The Bright Ring of the Day
Nexis Pas
(nexispas@yahoo.co.uk)
I wrote this in 2008. It was published in an ezine that required that all other copies be deleted. I recently discovered that the ezine has disappeared. So I am reposting it here.
And I said, Let
grief be a fallen leaf
At the dawning
of the day.
--Patrick
Kavanaugh, ‘Raglan Road’,
1946
(sung to the
tune of the classic Irish
song ‘Fáinne
Geal an Lae’)
In the early morning light, the cold ocean stretched
grey to the north horizon. On that autumn day, the long waves rolling past me
toward the head of Sheephaven
Bay barely lifted the
water, as if the sea were too thick and heavy to move. The bus taking the
children to school in Letterkenny had awakened me while it was still dark. Their
voices as they waited in the old market square and then the protest of the
engine as the driver shifted gears and eased the bus up the winding road out of
Dunfanaghy carried clear and distinct across the harbour that separates our
house from the village. Sounds that I would not notice amid the noise outside
my home in Brighton disquiet my sleep here,
where the bleating of a solitary sheep against the background of the waves is
enough to perturb the night. A short time later, when a group of hikers chattering
about birds walked past the house along the road to Horn Head, I abandoned all
hope of sleep and got out of bed. Without turning on the lights, I made coffee
for myself. I pulled on one of the heavy woollen coats that always hang from
pegs in the passageway and then carried my cup outside to stand by the low wall
behind the house. The steam from the cup mingled with the mist in the air.
Fáinne geal an
lae, the ‘bright ring of the day’, the ancient Irish kenning
for the dawn, was apt that morning. The low clouds closed off the sky except in
the east, and the first hint of the sunrise was a narrow crown of light along
the tops of the hills on the east side of Sheephaven Bay.
Shapes slowly emerged from the darkness as the daylight grew around me. I wedged
the cup into a hollow in the top of the uneven stone wall and looked down the
hill toward the shore. A lone razorbill skimmed the surface of the sea below me
and then merged with the water.
I seldom visit Dunfanaghy any more. My sister and her
husband and their children and now their grandchildren use the house as their
summer home, and I find them too much company. Once, perhaps twice, each
summer, I yield and spend a weekend with them. The phone will ring, and that
voice that sounds so eerily like my mother’s will entreat, ‘It is after all
your house too, Ross, and family is important. The children deserve a chance to
know you.’ And so I take the car ferry from Holyhead and then drive to Donegal,
and for two days observe the formalities of affection. I listen sympathetically
to my sister’s fond tales of her irritating students and nod sagely at my
brother-in-law’s accounts of his business. I pretend an interest in the lives
of my nieces and nephews. I chaperone their young children on walks along Killahoey
Strand and then ooh and aah at the treasures they find on the sand. I accompany
my sister and her husband as they play a round of golf. I like the exercise if
not the game, and it gets me away from the house. The air in the house on those
weekend visits is dense with noise. It feels like a pressure surrounding my
head and pushing into me. Someone is always talking, and the radio or
television or the children’s CD players are always on--occasionally all of them
at once. I am glad to flee on Monday morning into the silence of my car and the
drive back to Brighton.
This stone house with its slate roof has been in my
family for generations now. Over time, it grew from a crofter’s hovel to its
present dimensions as my family moved up in the world. It is the usual Irish
country box, with a door in the centre of the ground floor, three windows to
each side of the door matched by a roughly parallel row of windows on the floor
above, and chimneys in the centre of both ends. My great-grandparents were the
last to live in it permanently. My grandparents and then my parents used it as
a summer retreat, leaving it in the hands of a caretaker the rest of the year. My
parents had the builders in when they retired in the mid-1970s and modernised
the place. Before that the accommodations were still fairly primitive.
We spent every summer there when I was growing up. The
house stands a quarter-mile or so north of Dunfanaghy above the long beach of
the Strand, facing eastward with an unobstructed view across Sheephaven Bay
to the opposite shore. I loved the freedom of the place when I was young but
grew to resent those visits mightily when I became a teenager. In my view, I
was being kidnapped from what I was learning to see as the delights of London
and forced to spend my holidays in the ‘back of beyond’, a deserted land with
more sheep than people, and no one my age except a few ignorant children who qualified
as teenagers only by virtue of their years, spoke in an impenetrable accent and
giggled whenever I said anything.
Inevitably, every spring, my father or mother would mention
that ‘soon we will be in Dunfanaghy and breathing clean air again’. For my parents,
the village was a welcome haven from the modern world and its confusions, a
simpler, purer place that allowed them to renew themselves. I dreaded those
summers as endless weeks of boredom with nothing to do except watch the days
creep by. In retaliation I buried myself in books and pointedly ignored their
enthusiastic advice to commune with nature. As far as I was concerned, the
‘fresh air’ I was always being counselled to enjoy was a danger to my well
being, and it would require weeks of London
pollution to restore my lungs to their natural state. I think I owed my success
on the A levels to all the hours I stubbornly spent lying on my bed reading
instead of improving myself by hiking and bird watching.
Now that I am older, I have learned to love the place
again. But I prefer to stay there when I can be alone, in the spring or autumn,
when the only sounds are those that come from a distance and my only companions
are the past and faded words spoken years ago and surviving only in my memory.
******
‘If you want birds, you should visit Horn Head in
Donegal. There are thousands of them there.’
Andrew Wheelwright and Damian Abbot turned to look at
me from where they sat farther down the table in our college hall. They had
been noisily discussing their plans for the break at the end of Lent Term and
speculating whether they would be able to find birds in sufficient numbers and
varieties to justify the trouble of getting to the different spots that had
been proposed. Damian’s voice irritated me, and his self-assured statements
always grated on me. I had had plenty of opportunities to hear them during the
three years we had been in the same college. He was fond of braying his
opinions loudly and decisively.
Damian slowly turned his head to face in my general
direction as if trying to locate the source of the comment, a look of disdain
on his face. ‘Good lord, perhaps I am only imagining it, but I do believe I
heard Kennaleigh speak. He so seldom violates the vow of silence he has so
wisely imposed upon himself that one almost forgets that he is capable of
speech. And in something approaching English. One has to wonder, however, on
what ornithological experience he might draw to make such an assertion. Did he
perhaps see a budgerigar in a cage on a trip to the ancestral bog?’ Damian’s
friends rewarded his sarcasms with raucous laughter.
‘I can assure you that there are indeed millions of
birds on Horn Head, including some very rarae
aves indeed. I have spent many fascinating hours watching them when the
family has been visiting my uncle’s estate on Inishowen. We once spotted a
Greater Seidenberg Plumed Goshawk at Horn Head. You would be wise to pay more
attention to Mr Kennaleigh. It has been my experience that although he seldom
speaks, he always does so to great purpose--a habit you would be wise to
cultivate, Mr Abbot.’ Damian’s head swivelled to respond to the speaker, but
whatever retort he may have planned died on his lips when he saw who was
speaking. David Saint-John ignored him and addressed his next comments to me. ‘I wonder, Ross, if I can persuade you to take a break
from your studies and join me in my room for a drink. It will just be a few of
our friends.’ The mellifluous voice floated above the table, silencing all the
after-dinner noise.
The ‘our’ was stretching it. David Saint-John and I rarely
spoke to each other outside class discussions. Certainly we had no
acquaintances in common that could be referred to as ‘our friends’. David stood
on the other side of the table looking at me with the warmest of smiles.
I answered in kind. ‘Of course, David, it is always a
pleasure.’ I closed the book I had been reading and pushed my chair back. I
must admit that I found no small pleasure in the satisfying snap with which the
book shut. Sometimes I surprised myself by rising to an occasion with what in
my youth I regarded as élan. As David strolled beside me out of the hall, he
began reminiscing in his clear, carrying voice about the Greater Seidenberg Plumed
Goshawk. Both of us contained our laughter until the doors to the hall had
closed behind us and we were standing in the quad.
‘And what is a Greater Seidenberg Plumed Goshawk?’
‘I haven’t the slightest idea. It does sound impressive,
though, doesn’t it? I hope it takes Abbot several hours of consulting bird
guides to find out that I don’t know what the hell I’m talking about. It would
serve him right. I was once taken as a child to see the bird colonies on Horn
Head and that experience convinced me that it was wiser to avoid the messy
creatures entirely. And where are you going?’
I turned back from the walkway that led to the annex
where I lived. ‘To my room.’
‘Nonsense. You have agreed to have a drink with me. Our
friends will never forgive me if I fail to deliver you.’
‘But I need to finish this.’ I held up the book I had
been reading.
‘Then you can finish it in my rooms. I will sit
quietly and watch you as you read, occasionally replenishing your glass as you
peruse that tome and heedlessly and unappreciatively swallow the moderately
good plonk I am about to pour you.’
‘Plonk of any quality is wasted on me. And you will
get tired of watching me. And your friends will get bored.’
‘The wine will not be wasted on me, and even you, my rustic
and ignorant bog dweller, will like it. And I never tire of watching beauty.
And I have already dismissed my friends. They are unworthy of your company.’ And
with a grand flourish of an arm, David indicated the path to his staircase.
I raised my eyes to his. ‘You don’t have to do this.’
‘Indeed, I do not. But it pleases me to do it. I’ve
been trying to get up the courage to speak to you for three years. And now that
I have rescued you from that petty snob, you can hardly be so churlish as to
refuse to grant me the reward I desire.’
‘The courage to speak to me?’
‘Yes. You are a devilishly hard person to meet, Ross
Kennaleigh. You are so seldom without a book in front of your face. I have
tried ever so many stratagems to attract your attention and draw your eyes away
from the words that seem to engross you so totally. I have even contemplated
the study of . . .’--David bent over to look at the title of the book I was
reading--‘Good lord. I never knew people read such books. The Linen Tax and the Formation of the Merchant Taylors’ Company? You would prefer the
company of the merchant taylors to the pleasures of a bottle of my most excellent
claret and my sparkling conversation? Nay, nay, gentle scholar. Do not shrug
your shoulders at me and look as if you want to escape. It is your duty to lift
the veil of ignorance that surrounds my knowledge of the role of the linen tax
in English history. If only you allow me to gaze upon your comely face as you
help repair my sinful neglect of the subject, I promise to attend upon every
word that issues from those wonderfully full, firm, masculine lips of yours.
Besides we must not disappoint Abbot. I am looking forward to regaling the
breakfast table with my newly acquired knowledge of the linen tax. I shall
relate how you kept us all enthralled with your account of the subject.’
‘But I’m not at all entertaining.’
‘It is not necessary for Adonis to be entertaining.
All he has to do is be. Come, make a mortal happy. It is the only worthy gift a
god can bestow.’
‘But I don’t qualify for that name. You do, but not
me.’
‘Well, yes, it is true that I am an Adonis, and, being
one, I can recognise others of my ilk. And you
are one.’
‘By that argument, if I were one, then I, too, would
be able to recognise myself as one.’
‘Hmm, very clever.’ David tapped a finger across his
mouth. ‘I am sure that there is a flaw in your logic. We shall have to discuss
this question. Need a beautiful object know that it is beautiful in order to be
beautiful? Now, you must join me in my room so that we can debate the issue.’
I ignored David’s last comments and returned to a
discussion that gave me firmer grounds for avoiding his invitation. ‘Adonis
wasn’t a god. He was naught but an up an’ cummin’ lad wot made good and boffed
the boss god’s dau’ter and sis.’ When I was younger, I often resorted to broad
dialect to cover the shyness that overcame me when I felt uncomfortable. I needed the mask of another personality as a shield.
The reasons for David’s interest had become apparent to me. It wasn’t that I hadn’t
occasionally let my thoughts drift in the same direction and looked upon people
like David with a sort of speculative curiosity, a ‘What if he were interested
too?’ But I wasn’t sure how serious David was, and I didn’t want to risk a
rebuff by revealing what was quickly becoming a hunger for him. I was also
worried that if we did end up in bed together, my lack of experience would
result in a disaster and that he would dismiss me with scorn and derision.
‘Classics and economic history.’ David gave a
theatrical sigh. ‘I have so much to learn. It will take years of constant
tutoring. We shall begin tonight. And you are wrong about not being Adonis. If
there is one thing I do know, it is . . .’ He stopped and looked at me soberly.
‘I’m babbling like a character in bad schooldays novel. I only do that when I
am nervous. I’m sorry. Look, I won’t pressure you but, please, come have a
glass of wine with me. I promise I won’t be foolish. Just one glass and some
conversation. When you finish, you can leave if you like, and I’ll stop hinting
that I want to tear your clothes off and ravish you. I’m really quite
harmless.’ He grinned at me and tried to look innocent.
‘I don’t have many clothes, so please don’t rip them
off me.’
‘What if I promise to remove them carefully and drape
them neatly over a chair?’
‘As long as you don’t think me insensitive if I read in
bed while you ravish me.’
‘Oh, Ross, do not toy with me.’
‘What if I take you very seriously?’
‘Then all will be well. It’s time that someone began
taking me seriously. I am tired of playing the clown.’ David put his hand on
the small of my back and with a light pressure began guiding me to his rooms. He
turned his head to look at me. ‘You surprise me, Mr Kennaleigh. It’s another
thing to like about you.’
David and I talked for hours that night about
ourselves and our lives and our hopes. We were still young enough to think that
words alone are enough to give castles in the air a solid footing on the ground.
I never opened the book on the Merchant Taylors’ Company. We actually didn’t
even drink that much. We sat on the floor with our backs against his bed and
our legs extended across the rug. After a few hours he turned out the light.
The noise of the traffic in the street outside his back window gradually died. Until
midnight or so the sound of a someone’s footsteps on the staircase would
occasionally interrupt our murmurings. After that we had the world to
ourselves.
At one point, I confessed my lack of sexual experience
and my worries about that.
‘We will find you a book to read on the subject.’
‘I don’t think there are any books for men alone,
maybe for men and women but not for just men.’
‘Then we shall have to write one. We will study the
topic closely and thoroughly. I think for now we should leave the chapter on
approaching one’s prospective partner to me. “The Initial Contact” we shall
entitle it. You will write the next chapter, “The Seduction: Tips for the
Beginner”. I suspect you will do quite well with that.’ David continued on that
vein, outlining the contents of the book. I joined the game and began proposing
other chapters. We chortled with glee, each trying to invent an even more
ridiculous subject.
When we had exhausted the topic, we sat there quietly
for a while. Eventually David broke the silence. ‘I don’t have much experience
either. At least not the type of experience that counts.’
‘Any experience would be more than I have.’
‘Oh, I’ve had sex a few times. I’m not talking about
that. I meant experience with a more serious relationship. The kind where your
partner does read in bed. I think I’m ready for that.’ He floated that idea
rather tentatively, as if trying it out on me.
‘What else would one do in bed except read or sleep?’
‘Hmmm. I can see that the book will require a lot of
research.’
Later he put an arm across my shoulders and drew
closer to me. Very late in the night, I drifted off to sleep, with my head on
David’s shoulder. I awoke as David was gently easing me off his body so that he
could stand up. And that is how the morning found us. Stiff from sitting on the
floor, resting against each other. I was the happiest I have ever been in my
life. I think David felt the same way, but I was afraid to ask him then for
fear that he might not regard me in the same light I was beginning to regard
him.
‘I didn’t take your clothes off and ravish you.’ He
reached a hand down to help me stand. ‘I do apologise for failing in my duties as a host. This is what happens when someone
takes me seriously. I talk too much.’
‘Oh you ravished me. Many many times.’
David looked at me sardonically. ‘Was it as good for
you as it was for me? I suppose now that you’ve had your way with me, you’ll
lose all respect for me.’
‘I . . .’ Then I did something I had never done to
anyone. I gathered David into my arms and kissed him. And following that we did
take our clothes off, and we didn’t waste any time draping them neatly over a
chair.
Later that day, David sought out Damian Abbot and
shook his hand while thanking him effusively. David’s arch and elliptical
expressions of gratitude must have mystified Damian.
Our lives depend so much on chance. The most important
thing that ever happened to me started because I broke into a conversation and
was snubbed. If David had left the hall a minute earlier or later, he wouldn’t
have been walking past and overheard the exchange between Damian and me. We probably
would have finished out our third year without speaking and then never seen
each other again. But David’s behaviour that evening was typical. He hated
cruelty of any sort, and he never lacked the courage to be kind.
******
‘I do believe that is the elusive Greater Seidenberg
Plumed Goshawk.’ David pointed at the small bird pecking at the flagstones in
the small yard behind our house in Dunfanaghy. We had decided to spend the
break between terms in Ireland.
Since his uncle’s house had more amenities, we were sleeping and eating there.
But we frequently stopped by my parents’ house and opened the shutters and
camped out there for the day. That afternoon was warm for the time of year, and
I had pulled one of the garden chairs from the garage and set it up so that I
could read outside. David had wandered down to the beach to make some sketches.
From time to time, I stood up and looked over the stone wall and watched him as
he ambled about, stopping every few feet to examine the pools of water along
the shore. Occasionally he would open his sketchbook and draw something. Even
from the distance, I could see the wind ruffling his hair. The light caught at
it and turned it russet. When he returned, he stopped beside me and ran his thumb
along the line of my jaw.
‘I’m almost certain it’s a sparrow,’ I said.
‘Not a Goshawk?’
The two of us examined the bird closely. In turn, it tilted
its head and eyed us suspiciously, appraising us for any possible danger to
itself before it returned to its hunt for seeds. ‘Now that I look more closely,
I think it may be a Spitzenberg Plumed Goshawk. In fact, I’m sure it is. It’s a
close relative of the Greater Seidenberg Plumed Goshawk and is often mistaken
for it.’ The bird decided it had enough of our speculations and flew away.
David laughed and then leaned against the wall and
looked out over the bay. ‘This place is so special. I wish we didn’t have to
leave on Wednesday and go back. I could stay here forever.’
‘You will have your sketches to remember it by. How
did your drawings turn out by the way?’
He picked up the pad of drawing paper from the top of
the wall. It was held together by a spiral of wire at the top. He flipped back
the bright yellow cover and paged through the sheets until he found the one he
wanted and then handed the open booklet to me. I examined the meticulous pencil
drawings filling the page. He had recorded a tuft of sea grass blowing in the
breeze, an outcropping of shale, a chipped and broken shell half buried in the
sand. The village was rendered in an abstract panorama of lines that somehow
captured how it looked better than a more realistic drawing might have. ‘I envy
you this ability.’ I held a finger over an image of the backside of a wave and,
without touching the paper, traced its outline in the air. Because of the shape
of Sheephaven Bay,
the waves sweep in from the North Atlantic. On
most days, they pass almost perpendicular to anyone standing on the long sides
of the bay. Looking southward from our house, you can see the backsides of the
waves rolling away from you and then cresting on the beach to the east of Dunfanaghy.
‘Those waves are so magnificent. The way they stretch
across the bay and only break along the ends until they hit that beach there. It’s
as if there is this tremendous energy in the sea, and every hundred feet or so,
it rolls through the water.’
‘Those are the swells.’ He lifted an eyebrow to query
me. ‘The little waves are called the seas. They’re formed locally. The swells
are the long-distance waves. They travel across the ocean.’
‘God moving over the face of the waters.’
‘What’s that?’
‘Ah, at last I have found something I know and you
don’t. In the Bible, before the creation, it is written that the breath of god
moved over the face of the waters. You can see how those waves, those “swells”
as you would have it, could serve as an image of the power of god. It’s an
ancient mystery, the force in the waters.’
‘My grandfather once told me that the waves come all
the way from the North Pole and that Donegal is the first land they encounter.
They become so large because the wind has so much distance to work on them and
build them up.’
‘Mr Kennaleigh, you are the most unpoetic Irishman I
have ever met. You are determined to be rational. I offer you a gift of poetry
and you hand me prose. “Mad Ireland”
will apparently never “hurt you into
poetry”.’ He faced the bay and, arms flung wide, declaimed, ‘Say rather that
the waves are fortunate to break on the shores of Ireland. But none so fortunate as I
to have found this blessed land and a man who knows the difference between a
swell and a sea.’ He embraced the entire scene before us and hugged it to
himself. Then he turned to smile at me.
‘Argh, what a tongue yon daft laddie has on him. It’s
enough to addle a man’s heart.’ I started to hand the tablet back to him when a
puff of wind briefly lifted the topmost sheet. I could see that the next sheet
held another drawing. I turned the page and found a picture of myself sitting
in the garden chair reading, with a few faint lines suggesting the wall of the
house behind me. ‘When did you do this?’ I was filled with a sudden great fierce
overwhelming joy at the discovery that David had drawn a picture of me.
‘Just now. When I was walking along the beach.’
‘But you couldn’t see me. How could you draw a picture
of me?’
‘When I started down the hill, I turned back to look
at you. And when I was walking, I thought about you, and the image of you
sitting here reading came to me. I had to draw it. It was so strong in my mind.
I felt I had to record it.’
‘May I have it? Please.’
‘But it’s just a sketch. You can see a more accurate
image of yourself in the mirror.’
‘It isn’t that. It’s, it’s that it’s something by you.
Will you sign it for me?’
David found a pencil in a pocket and took the tablet
from me. He set it atop the stone wall and began writing.
‘What are you writing? It shouldn’t take this long to
sign your name.’ I sat up higher in the chair in an attempt to see what David
was doing. He turned the pad away from me so that I couldn’t watch him write.
‘Patience, Mr Kennaleigh, patience. I have a very long
name. It took ever so long to christen me.’ He finished with a flourish and
handed the pad back to me so that I could read the inscription.
‘To a constant reader from his constant lover, John
Michael David Lionel FitzHugh Kennaleigh Saint-John.’
‘Kennaleigh?’
‘It is a recent addition. It is a name I have chosen
for myself. “Kennaleigh Saint-John” has a pleasing rhythm, don’t you think? But
perhaps you prefer “Saint-John Kennaleigh”?’
I couldn’t speak. We stared at each other. After a
minute David spoke: ‘You’re crying.’
I suddenly became aware that tears were running down
my face. They felt both hot and cold in the wind as they furrowed my face. I
nodded my head yes and started to wipe them away. David reached over and
grasped my hand to stop me.
‘Don’t. Let them be. They are beautiful. You are
beautiful.’
I finally found my voice although my throat was closed
tight with emotion. ‘You make me feel beautiful.’
******
That conversation took place forty-two years ago. David
died two years ago last month. In the measured words of his obituary in the
papers, he ‘passed away after a long and valiant struggle’, the customary
euphemism of his tribe for a death from cancer or some other debilitating
disease. A record of his accomplishments and honours followed. The only
departure from the conventions came in the listing of the names of his
survivors. At his mother’s insistence, the first person named was ‘his long-time
and much-loved partner, Ross Kennaleigh.’
I was with David when he died. The hospital had tried
to exclude me because I wasn’t ‘family’ only to be met with an imperious ‘Don’t
be ridiculous’ from his older brother. ‘Of course, Ross is family.’ David’s
last words to me were ‘thank you’. I had performed some trifling service for
him as he lay in the hospital bed, and he grasped my hand in his and squeezed
it briefly. He had to manoeuvre his arm through all the tubes attached to him
to reach me.
I can still feel the touch of his fingers. He was so
weak by that point, and his hand was dry and thin. The touch of the husk of
someone I loved, someone I wanted desperately to be a stranger. I try to
remember him as he looked that day when he stood where I am standing now,
leaning against the wall behind the house in Dunfanaghy. When he was young and
alive and vibrant and I first knew that he was as in love with me as I was with
him. But that memory is often overwritten by the old man he became in hospital,
his face drawn taut, the shiny too-pink scalp with large spots of brown showing
through his sparse and brittle hair, the brightness falling from his eyes.
And I mourned.
David’s death made me a stranger even to myself. An automaton
took over my body and went through the motions of life. It attended his funeral
and spoke one of the eulogies. It helped David’s family sort through his things.
After a week, it returned to work. It endured and accepted with as much dignity
as it could muster the inarticulate expressions of regret that were hurriedly
cast toward it, the swiftly spoken and embarrassed reactions of those who felt
they had to say something but didn’t quite know what form of sympathy to offer the
‘long-time partner’.
But nothing anyone says can ever help. No words could
fill the enormous blank vacant emptiness at the middle of my life. Nor did I
want them to. I cherished my soundless grief and held it to myself. It was as
if my sorrow were the only thing left to me of David.
Inside, silence, complete and total silence. The
ancient poetry ended, prose splintered, words
floundered, stripped of the possibility of meaning. Time stopped in anguish and
regret at the futility of it all. Sorrow became my close friend. I feared that
if I let it go, nothing of me would remain. If I let my grief go, David and I
would disappear and no one would remember us.
But once the inadequate words of consolation have been
spoken, one is expected to move on and not burden others with the necessity of
sympathising. The proprieties had been observed, and the survivor is supposed
to get on with his life and restore our common pretence that there is no death.
And the person who inhabited my body when I was with others mastered my
emotions and kept them locked inside. I quickly relearned the amiable habits of
sociability. In public, David became someone I could speak of again and refer
to in the past tense, without the threat of unsettling tears. But I would awake
alone in the middle of the night raging with mindless anger, at David’s death,
at his betrayal, at his desertion. Everything reminded me of his absence.
Better never to have loved than to have loved like this.
And then David healed me, as he had so many times
during our life together. Last Wednesday, for the first time since his death, I
awoke feeling calm and, if not content, at least aware that contentment was again
a possibility. I lay there in my bed watching the wind stir the curtains in the
open window. I could smell the ocean. It was such a strange feeling, something
that I hadn’t felt in so long, that I was at a loss to account for it. And then
came the memory, vague at first but growing stronger and stronger, that I had
been dreaming of David, David standing against a wall overlooking the sea and
stopping me from wiping away my tears. And I knew I had to return to Dunfanaghy
once more and finally bury David. Not to forget him, but to let go and let him
be dead. To remember him, and to honour those memories, all of them, both good
and bad. But to stop disfiguring his memory with my wanton, selfish grief. He
deserves more, much more, from me. He deserves someone brave enough to tell him
‘thank you’ for everything he gave and to, at last, cease wanting more.
And so I stand by an ancient stone wall, as waves that
began with a wind blowing over distant waters roll past me and break upon the
land. And I do not grieve. The joy that I was privileged to share for so many
years swells inside me and lifts me up, into the bright ring of the day, into the
uncreated light.
