Heavenly Beverley : Emotions

Emotions can be soft and gentle, like a welcome breeze in my face on a sunny afternoon. Or they can be brutal and savage and unpredictable, with all the power of a rogue storm coming out of nowhere. Or squeeze my soul until I struggle to breathe. Or a sun shower, providing both sorrow and happiness all in that one spontaneous moment in time.

This past week has challenged me, teasing me with quiet satisfaction intertwined with the menacing presence of the Black Dog. I have been wrung out like a sodden rag. I have won the good fight but been left utterly spent. I have been caught unawares by visions and memories. Rage and sadness have snuck up behind me and bitten me on the bum. Happiness has been fleeting and fluid.

I need to write about this week. In doing so, I am choosing my words very carefully. I am over angst. I hope not to attract dissatisfaction or accusations in return. I just want to express my thoughts and feelings and responses.

So, why on earth do I have this urge to share all that is present in my own head? Why is this task so important?

For connection? For tolerance? For understanding? For acceptance? Alice Adams has provided me with my own personal answer -

Because it takes me out of my own head, away from my troubles.

Because it gives me a shot, however remote, at creating something sublime and transcendent.

Because I burn with rage at the world, and it seems like a better outlet than gratuitous violence.

Because I long to capture things that are ephemeral before they evaporate into nothingness: the quietly ecstatic feeling of being in a garden at dusk in summer, the mossy scent of a lover’s jumper.

Because putting something into words forces me to articulate my thoughts and shape them into a narrative, and that gives meaning to my life.

Because purging myself on a keyboard is compulsive and addictive; I sit down to bang out a few hundred words and look up hours later to find it’s dark outside and I am damp with perspiration, limp in my chair but full of a queer satisfaction, emptied and stilled and sated.

Monday, we travelled to the Stoneville house, the scene of countless cups of tea with soya milk, Lucky's extraordinarily bespoke cakes, love, family and laughter. Now with both Judy and Lucky gone, I could hear and feel the echoes of their home. There are still a mountain of photographs to be sorted in the future. They have been boxed up for now. Each photo has its own set of reactions, like the ripples caused by a pebble tossed into a pond..

Michael and his siblings travelled to Perth city to complete another forest of paperwork in order to address the terms of Lucky's will. We had real estate agents also assessing the property. Immersed in the memories, I packed up years of manchester into neat bags. I touched every rug, every sheet, every towel. The same with their leftover kitchen items. Would Michael like this? Would I? Decisions made by instinct.

Tuesday, Michael returned to spend another day of clearing up at Stoneville. I entered into the continuing stoush with Western Power. At the very end of my tether, I was passed into the hands of one of the Complaints Team. I encountered a remarkable woman who was actually sympathetic, helpful and proactive. The invoice for our domestic connection was generated and e-mailed to me within a couple of hours. My newly-discovered angel promised me a date would be announced for our connection the following day.

Tuesday was also the first anniversary of Mum's death. That in itself caused a deluge of conflicting memories, of detachment, of sadness and of struggle. And then Pip started barking frantically at the front window. Upon investigation, I received a flash of our great big beautiful Sascha gazing back quite nonchalantly at me. Really? Who is to know.

Wednesday, we received the news we had been chasing for five months. Our electricity was to be connected on 25 November. Initial works were to start as soon as the scoping team had investigated. I was elated and exhausted. During the afternoon, I received the gloriously therapeutic reward of a massage. Vivid lights and colours dominated behind my eyes.

Thursday and Friday were hot and sultry. the skies matching my mood. The Gallery badly needed some TLC. I was unmotivated and ambivalent. I had to push myself to attend to detail. In spite of multiple visitors, we had no sales at all, which just added to my sense of dissatisfied gloom.

Yesterday was a day of reckoning. Michael cleaned the house and washed the floors. I finished the new labelling and some movement of our pieces, gearing up for Christmas. I cleaned and polished all the furniture. The Gallery was re-energised and I was carried along, buoyed once again with determination and pleasure.

I didn't go home until evening. We were sitting together at the table. Michael's phone signalled a text. He read the message and then gave his phone to me, unable to speak.

Michael's youngest daughter married during the last year, we think. We only know this information through the extended family as we did not receive any notification from his daughter. Needless to say, we were not invited. Michael's daughter had struck out on her own in the fallout of her mother's death and her inability to accept her father's relationship with me. Prior to that, their relationship had been, at times, stormy. Over the last seven years, we have never heard from her at all, except when she taunted Michael at the family home and voiced her negative opinion of her father on Facebook. After that episode, I blocked her.

Last evening, her husband (whom we have never met) sent Michael a text out of the blue. She was applying for a passport and had discovered that her own documentation was inadequate. Hence, she was seeking a copy of Michael's birth certificate. He sent the message on her behalf.

We were both in shock, overwhelmed by this approach. And particularly the motive behind the approach. For some minutes, Michael was defenceless in the deluge of emotions created by this contact. We sat in stunned silence, as if we'd both fallen down the rabbit hole.

Eventually we shook ourselves off. I located Michael's birth certificate. He responded to his son-in-law ( how weird that feels to write) in the affirmative. Of course we would send a copy of his birth certificate to them. And that we would like to meet him someday. The young man signed off "thanks mate".

Today, I'm sitting with Michael in our Gallery. He still feels as if his breath is caught in his throat. He wonders whether his daughter and son-in-law have ever thought of him at any other time. If she has altered her opinion. Whether his son-in-law is willing to give Michael the benefit of the doubt and make his own judgement.

"I wonder if they ever think what it's like to be me".