Today’s cherishable sad and sweet memories are the times Manjula and I spent together.
Here
The writer Didion coined the term ‘vortex’ in her book ‘a year of magical thinking’ about the year after her husband died.
It helpfully describes when one is ambushed by trigger memories of good times spent together.
But I wasn’t ambushed, as I fully expected it.
These are sad and tearful yet happy treasured moments in central London. I know it so well yet it now has an other dimension.
I have swam in it, swallowed it, fought it, opened my arms to it, shrivelled from it, tolerated it, hated it,.. It’s hit me like a personal tsunami, been wishy washy, sticky beyond treacle, invaded my brain to make it fuzzy and cracked open my tentative comfort zones. I know it’s a lifelong friend I have to accept it. It’s equal with and probably surpasses the combined effect of all the worse times in my life and for the first time uncovered real solid regrets.
It’s a gravy train that doesn’t bring benefits or maybe it does.
My heart was broken by losing Manjula, I covered it up and held it close but now I’m beginning to feel able to open my heart again. So there are positives to discover and learning to reveal.
I now love Manjula even more and in ways that I couldn’t imagine. I’m tentatively beginning to be kind to myself.
Part two of this series of postings is the heart
Thank you for your support during this horrendous journey.
I love you Manjula
For almost 2 1/2 years I’ve received daily iPhone notifications —like the one below —reminding me to switch the water on and off. This is to pump water from the sump to the header tank and for the house to not run dry (a common system where we live). The messages were set up by Tom after we realised I needed a reminder. Without Manjula’s physical presence in the house it wouldn’t get done.
MAnjula collected coins in a make up bag. Each morning I take out ten rupees for my morning tea break while walking with Lucie. Thanks Manj.
Lucie waits patiently at the top of the stairs for me to go backwards and forwards getting ready to walk. At the last moment she peers in manjulas library as a reminder to check that I’ve bolted the balcony door.
I look in and smile at two of the many portraits of Manjula that fill the house.
Occasionally placing a T light in this wonderful engagement present brought all the way from Australia
All pieces of the jigsaw of our life. The missing pieces’ essence is present in every one of them.
I’ve chosen to deal with my grief companion head-on. Others will do it differently. Who knows what’s the best way, our experiences are completely individual. The pain is there, whatever but I try to minimise the suffering.
I share Manjula’s story wherever and whenever I can. In the dentists waiting room, even the treatment chair, during the morning tea break, handing out cards inviting people to appreciate our garden.
It’s important to me.
She probably thinks I’m ridiculous. 🤭
Last night was my second appearance at an open mic. MAnjula did get a mention (that’s the point) it was three intertwined love stories. But I ran out of time. The story of my life. If reincarnation and reconnecting souls is true, maybe I’ll have more time with Manjula’s sweet kind soul.
A first cycle tour after a loooong gap and what a lovely couple Diana and Josia, from Mexico and the US respectively, currently working in Chennai.
In my attempts to be the wise owl I passed on the two key pieces of advice of the many things I’ve learned from Manjula.
Be there for your partner, we’ve heard so much about presence there’s a risk of overkill but when I read this (see below) it seemed so pertinent. Our love means we should be present for the other.
The second piece of advice is to prepare for the end. In terms of helping each other plan and as part of that decide if you want to be resuscitated. It doesn’t matter how old you are.
Article here about older people and their plans for ‘letting them die.’ How young is too young?
An insight from earlier this year.
Today Manjula would have been 48 and it’s yet another reason to celebrate and thank her for the time we were together (we still are).
Manjula sent messages with her love and for me to know all is well on her soul’s journey to her new life. She’s most definitely not a ‘hungry ghost’.
Here’s a video message from my love. Previously we’ve also heard from her via messengers
We’ve done a few things that Manjula would like and maybe make her giggle. Like the remembering garden. we’ve just planted in the park opposite our house.
She’s left audio and video recordings which I’m using to help write our story. We’ll release some of the videos in 2022
So what’s a hungry ghost? One of the tales that will be featured in our story, to be published before we reach what would have been her 50th birthday.
My friend Zetta posted about a funeral today Where they played: How long will I love you? Sung by Ellie Goulding. So I listened to it
Today, before a small piano concert at a friends house here in Mysore I was introducing Manjula to a few more people.
Yes, I’ll introduce Manjula anywhere and everywhere. I was talking about the new garden we were creating to help celebrate her.
I explained that it’s over two years ago that she died, sometimes that feels a long time ago, others as if it was yesterday.
I know there is no limit to my unconditional everlasting love and liked the song.
…
How long will I love you?
As long as stars are above you
And longer if I can
How long will I need you?
As long as the seasons need to
Follow their plan
How long will I be with you?
As long as the sea is bound to
Wash up on the sand
How long will I want you?
As long as you want me to
And longer by far
How long will I hold you?
As long as your father told you
As long as you can
How long will I give to you?
As long as I live through you
However long you say
How long will I love you?
As long as stars are above you
And longer if I may
How long will I love you?
As long as stars are above you
Yes, it’s forever, in this life and any others. 🌞
Last night I completed chapter eight of our story Full Full (working title), of draft three (with many more to come) it was particularly difficult to work on, as it related the story of her last year. In some ways it also helped.
This morning I was outside our house, sitting on a stone slab bench, beneath our wonderful strong shading tree. I was waiting for my neighbour, for our morning cycle.
A friend came along
It was a messenger from Manjula to reveal she knew what I was doing, supported me and sent her love.
With critical timing.
I’ve had a few messengers now.
Equally impressive was the circling dragonfly and even pretty moths get in on the act.
How our loves reveal who we are, an illustrated serenade to aliveness and seeing the world with newborn eyes, and a great forgotten love story
“Attention is the rarest and purest form of generosity,” the great French philosopher Simone Weil wrote shortly before her untimely death. An epoch after her, Mary Oliver eulogized the love of her life with the observation that “attention without feeling… is only a report.” Looking back on centuries of love poems by people of genius who dared to love beyond the cultural narrows of their time, the poet J.D. McClatchy observed that “love is the quality of attention we pay to things.”
Because our attention shapes our entire experience of the world — this, after all, is the foundation of all Eastern traditions of mindfulness, which train the attention in order to anneal our quality of presence — the objects of our attention end up, in a subtle but profound way, shaping who we are.
Because there is hardly a condition of consciousness that focuses the attention more sharply and totally upon its object than love, what and whom we love is the ultimate revelation of what and who we are.
That is what the great Spanish philosopher José Ortega y Gasset(May 9, 1883–October 18, 1955) explores in a series of essays originally written for the Madrid newspaper El Sol and posthumously published in English as On Love: Aspects of a Single Theme (public library) — a singular culmination of Ortega’s philosophic investigation of Western culture’s blind spots, biases, and touching self-delusions about love, that is, about who and what we are.
I discretely followed it to try and take a photo but I could only get this silhouette before it flew away.
An hour later Lucie and returned home to it resting on the door knob. only to surprise me again and land on one of our windows.
It has the scary images of two reflective eyes on its wings, it’s wing span is seven inches or more and now it’s gone.
It arrived a day after I had, once again, in exasperation called out to Manjula complaining that I couldn’t feel her presence or hear a message.
I’m happier now.
Tanuja tells me it’s a moth. So now we know messages come via Dragonflies, Butterflies and Moths.
We’ll keep you posted as more messengers are added to the list. 🙂🙃🤭😉🌞
Is there ever not a problem? But they’re always solvable in India.
This is the corporation office of the non removable assets, meaning where they exchange contracts for land, buildings etc.
In our case, we’re the immovable objects getting married.
These photos have just been found and shared by our good friend Tanuja.
I can’t remember what this was about probably just checking details before the critical point where we sign and are officially joined in matrimony.
The whole set up was confusing and it was difficult to know at what precise moment we actually got married. Maybe this was it.
Look out for the full story next year.
Me and MYCycle 