Monday, October 25, 2010

I Could Go Right Back To Sleep

Easy. I had one of those nights last night. You know the kind. You're tired but you can't fall asleep for an hour and a half, no position is comfortable for long, and every time your partner shifts or gets up you're wide awake until he comes back. Gah. He's sleeping in the other bed tonight, I intend to sleep in the middle and toss off all the too-heavy covers. I predict I'll be having the devil of a time staying awake at work today.

October 24--Alderney, Channel Islands. The dune grass grew lush and green right down to the high tide line. My feet remembered the feel of it even if I could not longer walk down. I used to love to leave the cottage early in the morning, Piper racing ahead to bark at the wheeling gulls, and make my way down to sit in the sand and watch the sun rise over France. Jacob always said that's why the French were so insufferably proud, they thought the sun rose for them. I miss Jacob in his tattered work pants with the salt stains on the cuffs, the shirts with frayed collars that he kept rescuing out of the charity bag, and the olive green cardigan I knitted for him when he was so sick with pneumonia the year he turned forty. We planned to sail into the uncertainty of old age together in our stone cottage behind the dunes but he took a nap in his chair one fine October day nearly twenty years ago now and he forgot to wake up. I buried him on a Saturday and that ungrateful Piper went and got hit by the petrol lorry not a week later leaving me all alone. I was lost in a vacuum of grief for months. Beatrice from down the lane brought meals and Doctor Logan or his nurse Ellen stopped by every few days and by the time spring came around I was nearly myself again. Now I've sold the cottage and I'm going "into care" as they call it. What I wouldn't give for one more walk down the dunes to feel the cool grass and damp sand beneath my bare feet.

Poor old thing. Enjoy your Monday.
--Barbara

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