Stoicism is not enough.

Stoicism, it turns out, can only get you so far.

I think: did I know this, and forget it? Did wish-thinking take over, so that I dreamt up a luring fantasy that I could just stoic my way out of it? Or did I remember very well, but think I’d give it shot anyway?

I’m not giving up on stoicism. I love it. I do not like the things which stand in opposition to it. I do not like the weeping and wailing and look-at-me-ing. I do not admire grandstanding and drama queening and that nasty strain of competitive grief which is played so ruthlessly by the narcissist. I do not like ululation and holding up the bleeding hands and the playing of the victim.

Everybody has sorrow. Everybody’s heart breaks. Everybody loses someone they love.

There are two voices in my head. (Who am I fooling? There are twenty-seven voices in my head. Sometimes it gets very crowded in there.) But these two voices are speaking the loudest, just now, and they are both saying the same thing.

One says: your mum died. This is the voice which understands well that is an ocean of loss, a great, unmapped expanse of water, almost impossible to navigate. That voice knows that the rogue waves will leave me storm-tossed, and hurl me, breathless and hopeless, to the beach, only to suck me out to sea again. This voice says there is no point trying to fight it or neaten it or pretend that it’s only an ordinary thing which happens to everyone. It does happen to everyone, but at the moment it is happening to me. This voice says, kindly, gently, that I must keep sailing on until that great tempest blows itself out.

The other voice says: your mum died. No need to make a fuss, says that voice, a steely note in it. (This is the same voice that says, when I dress up for a party, well, no-one is going to be looking at you.) Get on, says that voice, and for God’s sake don’t be a bore. Sing another song boys, says this voice, who has been listening to Leonard Cohen, this one has grown old and bitter. This voice is quite useful, in a way. It is the voice which gets me to HorseBack to do my work there, and gets me out to the field to check the water trough and put out the hay, and drives me to make breakfast every morning for my dear stepfather and make bright conversation about world events to cheer him up and keep his mind off it. (As if I could keep his mind off it.)

Another wiser, saner voice speaks now. That voice says: they are both right, and you have to find the balance between the two. Find the balance. Stoicism is not enough, although it can be good and useful and keep one existing in the world. The wild stormy griefs must be let out, from time to time. Probably best if one does that in a nice, quiet, private place, so as not to startle the horses, but they must be given their moment.

Let it out, keep it in. It’s like a push-me-pull-you. Wallowing is no good; self-indulgence is no good; but the thing is real and true and must be felt. Find the balance.

I write all this because I burst into tears in front of the poor stepfather this morning. For all that I believe my job is to cheer him up and be my best self for him, I could not help it. Out they came, the streaming tears. Then I put on my ridiculous hat and made a joke about it. ‘No wonder I am crying,’ I said, a bit watery, ‘when I have a hat like this. It is a truly tragic hat. But it does keep the rain off.’

(I feel there is a life lesson in this, although I can’t quite put my finger on it. It really is a tragic hat, but it really does keep the rain off.)

And we laughed, and I went home to do my work, and said that I would see him in the morning.

 

Today’s pictures:

The rain stopped this morning, and the sun shone, and my sweet girls went out into the set-aside to have a little graze. They are so happy and so muddy and so woolly and so absolutely themselves, rooted in this good Scottish earth, shimmering with goodness and authenticity. They are my best consolation, because they are so beautiful and true:

Good parts, bad parts. Or stoicism and loss.

I’m back in the missing stage, today. Yesterday I was in the stripped of my skin stage. The day before I was in the baffled, hit a brick wall stage. Today, all I can think is: I miss you. Oh, I miss you.

It was every day, you see. I saw my mother ever day. That’s part of the problem. It’s the good part and the bad part. The good part is that we saw each other each morning as I went in to make the breakfast. On Saturdays, I collected her Racing Post from the shop and delivered it and stayed to talk about the day’s runners. (‘Oh, Ruby,’ she would say, a wistful, maternal note in her voice, as if these were not tough men at the top of their profession. ‘Oh, AP.’) On Sundays, we all had a lie-in and I would just get a telephone call if Hurricane Fly or Annie Power had done something marvellous at Punchestown.

That’s all good part. The bad part is that this means there is a vast daily rupture; a daily absence; a daily reminder. The lovely Stepfather and I eat our eggs and doggedly talk of the news. We speak of Paris and fundamentalism and tolerance and intolerance and the lessons of history, and we pretend that there is not a great, gaping hole in the house. We do a lot of speaking. The one thing we do not say is: ‘Oh, how we miss her.’

I write about my mother and father as if they were paragons. They were not. They were as complex and flawed as all human beings. They were both dazzlingly brilliant parents and occasionally absolutely useless parents. There were times when they drove me mad, and times when I drove them mad, mostly through my shocking stubbornness.

But the interesting thing about death (at least, it is fascinating to me) is that almost at the very moment of passing from the mortal realm to whatever lies beyond all those flaws and frailties and maddening bits are burnt away, as if in some grand Phoenix-like fire. And from the ashes rise all the glorious parts, the good bits, the moments of glad grace, the idiosyncratic talents, the laughter, the kindness, the sheer otherness. (They were both quite unusual, in their different ways. I only realise this when I tell someone a story which I think perfectly normal, and see the arched eyebrows and look of astonishment.)

I like that part. I like remembering them in their glory days; I carry their very finest selves with me, locked into my heart.

I got used to being without my father. It took about two years. I still think of him every day and sometimes miss him so much that I can’t breathe, but mostly I think of him with a great, spreading fondness and keen pride and a lot of wry laughter. I’ll get used to this too, although I think it’s going to be harder and longer, because of the every day aspect. A huge chunk of the cliff of my life has crumbled into the sea and I have to make a new path.

The Stepfather, who is a gentleman of the old school, as my brother said at the wake ‘the greatest gentleman in Britain’, said a very kind thing yesterday. We were talking about stoicism. Mum had it; he has it; it is one of the virtues that is still stitched into the culture of this dear old island race. I admire it more and more as I get older. ‘I think you are very stoical,’ he said, nodding his wise head.

I felt as if someone had given me a medal. When I was young, I wanted to be charming, brilliant, eccentric, talented. I wanted glittering prizes. Now, I want to be steady and stoical.

It doesn’t mean that emotions are not felt, or honoured, but that one does not make a three act opera of them. One may stare them in the whites of their eyes, but not wallow in them. It’s a very, very fine line to walk. Sometimes I feel that even writing this is a bit of a tap dance. Look at me, with my grieving. On the other hand, sorrow must have words, and this is as good a place to put them as any. I put them here, and people may read them and understand them, or they may pass on, and I don’t have to bore poor real-world humans and frighten the horses in the street.

Also, I want to remember. When the missing stage has faded, shrunk back to its proper place, become gentled with time, I shall take down this book and slowly read. I find it curiously soothing to know that it shall all be there, waiting for me.

 

Today’s pictures:

The remarkable thing is that the one place I don’t have to be at all stoical is down in my enchanted field. The mares are so funny, affectionate, clever and beautiful, so authentic and present and real, so honest and absolutely themselves, that merely standing next to them banishes all sorrow. It is really quite odd. It’s my daily rest, my morning holiday from wearing emotion. I can’t quite work out what it is - their sheer loveliness, the purity of them, their own complete lack of sentimentality, their faintly flinty life must go on aspect. Or perhaps all of those things. Whatever it is, I am more grateful for it than I can say.

It’s gloomy today, so these pictures are from a couple of days ago, when it was sunny:

Cheese puffs.

I have just made some cheese puffs. I have no idea why. I have never made a cheese puff in my life.

I am practising for my mother’s wake, which is on Saturday. I am in charge of the food. I am doing some old favourites which I can cook in my sleep, but I suddenly wanted something a bit different. So I got the puff pastry and played around with it and filled it with cheese and rolled it and rolled it and cut out little disks using an Edwardian sherry glass (exactly the right size for the puff, it turns out) and presto! – a cheese puff.

I have no concept of why I suddenly decided these would be the very thing for my mother. She never made them when we were little. They were not a tea-time favourite or a Saturday treat. We did not sit around in a pleading chorus, our eyes as yearning as those of Dickensian orphans, shouting: please, please, THE CHEESE PUFFS. I don’t think I’ve ever knowing eaten a cheese puff. I’m not sure I could have told you what they looked like. But that is what we are having.

I find the whole thing most surprising.

Riding and cooking, I think; those are the places where I am all right. In the field and in the kitchen. Do some people get very stout when they lose their mothers? Cooking, cooking, cooking, like a demented Italian mamma (do Italian mothers still think that food is the cure for all ills?), making soup and taking it round in pots so that the dear stepfather can keep up his strength, making something, some good offering.

He said this morning: ‘I still have my appetite. Is that wrong?’

I said: ‘It’s marvellous. You must eat, because it’s so bloody tiring. If we did not eat we would fall over.’

My step-aunt, whom I adore, has arrived, and we all have breakfast together, and it’s all hysterically British. We make little stabs at irony and talk about the news and generally carry on. The said is all in the unsaid. Occasionally, our eyes slide towards each other, acknowledging all the things that are tacit. (These are: it’s bloody awful; the house is so empty without her; everywhere you look there are heart-breaking little reminders.)

Then I stomp off to the field and there are my dear mares, as still and centred and peaceful as two little Zen mistresses, and I mix up their feed and give them their hay and do a little work with them and feel the heavy ache lift. They are both very affectionate by nature. Not all horses are. Some are like cats, and don’t care much for human stroking. These ladies are also getting into their furry stage for winter, despite their aristocratic bloodlines, so they are like two beloved teddy bears. I hug them and rub them and talk to them and they blink their liquid eyes at me and whicker down their velvety noses.

I suddenly thought this morning: this is like being in a foreign country. It’s as if I’ve gone abroad, to somewhere not very nice, where I can’t quite remember the idioms and am not certain of the food and can’t read the road signs. I have been to this doleful country before, but the memory is not sharp. So I drove along the river to anchor myself in my own country and look at my favourite hill and watch the water go by.

And then I went and did some more cooking.

 

Today’s pictures:

The river:

The teddy bear:

A day off, a day on.

Yesterday, I decided I would take a day off from grief. I was going to have a happy day. I was perfectly prepared for failure (failure and I are old, old friends) but I thought it would be interesting to see whether through sheer force of will I could give my mind and body a rest.

The amazing thing was that it worked. Two of the great-nieces came to see the horses in the morning. There was a lot of sweetness and laughter. I worked the new mare on the ground and then walked in the rain with my sister and Stanley the Dog loped beside us. I saw the dear Stepfather and watched the racing. There was one little blip when the telephone went just after Bobs Worth won at Sandown. I thought for a second it was my mother. She always called when one of the horses she loved ran a huge race.

It was not her voice on the line. I won’t get that telephone call ever again.

Then I rallied and brushed myself up and put on a jewel and went out for dinner. I sat next to a gentleman I had never met before, a kind, intelligent man with an open face. We spoke of many things. Then he mentioned a name. The name was well known to me. It was the son of a man who once saved my father’s life. I said, quite calmly, ‘Well, you know, if it were not for your friend’s father, I would not exist.’

This sounds melodramatic, but it is true. On a drunken winter’s afternoon, in a house by the water’s edge, someone rashly bet that nobody could swim across the Thames. My father did not hesitate. He leapt into the icy water and made it to the other side. The fellow who made the bet bawled that it did not count unless Dad swam back again.

I looked at the kind gentleman. ‘Dad being Dad,’ I said, ‘he plunged back in and set off at once.’

Half way across, my father got cramp and started to sink. One man had the courage to swim across and rescue him. This man, whom I remember well, a smiling, sophisticated, charming fellow, was the parent of my dinner companion’s old friend. It was before I was born. So, without that brave swimmer, I would not be typing these words.

The dining companion seemed to take this on the chin. I quietly marvelled at the odd strands which can connect complete strangers. Then we changed the subject and talked of the financial crash. ‘Iceland,’ I said. ‘A whole country was wiped out. All those fishermen who became hedge fund managers.’

The most odd thing was that on the stroke of midnight, as if I were Cinderella, the melancholy returned. It had been waiting for me, in the wings. My experiment worked. I could take a day off. The force of will could be employed. But it was only a delaying tactic.

It’s good to have a rest. It’s good to know that one can find laughter and interest among the wreckage. The thing I understand most of all is that time will come along and do its thing. What time does is allow one to remember the Dear Departed with smiles instead of tears.

Tonight, I cooked my stepfather a lovely soup, an invention of my own which was a riff on Vichyssoise. (Cauliflower and watercress instead of leek.) We talked of many, many things. We spoke of Evelyn Waugh and Nancy Mitford and Diana Cooper; we discussed Winston Churchill’s odd attitude to money; we talked of the Remembrance Day service and how the British do that kind of ceremony so very well. We did not talk of my mother. At the end, we looked at each other, and it was all there. We did not need the words. We are buggering on, and we do not make a three act opera of it.

Yesterday, I had a day off. Today, I had a day on. Sorrow and I are known companions, and grief walks beside me like an old hound. Yes, I say, I know you. There is no trick to it, no secret, no brilliant strategy. I think one has to let it in and not fight it.

Today, the nation stopped at eleven o’clock to remember all those massed ranks of the Dear Departed. I always watch that great ceremony at the Cenotaph, but this time I could not do it. I got on my fine red mare and walked her gently into the middle of our Scottish field and held my own private two minute’s silence. I heard the distant chimes of the church bells and bowed my head. She stood like a statue. I was never so glad in my life that I taught her to be still.

Today, the hundreds and thousands and millions of war dead were held in the collective memory. I thought of them, those lost who fell in numbers I can hardly imagine. And afterwards, I thought of my mother and missed my mother and mourned my mother.

I will find a safe place to put her. That is another thing that takes time. I found it for my father, and now I shall find it for her. The safe place is in that good corner of the heart where the dead still live.

Today’s picture:

From her eightieth birthday party, last year:

My mission, should I choose to accept it.

Well, the Be Happy For Mum plan didn’t go all that badly, in the end. I thought that it might be the most shaming disaster. I thought that everyone might shout through the ether Oh for goodness’ sake, just be bloody sad and get it over with. (I suspect that was a bit of Freudian projection, and in fact was the voice of my critical self, who is a terrible old vampish harridan and has always had too much gin.) In actual fact, on the Facebook, on the blog, kind people, some known well to me, some complete strangers, all rose up in glory and said generous and funny and wise things, which touched and amazed my bashed heart.

Here is what I learnt, because I must always learn something. All these years on, and I am still a girly swot at heart.

There is one place that the sadness really and truly does go completely away and that is on the back of my thoroughbred mare. I always knew that she did have super-powers. I just did not quite know how powerful they were. Being with her is cheering and soothing, but it’s on her back, when I feel her power under me and the peace that she carries in her flowing from her mighty body into my puny one, that everything falls into a stunning equilibrium. All the bad and sad things just fall away and I am free. I don’t know how this happens, but it does. She is a miracle horse and that’s the end of it.

The joys are there, if you look for them. They don’t banish the sorrow, but they go in tandem with them, like a pair of slightly grumpy and ill-matched carriage horses, the kind that the Queen would not use for state occasions. I’m going to go on driving my wonky carriage, and one day, those two ponies will learn to trot along together.

My stabs at normality are quite funny. I’m a little off kilter. Everything I say is a crotchet off-beat. My laughter is a bit too loud. My walk is a bit ragged. My clothes are frankly peculiar. My hair is a bit bonkers. My attempts to make sense don’t quite make sense.

Laughter still exists though, and it is as healing as tears. I have a new theory that grief is like a trapped energy and has to be let go, in great gusts. It needs to be released from the actual body. Shouty tears can do this, but so can shouty laughter. The Beloved Stepfather made me laugh at breakfast so much that I couldn’t speak for four minutes. It was one of those comical stories so recondite and absurd and almost tragic that only he and I (and my mother had she been here) could get it. That made it even more intense. Once he had told me the absurd thing, and I started laughing helplessly, he started laughing too, the first proper laugh he has done since it happened. It was naughty schoolboy laughter, because it was the kind of thing that was really quite sad in some ways, but we couldn’t help it, it tickled us to death. That laughter opened the door and let some of that captured energy out.

I have to keep reminding myself to let my shoulders go. I have another theory, you will be amazed to hear, that people trap their emotions in different parts of their bodies. Some people get headaches, or stomach cramps. I get the shoulders up around my ears. Every half an hour, I have to say: get those damn shoulders down.

Talking out loud is oddly helpful. I’ve always been prone to this, and it’s getting worse as I get older. Lately, I find myself in the Co-op saying, at shamingly high volume: ‘Now, what have I forgotten?’ Since Saturday, I have been walking round the house saying ‘Oh,’ and ‘Ah,’ and ‘Oof,’ and ‘What next?’ I say: ‘Oh, Mum,’ with a dying fall. I expect soon I shall move on to: ‘Steady the buffs.’

I like having a mission, and I’m going to keep on my mission of hunting for beauty, squinting for the good, searching for the consolations. My old friend The Horseman, who is a man of great matter-of-factness, not a sentimental bone in his body, but a man of oak, the sort of man on whom you can really rely when the chips are down, wrote me a brilliant, pithy message. It said: ‘Live hard in respect for those who can’t.’ That is my mission.

But, and here I think is the important thing, I’m not going to scold myself when I can’t do that. There will be days when it’s not possible. It’s a good goal, and a fine thought. I keep it in the front of my mind, like a shining amulet. The good old Horseman. He was there when my dad died, and when my dog died (he found me in streaming tears on his drive and staunchly faced them without fear) and now he has sent me a line to live by.

Rather to my astonishment, I have achieved quite a lot this week. I have written words, and done good work for HorseBack, and made soup, and worked my new mare, and ridden my old mare in glorious cowgirl canters on a loose rein, and even arranged some flowers. There are roses on my desk. There are never roses on my desk. They were on special offer and I thought, bugger it, I must have roses. They feel sweetly symbolic and I look at them now as I write and think: yes, yes, the small things. I live now in the world of the small things, so that the big thing does not overwhelm me, so that I do not drown.

 

Today’s pictures:

The roses:

I found this wonderful picture of my mother this morning. I remember that fur hat so well. I was very small when she had it, and I used to whip it off her head and hold it and stroke it as if it were a small bear. I can feel it now:

And this picture was in the same book. It is my sister, on her side-saddle champion. This says a lot about my mother. It was she who taught us to ride these ponies, who schooled them and groomed them and taught us sternly to look after them. If we were to have the great fortune to have such glorious animals, we had to be responsible for them. We were never allowed to come in at the end of the day until our ponies were happy and settled with their bran mashes. She would get up at three in the morning to drive us to distant shows – to the Three Counties, and Builth Wells, and Windsor, and Peterborough – and she would make us the best bacon sandwiches in the world to sustain us for the road:

12.12.12.

This is a Red Letter Day. It is a day among days. Apparently, this repetitive date is the last one ever. I can’t quite work it out in my mind. Surely it will come again, on the 12^th of December 3012? I suppose what people mean is that we shall all be dead by then.

Either way, it feels tremendously thrilling to me, for a reason I cannot work out at all. I am inspired to blog the whole day. I actually signed up to a thing called One Day on Earth, where they are making a brilliant project, getting millions of people to record the day on video, and then posting it all on their website. This is a lovely idea of human community and I was all for it, until I realised that I only have a pathetic video facility on my ordinary camera and have never been able to work that properly. Instead, I am going to do my own little one day, right here in this small corner of the earth.

It will be like the Mass Observation: an ordinary day, in the ordinary life of an ordinary woman, on an extraordinary date.

I did not start the great day on a glorious note. I slept through three alarms and ran down to the horses with my hair sticking up in shock and lateness. They were unmoved, feeding happily at their new, custom-built, hand-carved hay manger.

I worked first with my small Welsh Mountain pony. We did some gentle ground work, yielding at the quarters and shoulder, backing up, coming to. We did a little join-up, and I had the keen pleasure of walking the field with her at my side. It’s an easy technique, but it gives me the most intense joy, and every time I do it I bless the cleverness of Monty Roberts, and wonder that it never fails. I think the delight of it is that an essentially wild animal is giving you their consent. This feels quite profound to me.

Afterwards, I stand with the pony for a while, scratching her all over her sweet spots, gentling her muzzle, telling her she is easily the cleverest pony in Scotland. She leans her head against me and I feel my heart expand with love.

Myfanwy is, on paper, good for nothing. She is old, and her back is crocked, so she cannot be ridden. All the rescue charities find it almost impossible to home what they call companion horses. Yet, to me, she is good for everything. She has grown into the most beloved, entirely irreplaceable member of the herd. I cannot imagine life without her. Red the Mare would be lost without her small, furry friend. When I appear at the gate, the pony raises her head and pricks her ears and makes a low, humming whicker, and that is worth more than diamonds.

Red gets no work today, just love. We stand together for a while, looking out into the light. She rests her noble head on my shoulder, and I stroke her dear face, and chat to her for a bit. I think of the thing the Buddhists talk about, of staying still in the moment.

‘This very minute,’ I say to Red, who listens politely, ‘is more important than anything. For this moment, I am quite happy. I must not think of the lost ones, of The Pigeon or The Duchess or my father, because then I shall miss this perfect moment with you.’

Red blows gently through her nostrils, as if she knows all this already.

I say: ‘Of course it’s easier to say than to do.’

But for a moment, I do manage to quiet my antic mind, and concentrate on the pure, undilute pleasure of being at one with a horse in a field, on a clear day, where, just for a second, it feels as if I can see forever.

I race down for breakfast with my mother and stepfather. We discuss the continuing row over Kauto Star going for dressage, and the now very public spat between Clive Smith and Paul Nicholls, and how the whole of Twitter is alight with it. I eat bacon and drink coffee black as pitch. The Stepfather, who is not interested in racing, fills out a form from The Dogs’ Trust to sponsor a lost dog.

I take Stanley the Lurcher into their garden for a race around. It is entirely fenced in, so I can let him off the lead and allow him to show his paces. When he runs, he is like a greyhound, his belly low to the ground, his head down, his long legs raking over the grass like Frankel in his pomp. It is a very thrilling sight.

‘Watch that dog go,’ I yell to The Stepfather, who watches in admiration.

I go home to my desk, and write this.

The sun comes out. The bare trees are gilded with pink and gold; the remnants of the ice and snow glitter and gleam. I drink more coffee. I think: 12.12.12. is a very splendid day indeed.

 

Pictures of the morning:

The horses’ field, looking north:

Myfanwy the Pony:

Red the Mare and Autumn the Filly:

When Autumn first arrived, Red did a huge amount of boss mare prancing and leaping, to show who was in charge. She has never been a lead mare before, and she rather overdid it, as if uncertain quite how to play the part. Now, they are sweet friends. Red occasionally gives Autumn a bit of a biff or a bossy pinned ear face, but most of the time they mooch about in perfect harmony.

The sweet dopey face of my lovely girl:

The field with its magnificent tree, facing west:

The herd, with the timber for their new shelter in the background:

Trees:

Ice:

My favourite small tree:

Sheep, looking east from my mother’s house:

The Stepfather’s excellent shed:

Another view east:

My favourite old iron fence:

The limes:

Stanley the Lurcher, with his good boy face on:

And his sweet flying ear:

Observing the sheep:

More limes:

My plan is to return later in the day, so that every moment of this date may be kept forever. Absurd, I know, but I have a habit of indulging my whims, every so often. It was whim that brought me Red and Myfanwy and Stanley, so it can’t be all bad.