Dear Jamie,

‘Our parents cast long shadows over our lives. When we grow up, we imagine that we can walk in the sun, free of them. We don’t realize, until it’s too late, that we have no choice in the matter; they’re always ahead of us.

We carry them within us all our lives–in the shape of our face, the way we walk, the sound of our voice, our skin, our hair, our hands, our heart. We try all our lives to separate ourselves from them, and only when they are gone do we find we are indivisible.’

Richard Eyre

This is the year then, when they are gone. Yours and mine, our brother’s and our sister’s. One neat decade apart, our parents have moved on ahead of us to whatever is next, the anything or the nothing about which we can only conjecture or believe and have faith in, but never know until we get there. 

In a story I once read, aimed at helping young children to cope with loss, the life cycle of dragonflies was employed as a powerful metaphor. In their larval stage dragonfly nymphs or naiads are riverine. The story told of how they loved their riverbed community and were always scared and sad when one of their number rose to the water surface and vanished. One day a naiad feels itself rising, surfacing and, with an unfurling of exquisite wings, flies up into the air. What wonder and beauty! The lightness, the freedom, the grace, the warmth and colour of the new world. Excited to tell his friends down on the riverbed, he swoops down to the surface, but cannot break through it. He can even see his naiad family and friends down there, and waves his wings at them, but of course they don’t recognise him in his metamorphosed state. They will join him when they are ready, and each one is ready in their own unique time.

An additional piece to the story, which I’ve just Googled, is that the larval stage can last several years and yet adult dragonflies might be on the wing for only a few days or weeks. Although I can see why that bit might not provide great comfort for a child, for me it lends another layer of rich resonance: when Mum died it really did feel as if she was still somewhere close, flying free in the universe yet still in touch with us, looking down on us mere mortals. Conversely, or in addition (as, given that we don’t know what happens, all things are possible and no beliefs or ideas should be derided) I felt that at the moment of her death my mother entered my heart, my inner being, like never before, and perhaps this is the thrust of Richard Eyre’s conclusion, ‘and only when they are gone do we find we are indivisible’.

Yesterday I spoke with Derek Wilson, Oban’s finest haulier, about my impending move from Edinburgh to Tiree. A hearty and engaging voice greeted me with the news that his grandmother had once, many decades ago, lived at 6 Comely Bank Terrace, possibly in the very same flat as me. He followed this with a query as to whether I was the same Julia Welstead who had once lived at Grasspoint on Mull, and subsequently moved to Islay. The very same, I blushed and gushed down the telephone. As sales techniques go, this was impeccable: I was mentally signing on the dotted line before we had even spoken of cost.

This got me thinking about identity. Having just had to, yet again, prove myself with passport and utility bill (does anyone even have paper copies of these any more? I do everything online, and had to resort to a final demand from the council, which can’t look good to a lawyer who is hoping to raid my piggy bank) I took a bit of a tumble into that old Heffalump trap of, ‘who am I?’ and ‘what am I here for?’ and perhaps most ominously, ‘why?’. It was nothing fifty laps of the pool couldn’t put into abeyance, but these soul searchings have to be given time and space occasionally, if only to work out what’s next in the wondrous zigzag of life.

Of course – this is becoming clear as I write – one’s sense of identity is all wrapped up in procreation, being parented and parenting. These are the fulcrums of life, the hatch, match, despatch pattern. That’s one reason why loss affects us so. 

For me, I have now lost both ends of this fulcrum. My three sons have all left home and are living their lives independently of me, and my parents have both died. The former wonderful of course, I wouldn’t wish it any other way, but having been a very full on Mum – single for much of the time – their leaving has unbalanced me, not only in the practical sense (I no longer have to lug huge quantities of food home, the hunter-gatherer personified) and in terms of the noise, the movement, the ebb and flow of family life which has come to an abrupt halt, but also because my internal map of reality has changed and that takes a while to get used to. 

The latter (parents dying) is also, of course, no surprise, to be expected. And yet it catches us unaware, trips us, sends us reeling nevertheless, as it wipes a whole swathe off our map of reality. When Mum died an image materialised in my mind of a chandelier in which Mum had been the glinting diamond at the top, holding together the subsequent tiers of us four, our children and your two grandchildren (and a third on the way, hurrah!). Without Mum, I could see, the chandelier is in danger of separating and drifting apart. How do we prevent that? Perhaps by communications such as this?

With my boys gone (although they visit often and we share WhatApps, instagrams and myriad other forms of electro-comms – don’t cry for me, Argentina ;~) I moved here to Comely Bank last year, to be near our mother for what I assumed might be five or more years of graceful decline (hers, not mine, which will be a wild and wooly affair no doubt!). I imagined us, arm in arm, pottering along pavements, taking bus rides or even the occasional taxi (‘never!’ echoes Mum’s voice, ‘such a waste!’). I saw us sharing books and 6pm sherrys for many more moons. If I had lost one outlet for my nurturing instincts, I could put my energies into another.    

Mum had other ideas, and I do believe she bent her impressive will to the task with great focus and determination. She had said she didn’t want to live a decade past Dad (just enough time to match his age of 91). He died in April 2007, she in June 2017 after a short, fierce, unbeatable illness. In the grand scheme of things she achieved her aim in style and with grace and dignity to boot. She went off like a fresh-winged dragonfly, up and away, colours sparkling into an azure sky.

Left behind, grubbing around on the stoney riverbed, it is easy to mope. But our world isn’t monochrome, quite the reverse. There is colour and charm, beauty and wonder everywhere, should we choose to see it. Life is long, or life is short, depending upon perspective and, given that we actually don’t know what happens after this life (anything or nothing) it would be daft not to live it fully awake and raw to the elements.

And the threads, the warp and weft of our personal tapestry, have an uncanny habit of repeating patterns and linking backwards and forwards, as exemplified in Derek Wilson’s comments to me. I suspect it was he who moved our goods and chattels from Mull to Islay, 26 years ago. What fun it will be to meet with him again next month.

Another quote (from whence I do not know, quite possibly myself): ‘The people around us enrich the textile of our lives, some form only one or two stitches while others may colour a whole section, but the warp and weft itself is ours alone.’ (as a textile designer and weaver, Jamie, you are welcome to re-jig this untidy metaphor!)

But hey, I was talking about identity and managed to get a bit lost in it. Perhaps that’s the point: like the fictional fish who didn’t understand the concept of water because it was all around him and all he had ever known, it is very difficult to stand separate from self in order to examine it, and maybe not an altogether good thing anyway. Best just to get on with being, doing, loving, laughing, engaging with humanity and the universe, and not worry too much about ‘who am I?, ‘what am I here for? and the agonising, ‘why?’.

Loads of love to you my dear bro,

Jules

PS Thought from 3:30 am:

Rambly, brambly, “Bramble Rambles”, is that what we are writing? Our passage through the thorny thickets of life, avoiding too many scratches as best we can and reaching out for those luscious bursts of fruit when they present themselves?