Thank you

Before I dash off - thanks so much for the three warm, thoughtful, helpful comments on my previous post. I'll think about all this while I'm away, and of course any others will be greatly appreciated too. Here's a picture of Harvey's plaque with three late Dublin Bay roses from the garden - I took them down the road to mark our wedding anniversary this month.

Where to from here?

I've been writing about the experience of losing Harvey and learning to live on my own for a little over a year now. My first post after he died went up on 16 January 2011.

What I need to work out now is, do I go on with this blog in the same way? Or do I broaden the focus a little and use it more as a writer's blog where I try things out?

I don't have to decide right now, and in fact I'll be away again from next week until the end of March (I was lucky with the timing - it perfectly suits a visiting academic couple to look after the house for me). So I won't make any decisions about it until I get back. But I would really appreciate any comments and thoughts you would like to send me about what you want to read here. (Just bear in mind that because comments here are moderated, they may not appear till I get back and put them up.)

Meanwhile, today I went to a book launch in the same local hall where we launched Harvey's last two books, and also had afternoon tea following the private funeral on 31 December 2010. The publisher, Steele Roberts, was the same one that had brought out Harvey's anthology, These I Have Loved, in October 2010. In his speech today, Roger Steele moved me greatly by recalling that occasion and paying a gracious tribute to Harvey. Thank you so much, Roger. It felt like a kind of gentle closing of a circle.

Anniversaries

I missed posting here last week because I was feeling too low, in that awful state where everything seems completely pointless. I think it was partly the aftermath of being ill, and partly the fact that my wedding anniversary was coming up and I wasn't sure how I would cope with it. The frightful "summer" didn't help eiither - this week it was officially confirmed that Wellington has had the least sunshine and fewest warm days on record.
      But dear Ali came round last Thursday and that made a big difference. Then on Friday I was whisked in to TVNZ's Wellington studios to appear on Close Up, talking about adoption. And fortunately, weeks ago I'd organised a long late lunch for 3 March, as a belated 50th anniversary present for friends (see Golden). I produced a five course lunch and thoroughly enjoyed myself  (I'll put a post up about it later this week over on Something Else to Eat).

I knew I'd probably feel rather flat when everyone went home, so I arranged to go round to my neighbour's and watch a DVD. As my contribution, I took round delicious leftover bits of the last course (strawberries, slices of chocolate salami, and a few stray truffles), plus the dessert wine, and that all went down very well indeed. All these goings-on seem to have turned the tide, and I've felt much better since.  

All over the place

I'm sorry to be so late posting this week. This isn't the only thing I've run late with, or not done at all. I can't blame being ill - I'm definitely better now, thank goodness. But the combination of the trip to China followed by the illness has somehow completely upset my daily life.

It took me a long time last year to get back some sort of equilibrium and come to terms with living alone on a day-to-day basis. I thought I'd managed it pretty well, really. But it depended on a range of routines, including cooking for myself and for friends, and doing some work, and going out.

While I was ill, all of this fell apart, and now I'm having trouble putting my life back together again. I know this sounds really feeble, especially considering that we're just coming up to the anniversary of the February earthquake which devastated so many people's lives in Christchurch. (The film When A City Falls is on TV3 this week - Wednesday at 7.30.) But it somehow feels as if I've slipped back quite a long way. I've gone back to having flashbacks of the last few days of Harvey's life, and I have to try hard to realise what I'm doing and consciously stop and think about something else. It all just reinforces the difficult but essential knowledge that none of this is straightforward, and it really is two, three, many steps forward and then several steps back.

O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!

Appalling how your world narrows down when you're ill. I had a relapse this week (very common with campylobacter, apparently) and had to go back onto antibiotics. I felt as if I'd gone almost back to square one, two weeks ago. But they seem to be working really well, thank goodness. You may not want to know this, but today is the first day I've been to the loo just the once.

With any luck, it won't be too long before I can start going out again properly, and eating something beyond yoghurt, applesauce, broth, bananas, jelly, dry toast, rice, boiled eggs and occasional bits of fish. (Instead of nice food made by me, there are nostalgic pictures of Chinese food over on Something Else to  Eat.) Fortunately I've had some urgent editing work to keep me occupied, and reviews to write, and kind friends have come to visit when I've been up to it.

 They do understand that despite the notoriously nasty nature of this infection and the remarkably ferocious way the usually reticent Ministry of Health portrays it in their helpful leaflet, they won't catch it just by being near me.

But I really am getting pretty bored with it all the same. When I think how long Harvey had to put up with feeling grotty and feeble and not being able to do anything physically or even enjoy his food much, I wish I'd told him more clearly how brave and determined and admirable he was.

Anyway, let's hope that my hero Erithromycin has done for this particular evil creature this time, and (with apologies to Lewis Carroll) set the poor beleaguered Tumtum tree to rights.

He took his vorpal sword in hand:

Long time the manxome foe he sought --

So rested he by the Tumtum tree,

And stood awhile in thought.

And, as in uffish thought he stood,

The Jabberwock, with eyes of flame,

Came whiffling through the tulgey wood,

And burbled as it came!

One, two! One, two! And through and through

The vorpal blade went snicker-snack!

He left it dead, and with its head

He went galumphing back.

"And, has thou slain the Jabberwock?

Come to my arms, my beamish boy!

O frabjous day! Callooh! Callay!"

She chortled in her joy.

Women of Xi'an

The terracotta warriors (220BC) were, of course, amazing and I will be happily dragging friends through my photos for weeks to come. But in the huge and wonderful Shaanxi Provincial Museum next day, I found the first image I'd seen of a woman, dating back to the beginning of the AD era.

I know she doesn't look like a woman, but that was how they wore their hair then. She's probably a servant, or maybe a concubine, because of course she came out of a tomb. (The warriors didn't - they were guarding a tomb some distance away.)

Next came the beautiful Tang ladies (618-901 AD). I hadn't realised Tang was so early.

(Throughout my trip I kept asking Jonathan "What dynasty is this?" "Han, Mum" he'd say kindly. "Yes, but when was that exactly?" He was very patient.)

Here's a lovely one with a baby, and one on a horse, looking like a medieval demoiselle, and a close-up of another with a magnificent hairdo.

This wonderfully elegant one was labelled "Female in male clothing" - certainly the hairstyle is male. But Jonathan wondered if she might in fact be a eunuch.

And here are some more servants. The very thin one with a book is later than Tang, I think - Yuan maybe? (Sorry, Jonathan - I should have written it down.)

The two with a teapot and a cup are much humbler folk-art. Their companions behind them are country horseposts, but these two stood at the gates of a small estate.

We found them in the misty grounds of the Small Goose Pagoda. Then we went off for some lunch and our own pot of delicate green tea. Only we changed our minds and splashed out on a rare, expensive cup of coffee instead.

Aftermath

China was great and I meant to do a proper post this week, but unfortunately fate intervened in the form of a really nasty stomach bug. I've only just started to feel slightly better, so I hope to catch up later this week.

A new year

I know Harvey died a year ago, but sometimes that feels like a long time, and sometimes it feels very short. And now it feels strange to no longer be able to say, or think, "my husband died last year".
              I haven't exactly made any new year resolutions, but I have come to a sort of general resolve: I need to try to live, as much as I can, in the present, and look ahead to the future, rather than turning back to the past. It's not easy; and not only because of the obvious, inescapable fact that I have more years behind me than ahead of me. As for many people my age, of those I've been closest to in my life, more have died than are alive. And I don't have any grandchildren to draw me on into the future.
               But the past is a place to look back on, not to live in. Neither Harvey nor Patrick would have wanted me to dwell there. Both of them had an enormous zest for life and for making the most of their time, something I've often not been very good at, even when they were here with me.
               So now I'm off to China to see my son Jonathan, while my visiting friend looks after the house. It's the third time I've been, and I've got to the stage where I enjoy going back to familiar places almost as much as I love seeing completely new ones. There'll be some of both on this trip, and once again I'll have a close companion to share it all with.
               Of course it's not the same and it never can be, I know that. Harvey and I travelled very well together, though of course, since we were both bossy and each thought we knew best, and strange surroundings stress you out a bit, there would be the occasional disagreement (to put it politely) about where we were, where we were going, what we should do next, where we should eat...
               In China there are no such moments, because Jonathan knows his way around and I don't. He also knows what I will like. What's more, I can't read a single word I see, it's all just pretty decoration to me. So I just trot round obediently after him, and it's very relaxing.
               It will be a good start to this new year, and to living in the present. And in three weeks I'll write about it here. By then we will be in the year of the dragon, a very auspicious sign, embodying beauty, creativity, energy, confidence and fearlessness.