Learning from others

I've been finding it hard to get to writing - all too easily distracted (the 'part time' job expanding to fill more space than I am willing to give it), poor time management, and perhaps the slightest edge of fear all stopping me from throwing myself headlong into this project.

So this evening I thought that if I couldn't write, at least I would read - The Long Goodbye by Meghan O'Rourke - a recommendation from my friend Nicole.  I've devoured half of it in almost a single sitting, between my garden and my sofa.  There's a wonderful review of it here on Brainpickings.

It's a memoir by a woman a little younger than me, who lost her mum from cancer at the age of 55.  O'Rourke was so attentive and present through her mum's illness, death, and the aftermath.  And I recognise so many things she describes beautifully in her vivid, honest and raw prose.  It's almost her throwaway comments that catch me the most - "Time doesn’t obey our commands. You cannot make it holy just because it is disappearing."

I remember being struck by that as my mum came to the end of her life.  There were still the banal things to do, and in a sense it was the banal that held the world together.  Washing, dressing, walking in the garden, making and eating food, sleeping.  All of these things have to be done, or were things that she could and wanted to do.  Every day.  Until her very last day.

But she also had a way of making all time holy.  Such that eating a slice of hard-boiled egg on our patio, in the sunshine, just a few days before she died, had a reverence and a joy that I might never know.  She could be transported into raptures by a beautiful moment, and would just close her eyes and smile.  She wrote:

Yes,life is uncertain and life is fragile.To be reverent of it is to show gratitude for this precious gift of life.