The air is moist but the weather is holding, so hopefully all is well up at the castle.
Today is the last full day together for Toyah and myself, at the end of a fabbo week with The Horse. This morning we set off for the municipal park and discovered a canal & riverside walk around the town. Then to coffee & the papers in a cloisters coffee shop before tasty lunch in The Soup Kitchen. This is a "traditional" English tea shop & restaurant with very friendly waitresses of the mumsy kind, situated in a timber-framed building from around 1600.
How mundane this seems when entered in as the record of a day's events. "I don't want you to go tomorrow," said Toyah, several times.
Now in Toyah's room at the pub, in the attic, practising guitar. I'll collect her at 23.00. Tomorrow late afternoon it's back to Dorset to finalise packing before setting off on Monday morning to Heathrow for Nashville via Chicago on United.
We have had a death in the extended family, a niece-in-law of 28 who died of cancer on Friday 29th. June. She was diagnosed with a very rare form of cancer, which first appeared in the form of a brain tumour, two years ago. The cancer was terminal. Three weeks ago she was given a fortnight to live, and one week after that asked her mother to take her out for a trip. They drove from the family home in London to Cirencester and, in Cirencester, she died in her mother's arms.
In exceptional & hard situations like this one attempts to understand how, and why, a bright young person is called away in an inexplicable fashion. Reflecting on this, I find that I do not look on obvious tragedies as necessarily and inevitably tragic; while accepting this does not negate the suffering of family and friends. Perhaps for this young person an opportunity has been offered, a gift given, a present moment completed, a piece of work arisen somewhere else. How can we know any of this, while knowing the grief of parents, brother & sister?
"We recognise in others what we know most deeply in ourselves."
