Focus through tears and touch

Certain days make you focus on the important things in life. Today was one of those days.

There are times when you become linked to people you do not know through people you know and love. 

Introductions can be difficult at the best of times but in some circumstances it’s best to remain silent. 

Sometimes, like today, the only communication is done through tears and touch.

It may not be physical – either the tears or the touch, but however you make the communication show it brings life into sharp focus.

Today I should have been in bed. I was so ill, but I needed to be elsewhere. I awoke early and got ready slowly – I have been lacking speed in the recent week due to sickness. Once ready I steeled myself for the hours ahead. No matter how hard it was for me, my physical and emotional pain would be like a drop in the ocean for the people burying their dear relative that morning.

Funerals have a way of bringing life and relationships into sharp focus.

Right there before the coffin I became a part of group of people whose truths of love and life were brought sharply into focus as if placed under a giant microscope.

Saying goodbye is hard. Showing you care can be hard, but sometimes you just have to find that way to focus that emotion so the recipient may know ... one day.

Memento ...

that was on the back of a card I just found. It was a card I sent to my ex-partner. It must have been about three years ago because we have been separated for nearly that long. The strange thing is that I have it and she doesn’t. When she left our home she refused to take things that reminded her of me, so she bought everything new and stored it in this house until her new home was ready. Rather bizarre really, because then all her new things were first in the same house as me. Mmmm. I digress ...

Anyway, back to the card, well it’s cards really because I found two of them. I had just finished a book and had gone back to my bookshelves to choose a new one to read. As I lovingly caressed the spines of the different volumes my fingers touched something unfamiliar. I reached further and pulled these two cards from the back of the books. One had been torn in two, but it was still stored there. I couldn’t remember putting them there.

When I re-read them I felt the same as I have felt in the last few years. Absolutely no regret about my decision. This time I only felt deep sadness that I wrote those words in the card and that it didn't work out as, both of us at one stage, had truly hoped. I know that as time progressed with each occasion that I bought a card for her I had greater trouble because they never really expressed what I wanted to say. I know that I did feel a great connection with her for some time and in all honesty I tried to express it on anniversaries and birthdays. Now it seems like a dream and it feels that somebody else could have written those words. But I know my own handwriting. It was me. It was me, then. Doing the very best I could. And I am proud of that.

My emotional journey has progressed a lot in the last few years. Like an endurance athlete I am now fitter, stronger, more assured and I have greater determination and focus to achieve my goals.

I looked at the cards for a long while.

Now, when I read the extra things that I wrote inside the card I am trying hard to remember if I can remember feeling the emotions I expressed. Does that sound sad? Does it sound wrong? I feel that it shouldn’t be like this but at the same time I know it is. However it sounds I know that I am now in the right place, with the right focus and that alone makes me happy. I have a freedom to express myself without the censure of constant disapproval. I have my freedom. It is good.

So, my conclusion on this day that I have uncovering these mementoes is that they have been a reminder that being in touch with my true self is absolutely essential. I’m now off to shred them.

Job done.

Unfinished business

I remember the last time I was in a pub and the staff moved between the tables like they were on roller-skates picking up the empty glasses and bottles. There is a system to their routine. They remove the finished product and you replace it with a new one, a fresh one. As I watched them weaving between the tables, making increasingly impossible loads of empties balanced on their free arm, I began to question whether they would reach their limit before they reached my table. The calculation went through my mind quickly. Then, suddenly I realised that they are on a different agenda to me. There was a moment when I saw them coming directly for me and I knew what they are going to do, so I reached out, but I was too late – the bottle has been whisked away.

'Hey,' I say indignantly, ‘I hadn’t finished that.’

The staff member donned their most scornful look as they turned back to me with my unfinished drink in their hand. They looked at me, then at the bottle. The bottle was turned slightly towards the fading light that came through the window behind me in the cosy alcove.

‘Oh,’ they said, and then a reluctant obligatory apology without any real meaning, ‘sorry, I thought it was finished.’ Then they tipped the bottle towards me and feeling embarrassed but determined to hold on to my position, I reach for the bottle. I no longer want the bottle as they put their finger in the neck of it but it's at this point I begin to feel that it’s the principle that matters.

‘Thank you,’ I say, while wondering why I am thanking them when I know that they have just done me a disservice. Nevertheless, I still feel as if I should not have let the bottle go.

I reclaim my drink and feel just how light it is. I’m not sure that there is even a full mouthful left in the bottle, but I know I was right to claim it. The drink was mine, I had not finished with it. I know that I’ll give it up when I am ready, and not before.

The people with me smile those knowing smiles and shake their heads at the staff member who has decided that they will wait for the bottle that I have reclaimed.

‘It’s ok,’ I say sheepishly, ‘I’ll just hang on to it …’

‘Are you sure?’ comes the sarcastic response, ‘I could just wait, as it’s nearly done anyway …’

Suddenly this has become about more than the dregs of liquid in the bottle.

This is unfinished business.

I am not ready to let go. My time for closure with my beverage has not arrived. But another person has decided that they have a prior claim on the drink and they, without consulting me, have decided that my business is in reality now finished.

I sat there wondering how to resolve this ordinary situation that had somehow become extraordinary and was the focus of not just my attention, but several people on my table and the adjoining tables.

Did someone else really have the right to decide that my short connection with this bottle was over? Surely it was only down to me.

The pressure was building. Light conversations began around me but my only focus was on the soiled bottle in my hand and the overbearing staff in front of me who was becoming uncomfortable with the load of collected empties that they had already gathered.

I asked myself '... at what point am I willing to let go of things in my life or would I always hang on to remnants of the past?'

I could not see myself as a rat in bags of rags that I refused to let go of so I sighed deeply and accepted the truth. I had a tendency to burrow in the past but I needed to face the present and the future. I accepted what they said. It is finished now anyway, I thought. I smiled reluctantly and handed the bottle back to the staff. I had not made the decision but that didn’t matter any more. Circumstances meant that closure came - although not on my timeline - there was no going back.

‘It’s ok,’ I said with a resigned acceptance, ‘yeah, you’re right – it’s finished.’

Anyone involved can call time on the business. When it’s over for them, it’s over.