Fractured pictures crack and crumble happy moments into very sad ones: persistent awareness of a dear friend’s deteriorating illness; news of an old friend’s patchy health; some random stranger’s sobbing sorrow on the bus; and an author friend’s terminal diagnosis. You sit and try to take it, hold it, add it to the pile of horrid things that have happened. You wonder at the whelm of sadness distant friends and families, strangers are fighting. You wonder how many more bricks the tower can take before it tumbles. And then as you pause to wallow in sadness, there’s the fascination of a fly’s personal hygiene. She’s taking an earthbound pause in her busy schedule. She’s stopped to check her wings for dust and her feet for spider web remnants. She’s darting back and forth, taking tiny shots at the table’s surface with her long sucky tongue. She’s testing, seeking, looking for something she won’t find and then she’s back up into the air. The debris on her wings and feet, the fascination of the table top, the moment where it mattered so very much, it’s all gone. Fleeting. Over.
I guess sad news of failing heath and imminent death comes more often with lengthening years. Getting older means to expect more news of the fragile and their vulnerabilities, more capitulation. For many, surrender comes with age and yet determination to ignore the legacy of the years can also be unwavering. Eventually the years may be many or not. Either way they will win and yet when they are many so are the memories, what’s left of others. The pictures of faces and places, people and friends keep dancing in imagination and dozing dreams and they are no less real, no less present, no less in need of our attention.
It’s been just over five years since our dad moved on to somewhere noisy and smokey and jazzy and filled with pretty women and brilliant musicians. His children, six of us, didn’t all grow up with him for all of his parenting years, but his influence on us was profound and enduring. A man of intense focus and commitment, but not always to everything and everyone at the same time. Apart from the music of course. A man of brilliance, renown and fame who was always surprised that anyone was interested in him or his achievements. And they were many as you may be aware. We miss him still and every day I see his smile. I hear his guffaw and smell the scent of sweat and second hand smoke settling on the pillow when he was home from a gig and came into our bedroom to kiss us goodnight, deep in the darkness and us deep in sleep. A snatch of a scene, and there is so much still to say.
And riding again this morning, lively horses and too much bounce reminding us that the getting old stuff is absolutely all in your head. Go with it. Push on. Stride along. Don’t forget to steer. Renewed power in the hips, so riding with back again as well as hands, balance and legs. That and faith of course. It works, but it’s a reminder that getting old doesn’t have to be so bad. And how you deal with it is up to you. Our dad was still performing at 87 and still filling in gigs in his diary and planning his solos in his head, which is where he mostly lived. Imagination isn’t just about denial, it’s also about life and living and reaching out for what happens next.
The sad news that seems to keep coming can‘no’t be ignored, but it can be a reminder that there is always something coming next, good or bad, for someone somewhere, for you. Our time will surely outrun our imaginations, but in the meantime keep believing in who and what you are. Keep sharing. There’s only one of you, and you are surely loved. What more do you want?
