Apologies for the continuous radio silence in these here parts. Various things have been going on (overwork and tension mostly) and I have had not the luxury of the computer time (when your boss sits behind you at work it really sabotages one's love affair with the blogging). There's been some sadness, and illness, and dead rodentia in the garden and I'm all menstrual but it doesn't obscure the joy of cats and Z getting his papers and miss_newham and hoshuteki dropping by for visits.

Lately, I've been thinking about a number of things most of them political, about which there will be more at another time (such as say, when my boss goes on holiday) but right now a brief and personal note.

The woman who was like another mother to me died a few months ago and the grief of that loss comes upon me intermittently, unexpectedly, in waves. I felt little sadness at hearing of her death because of my beliefs that the spirit continues to live on and that in death all pain stops. I grieved though for the family she left behind, particularly my friend, her son because I know how close they were.

But I do grieve for her illness. It was not exactly a surprise that she had cancer (smoking like a chimney and eating no vegetables really is not a recipe for longevity) but that didn't make me any less fucking sorry that it was the case. And I still feel so sorry for the fact that she got ill, and went through the brutal treatments for her illness, and that she began to lose her breath and her words and the latter particularly made her sad for she was an eloquent, articulate, well-read woman.

My mother and she were close friends and I was glad that my mother was there for her and her family, that she could be. I wasn't really though because my second mother was always very keen to shield me from her disease, to keep me outside of it, and I tried to respect that. We compartmentalised our grief, we skated around Cancer Talk, we shared good times and our silences were rich with care and meaning. I do not have any regrets, only sadness for her and her family.

And today I came across a poem that touched the raw places, and that made me cling to Z like a monkey while I sobbed my heart out on his shoulder. So in memory of that woman I loved, and all the things about her illness that I couldn't or didn't know how to say, here is Emigration by Tony Hoagland

Try being sick for a year,
then having that year turn into two,
until the memory of your health is like an island
going out of sight behind you

and you sail on in twilight,
with the sound of waves.
It's not a dream. You pass
through waiting rooms and clinics

until the very sky seems pharmaceutical,
and the faces of the doctors are your stars
whose smile or frown
means to hurry and get well

or die.
And because illness feels like punishment,
an enormous effort to be good
comes out of you --
like the good behavior of a child

desperate to appease
the invisible parents of this world.
And when that fails,
there is an orb of anger

rising like the sun above
the mind afraid of death,
and then a lake of grief, staining everything below,
and then a holding action of neurotic vigilance

and then a recitation of the history
of second chances.
And the illusions keep on coming,
and fading out, and coming on again

while your skin turns yellow from the medicine,
your ankles swell like dough above your shoes,
and you stop wanting to make love
because there is no love in you,

only a desire to be done.
But you're not done.
Your bags are packed
and you are traveling.