but here we are. Here’s hoping for many more years.

Previous > On Coping #36: Raindrops on cobwebs | Next > On Coping #38: I tread water

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On Coping is my story of surviving on the sidelines of cancer. It begins in 2022 with On Coping #1, written the day after my 41st birthday. The day my wife Imogen, the mother of my three children, was diagnosed with stage 4 cancer.  It’s the story of what happened next. Read from the start.

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