Sunday, February 08, 2009
8th February 2009
Last night me and my daughters went out together.
These reunions are rare these days, and I treasure them.
We had a meal at a Chinese restaurant near Haymarket which we all love; and then went to the theatre.
Katie and Bex both love Arthur Miller plays; they were performing his The Man Who Had All the Luck at the Lyceum.
I'd bought our seats in a grand circle box.
Watching a play in a box is one of those treats we'd always meant to give ourselves , but never had.
I hadn't told them about it in advance; it was a surprise; we all got giggly and excited.
The box worked its magic; even though the sightlines were terrible, it still felt amazing special.
We had such a happy night; afterwards I bumped into a lovely person who worked with me on Faust as a stage manager. She has since become a gardener, and I had a sudden impulse to ask her to give her number so I could ask her to sort out the wee garden area at the back of the house.
It's behind me, here, as I right this: the space Susie turned so proudly into a rockery in the months before she fell ill.
I realised yesterday that while I have transformed the rest of the house, it's as if all the grief has got concentrated into this area just out the back of it.
And I still can't bear to go there. I avoid taking clothes up to the washing line, even on the best drying days, because it hurts to walk through this sad, neglected, grief-filled space.
And so there is this week's washing, right to the left of me at this desk. Drying a bit squalidly on a plastic drying rack.
It would be good to sort out that garden space, so I can enjoy it.
I was thinking all this as I walked home. That walk still reminds me of the dreadful lonely walk home after the first night of Anna Karenina just after Susie had died.
And then tonight I had one of those dreams in which Susie's dying and death has all just been a gigantic painful mistake, and we can be together again, and we run to meet each other... I've had such dreams quite often, but never, I think, with quite such incredible vividness and intensity: running to embrace each other in such incredible excitement and joy.
Waking up after this always feels like such cruelty.
I couldn't wake: I felt heavy and tired.
I just wanted to go back to the land of sleep: where I had been so happy.
Last night me and my daughters went out together.
These reunions are rare these days, and I treasure them.
We had a meal at a Chinese restaurant near Haymarket which we all love; and then went to the theatre.
Katie and Bex both love Arthur Miller plays; they were performing his The Man Who Had All the Luck at the Lyceum.
I'd bought our seats in a grand circle box.
Watching a play in a box is one of those treats we'd always meant to give ourselves , but never had.
I hadn't told them about it in advance; it was a surprise; we all got giggly and excited.
The box worked its magic; even though the sightlines were terrible, it still felt amazing special.
We had such a happy night; afterwards I bumped into a lovely person who worked with me on Faust as a stage manager. She has since become a gardener, and I had a sudden impulse to ask her to give her number so I could ask her to sort out the wee garden area at the back of the house.
It's behind me, here, as I right this: the space Susie turned so proudly into a rockery in the months before she fell ill.
I realised yesterday that while I have transformed the rest of the house, it's as if all the grief has got concentrated into this area just out the back of it.
And I still can't bear to go there. I avoid taking clothes up to the washing line, even on the best drying days, because it hurts to walk through this sad, neglected, grief-filled space.
And so there is this week's washing, right to the left of me at this desk. Drying a bit squalidly on a plastic drying rack.
It would be good to sort out that garden space, so I can enjoy it.
I was thinking all this as I walked home. That walk still reminds me of the dreadful lonely walk home after the first night of Anna Karenina just after Susie had died.
And then tonight I had one of those dreams in which Susie's dying and death has all just been a gigantic painful mistake, and we can be together again, and we run to meet each other... I've had such dreams quite often, but never, I think, with quite such incredible vividness and intensity: running to embrace each other in such incredible excitement and joy.
Waking up after this always feels like such cruelty.
I couldn't wake: I felt heavy and tired.
I just wanted to go back to the land of sleep: where I had been so happy.
Labels: grief and the garden
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