Comings and Goings

 A short piece of writing which has no other home but which you might like to read. Warning its a bit sad and thoughtful. I haven't put this and other pieces on facebook as people don't always want the difficult in that place but if you do read it and get anything from it please do get in touch. Facebook is my most frequented haunt.

Nobody really told me that at a certain point in life all the comings would be replaced by goings. At the age of four there was the coming of a baby sister,  then the coming of school teachers, some nasty some nice.  Then came a child of my own and family and friends new borns.

In my 40’s the comings have stopped and the goings pile one on top of the other, building a wall which locks in a certain feeling.  Hard to know what to call it and what to do with it. The goings began with  Grandma who died at a good old age surrounded by family.  Then came the parting of my partners Mum who slipped away in her sleep.  The loss of my partners job and the slow chipping away of benefits which had kept us working and afloat. My Dad followed on a few months after, a harder death with breath caught short by strands of asbestos and the cancer they caused. Then came the loss of our home, taken back by our landlord. The departing of many possessions as we sold them on to make a move lighter. The loss of the cat who was lovingly rehoused one day near to moving time.

 The loss of a dream followed next as we returned from a three month journey to buy a French house, brought back by brexit uncertainty and my partners ill health. Loss then of my partner, not to death but to strong tablets and illness which etch into what he is. Loss of  an easy freedom as trips beyond the front door have to be arranged not just taken. I don’t cry until I see the watch my partner gave me, fallen from my wrist and disappearing round the u bend of a flushed toilet. I wonder if one day there will be one loss too many.

When you reach an age when the natural order of things brings up more goings then comings how do you create a feeling that new things might come? Perhaps my new upturn in ordering stuff is some effort to salve the wounds of all these goings. The knock on the door announcing a new rug, books a food order. The dragging in of the parcel, the unwrapping.  The placing of the new thing in our still sparse surroundings.  It is just a salve and the object soon tarnishes and its thrill wears off. Too much of it and I will once again be drowning in stuff whilst the world will be slightly depleted.

 I paint of course. It is what I do to give life meaning, it is what I am and it shifts the mind to a new place for a while. The sticky oil paints, squeezed from a tube, scrubbed onto paper. Each painting a coming. I write, splurge and shape my story into something familiar at time of writing but when read back new.  I knit and crochet, each stitch a step towards a new thing.

I worry for those who have no way to create new comings in their world full of goings.  I guess that most of us find our own way of doing it. Maybe it is as simple as turning dirty toilet into clean, finding new people to be with, new missions, taking up scuba diving.  We have to work within the confines of our circumstances, wishes are useless here. It is only feasible actions which seem to help. Actions which balance all the goings with comings. It is probably why I facebook share the pictures of a soup I made or show a room moved around into a more pleasing form, why I share each painting when it is only half there. Proof to me and others that through the effort of action I brought something into being today and it isn’t always a story of loss.