A Pocketful of Happiness...

... for Knots in the String.

A Pocketful of Happiness

Apropos of nothing, I noticed a burst of brightness in the bedroom earlier this week. The cloud along the top edge of Kunyani (Mount Wellington) had cleared and light outlined the mountain edge – as though someone had couched gold passing-thread along the ridge. It was gone in the blink of an eye. But worth the heartbeat it took to see it. Enough to re-energise me to cook while listening to an audiobook.

I’m currently listening to Richard E Grant’s recently released (last week) memoir A Pocketful of Happiness. It’s a journey through grief – the second grief memoir I’ve read this year oddly, and it prompted me to think about its presence in our lives. It’s a backdrop that we’re unaware of until it drops behind us as an event plays out in our lives. Grief for lost or absent family, lost pets, lost jobs, lost homes, loss of independence, loss of self and much more besides.

Grief has a way of knocking us down, sometimes out, but if we have the strength to pick ourselves up again, it reshapes our lives, reshapes us – often into something much stronger.

When Dad died in hospice care after five years of COPD, that backdrop was lowered almost gracefully. When Mum died suddenly of a stroke, it smashed down and left me with emotional concussion and breathlessness. When my husband was diagnosed with cancer – the backdrop was there, but I ignored it because he needed me to support him as we flew to Melbourne for surgery and then back home, followed by dedicated care afterward. But we were lucky – he recovered and so the backdrop rolled back up again. (Perhaps that story is for another time.)

My husband has been overseas this last week. Nothing new there, we’ve often been apart during our married life. But when Covid hit, we had two and a half years together, uninterrupted. It was almost alien as a concept, but it was good! It made me realise all over again that there are couples who are soulmates and kindred spirits – like Richard E Grant and Joan Washington. There was nothing difficult about our being together non-stop for two and half years and everything was memorable.

So much so that when my husband left for his first trip O/S about 6 weeks ago, I found the enforced separation a little like grief – a little like the kind I experienced at times of great loss in my life. Sadness, pain, anxiety – it wasn’t much fun, and I was glad when he was back. I’ve been told that such feelings mean I’m co-dependent. But is that a bad thing in a marriage between kindred spirits? After nearly 47 years, I’d say no.

Anyway, for this latest trip I decided to keep extra busy, but that was just exhausting physically and mentally because in effect, all I was doing was running away and no good ever comes from running.

Absence, loss … grief? It happens, and we have to move through it as best we can.

He’s back now – my prodigal partner, and I’m glad. My life is rounded again, more nuanced, we talk and laugh.

And as much as I spent hours talking to the terrier during my husband’s trips, the terrier didn’t really talk back in my language. The dog loves me, of that there’s no doubt, and he has his canine idiosyncrasies which make me laugh, but he doesn’t understand my writing experiences, politics and the world. To me, he only seems to understand telegraph poles (anything upright actually!), beaches and shells, balls, lizards in the garden, the postman, wheels and men in bright orange vests. Whilst in the process he completely misunderstands other dogs. (But that’s maybe another story as well.)

So whilst in my own life I’ve had my share of grief, I now read about people like Richard E Grant and am strengthened and validated by his (and Joan’s) story.

My time:

Solitude. Which I love (mostly).

Walking, walking, walking. The terrier and I are quite a good team (mostly).

Ballet classes. Wonderful, but we now have a week-long layover for school holidays. Which for me, means age-ist stiffness when we start back. I’m relying on the terrier to keep me fit and flexed. He’s a bit of a goer, and I’m the one flying along on the end of the lead!

Summer garden plans for plantings. The spring gardens look beautiful with fluorescent chartreuse leaves unfurling, at first shyly and then with a showy abandon that takes the edge off memories of a too-long winter. Flowers are bursting like little fireworks. The yellow, black and orange tulips have finished so it’s time to fill the tubs with something moonlightish for summer. I’m totally fixated on Vita Sackville West’s white garden at Sissinghurst and have been forever.

Reading:

You may have noticed how long it takes me to read a book. It’s because I only read at night and when I fall into bed, I can barely read more than a page before the Kindle falls on my sleeping face. So I’m still reading Mary Stewart’s Rose Cottage on Kindle. Timeless.

Watching:

With my husband away, I wasn’t at all interested in cerebral TV. I haven’t even watched the TV news. So I ran away … if there is an Olympic medal for running away, I would win gold. I’ve watched things that might make your toes curl with mocking laughter. Chesapeake Shores, As Time Goes By, Survivor, Alone (now that’s an irony!), The Durrells. Thus, I’d go to bed unchallenged, unworried and sleep the sleep of the dead.

I also spent worthy hours watching wonderful You Tube performances of various ballets. The highlight was actually a showcase of 13 principals performing their versions of Don Quixote Act 3 (Basilio Variation). Corella and Baryshnikov are simply breathtaking!

Listening:

On radio, some very ordinary local radio which I switched off.

On Spotify, my own eclectic list which never fails to give me pleasure and always soothes me. I’m about to make a Classics list which will be all my favourite ballet music and some classic pieces that Dad introduced me to.

But most significantly, on Audible, Richard E Grant’s A Pocketful of Happiness.

Let’s remove Richard’s beautiful voice from the equation for a moment. This is Richard E Grant’s and Joan Washington’s journey through a terminal disease. One reads that sentence and one’s insides tremble, but Richard’s words are so much more.

As a grief memoir the book is as uplifting as it is heartbreakingly honest. It’s a story of two people who loved and respected each other so much – soulmates, kindred spirits – who worked through vicissitudes together, giving each other strength at the direst time. The weighted emotion is leavened by anecdotes that make one laugh with delight. Because obviously Richard and Joan knew people and that gives this book an added ‘fly on the wall’ dimension.

I was driving to the supermarket yesterday and Richard was reading a letter to his sofa-ridden wife from a friend who was also ill and whose specialty was acid wit and a view of life loaded with acerbic ennui. I laughed as the words fell blithely from Richard’s lips.

At times, because of his mellifluous voice and because he will chuckle as if he’s just remembered some anecdote, I feel as if he and I are sitting talking over coffee (and cake – possibly made by Nigella) and I’m privy to the workings of his and Joan’s innermost souls.

That’s the thing – this book doesn’t leave one as wrung out as a dishrag. It lifts one beyond the darkness to a place that many would envy.

I’m lucky. I too have that place – that relationship with a partner where we laugh and cry together and where every moment is shared. The good, the bad and the ugly. That is what A Pocketful of Happiness is telling me, telling all of us. That the ripples of such a relationship continue ad infinitum, even after the most loved partner ever may have gone, and it is those gentle ripples that cushion one as time goes by.

Richard details each moment in Joan’s inevitable journey, but never once have I yet felt it is too much and that I need to switch off. That’s a testament to the man’s enviable ability to find that pocketful of happiness. I think this memoir will be an ultimate favourite (and guide) for those grief-ridden moments that will sadly occur through life.

Talk next week and look for your own pocketful of happiness in the interim. It’s there, I assure you.

Cheers.