Hi there
I feel like this is the week I finally landed!
After the move and finishing off a huge NOON project (a report for law firm Mishcon de Reya into the effect of midlife divorce on women, launching soon…), I felt like my tightly coiled spring finally went slack…and I slept from 9pm to 9am.
It’s that kind of time of year. The changing of the clocks heralds the beginning of winter proper, and as mammals we have a buried urge for hibernation. The early onset of the dark, the chilly nights, the falling leaves and spectacular colours – all seem to be urging us to hunker down, feel cosy and, most of all, to rest. The urge for stillness this weekend feels overwhelming.
Perhaps that’s because this is the time of year when the membranes between this world and other realms is thinnest. I know Halloween is now all about plastic witch hats, trick-or-treating, endless sweets and tat. But underneath all that Americana consumerism is something ancient and important.
All Hallows E’en is the night when the ghosts of the departed come a’wandering. In Mexico during this period (Nov 1 & 2), they celebrate the Day of the Dead: Families make the favourite foods of those who have passed and eat them on their graves, in celebration. This isn’t maudlin but joyful, a way of being close to those who have gone and remembering them. I love that it is so much a part of life to remember the ancestors, those whose DNA we carry, who live on in us.
There are messages from those who have gone – in chance encounters with people who knew them, a song they loved suddenly playing, a whiff of a scent they loved. They’re reminding us of their presence…or maybe those things remind us of them
Another memorial, another goodbye
I went to a memorial service this week, another great send-off at St Bride’s, the journalists’ Church in Fleet Street. This time it was for an old colleague and mate Jonathan Miller (not the opera director).
He was a real hack, a kind of Fleet Street Jackson Lamb (the hero of Slow Horses; if you haven’t watched it yet, then do).
Jonathan would argue about anything; it was his way of being alive. He believed totally in Voltaire’s maxim, “I might hate what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it.” He was an expert at biting the hand that fed him and attacking the status quo. His religion was asking awkward questions. He was also hilarious, warm, kind, enthusiastic and infuriating. His wife of 51 years, Terry said: “Sometimes 50 years with Jonathan felt like 500!”
Some columnists don’t have any ideas – you have to tell them what to write. Jonathan always had about 10. He was an editor’s dream. I sat next to him on News Review at The Sunday Times. Then he went to live in France. I hadn’t seen him recently, but it was a shock to hear that he had died suddenly at 73.
That is such a part of midlife, that sense of time passing. Oftentimes we’re not able to go back to former bits of our lives because those who made up those times are no longer with us. That past can really be another country to which we no longer have a passport. Those who were a few decades ahead of us are now sometimes no more.
As we gather with others from the past to remember the person who was our friend, these former colleagues are also older and frail. Their children whom we remember as teens are now forty with their own kids and lives… (yet we still feel so young!). We are confronted with evidence of time passing. Of what was our everyday, now gone….
It’s a year since my mother-in-law died, too, meaning grief is near the surface. At Memorial Services, we cry for the one we are mourning that day but also for all the others we have lost. As we age, there is a growing phalanx of loved ones who are no longer with us.
Appropriately, in the church, I was sitting next to a posse of colleagues of my late stepmother’s from the Olympics who were reminiscing about her.
I told you the membranes are thin at this time; there are messages coming from those who have gone – in the chance encounters with people who knew them, in a song they loved suddenly coming on the radio, a whiff of a flower or a scent they loved. They are reminding us of their presence…or maybe those things remind us of them. Who knows?
It’s the poetry and the music that always gets me.
On Thursday, it was Jonathan’s darling grandson Raphael, 12, reading “Rage, rage against the dying of the light” with such clarity and passion that set me off. And the choir singing (for the first time ever in St Bride’s) “You Can’t Always Get What You Want”.
There were pictures of Jonathan with long dark hair and biker boots at the University of Michigan, Andrew Neil giving an address about how together they’d created BSkyB; counting down to the launch of the channel with Murdoch next to them, neither knowing if it would actually go live. The moments that make up a life.
In our 50s, yes, if we are lucky we might have another 40 years left. But we are also halfway through, with half our life past.
The world is different from when we were young. Attitudes are different, places aren’t the same. London, for instance, changes all the time. Places that were no-go zones in my youth are now most desirable. Our internal geographies have to realign too.
Reminder of what this season is for
If I’ve learnt anything over the last few years it’s that we have to learn to feel all of what is here. We can’t numb ourselves with busyness or booze, or food, or whatever to process it. We can’t go under it, can’t go over it, got to go through it. We have to feel it all and let it pass through us, even if those feelings are sad. Even if we wish we didn’t have to feel them.
My meditation teacher Ayala Gill talks about our thoughts being the waves on the top of the ocean, our emotions the currents, while we are the water itself. She says that we shouldn’t get too attached to the stories we attach to the waves and the currents. We must just let them flow through us. By doing so, we allow them to pass, often quicker than we think. We spend so much effort trying not to feel anything uncomfortable, but actually when we allow ourselves to – when we let the tears flow – it is a relief.
On All Hallows E’en and this weekend, it’s as good a time as any to feel the loss of those we’ve loved who are no longer here. Let’s hold them in our hearts – or as the Quakers put it, hold them in the light. Hold them in the light of our love, which doesn’t stop because they are not here.
Thinking about Jamaica
To everything there is a season…another of the beautiful readings at the service.
A time to laugh and a time to mourn.
My sense of sadness this week has been augmented by the knowledge that so many friends and places that I love in South West Jamaica have been ravaged by Hurricane Melissa.
The eye of the storm passed through a town called Black River; there was a church there built in 1680 which had stood ever since. Today, only half the belfry remains. The destruction is apocalyptic.
A metre of rain fell in a few hours, overwhelming the river and the town. The storm surge reached 13 feet. So much of the area is gone. And Treasure Beach – the beautiful village just along the coast which I love so much – is also under water. The main street is a river, the beloved beach bars and coves wiped clean away or unrecognisable.
I’m sure you have a place in the world which exists in your mind in an endless summer; where the sky is always blue and the sun shining, the people smile and all is right with the world. Now imagine that place wrecked, destroyed. Paradise lost. I know they will rebuild; they did after Beryl. The community spirit is what makes the place.
But when lowering clouds hover and wreak havoc somewhere you know and love, it is devastating. Much worse, or course, for those who have lost their homes; at the time I was writing this, 19 people have been reported dead in Jamaica. It’s another element of this week’s sadness – and my need for a pause.
If you’d like to contribute for Jamaica, I suggest The American Friends of Jamaica. Write “For BREDS” in the comment box. Donations help survivors of the hurricane in Treasure Beach – going straight to the people who need it.
Time to hibernate
I am planning to hunker down this weekend, take up residence on my sofa with a book and some excellent telly. Cook warming soups, perhaps go for a bracing cold swim and a blustery walk. Be quiet and still. Meditate and sleep. Feel ‘twixt two worlds. It’s the season for it, after all.
We Queenagers hold up half the world, we do and do and do and wear ourselves out.
So please, this afternoon, take a little time for yourself. Maybe light a candle as the night draws in, or build a fire, sit and just ruminate on it. Run a hot deep bath and fill it with oils. Sit in it and remember everyone you love who is no longer here – hold them in your light.
Maybe make also a mental note (or an actual note) to yourself to reach out to those who may not be with you for much longer, who are sick or ageing, who you really should see. Or just old friends you haven’t seen for a while…
But not today.
For now, rest. Be peaceful.
You deserve it.
Eleanor
