Bereavement & Crutches

I stood there dumbstruck staring at the object in my hand. I just could not believe what I was seeing. My mind was itching to become angry and aggressive. Earlier times would have seen me move very quickly straight into such anger and aggression which in those days would have signposted me straight down the road to depression, failure complex's and loss of self confidence. Now though I continued to stare at my hand eventually voicing my feelings with the words. 

"I cannot believe I have just done that".

The day, up to this point, had gone well. It was my last day of caring for My disabled brother Richard. His full time carer, Hannah was on her way from the Czech Republic and would arrive later in the day. The house was spic and span and a delicious Green Thai curry prepared for the evening. 

Richard and I, yesterday, had enjoyed a wonderful day out. We did an eight mile trek around Salisbury with me accompanying his rough terrain electric buggy on my bike. Tanya rode in her green bucket on the back of my bike. Actually she ran most of the way and only accessed her green bucket 'taxi' on busy road sections. We thoroughly enjoyed the experience and were today quite happy to stay 'home based'.

The weather was hot so what more inviting than a cool swim. I headed over the playing field to my chosen riverbank spot and immersed myself in the fast flowing clean chalk water of the river Nadder. Beautiful, and gorgeously cooling. 

 I then slowly walked back to the house where I had a chat with Richard before going upstairs to change out of my swimming shorts. Only at that point did I discover deep in my swimming shorts pocket, my beloved mobile phone! This was the object lying in my hand. A soggy and very dead object. This was the happening my brain was having difficulty coming to terms with. 

I must have remained there a full minute, maybe more, deathly still, shocked, jaw moving but no words emerging. Dumbfounded and just desperately not wanting the truth of what I was staring at to be reality. Of course it was very much reality and my voiced words finally broke the spell. The awful reality of this completely dead and very wet modern smartphone became fact. 

 Action was needed and soon followed. It was not long before my bank balance got shocked into shuddering finances through the credit card into the hands of a delighted Carphone Warehouse salesperson. 

Since then it has just been the normal modern day hassle of recovering 'stuff' from the ether, or, as they call it these days; 'the cloud'. Intermittent shaking of the head and ' I cannot believe I have just done that' still remain but are getting less severe now. Until that is, I get unmercifully ribbed by Hannah, Richards carer, with comments such as: 

"Oh! Going mobile swimming again are.we!!" ..... Aarrrrgh!

However; I have to inform you dear reader, that such comments are coming from a young lady who recently walked the 93 mile Scottish West Highland Way using crutches as she had a badly damaged tendon in her leg. Yes reader, that is right, I did say crutches. Actual perch on the arm anodised aluminium standard NHS crutches. 

 I ask you sincerely now. Would you consider such a woman sane? Indeed: how dare such a courageously crazy lady unmercifully taunt a doddery, vulnerable and elderly citizen as he bravely copes with sudden, unexpected and tragic bereavement. 

Mobile swimming Huh!, I'll have you know I was totally besotted with my beautiful red HTC one smartphone. 

 Then I drownded it! 

 Sorry, I'll have to end here..... sob..... The emotion is getting to me. ..... sob, sob. "Where the hell ..... sob ..... did I put that whisky bottle."

Thoughts & something from the past.

I'm in Salisbury at present spending time with family, staying with my Brother and giving Sadie some well earned rest and TLC. Part of the TLC was repairing Sadies rear bumper. All the way around three European countries and guess who backs into an obstruction just near Redhill, Surrey! Luckily the damage was easily repairable with trusty but smelly fibreglass resin.

While at Montsec, France, a few weeks ago. I was near the American war memorial and parked amidst beautiful wild meadows. This lovely setting surrounded as I was by Mother Nature reminded me of 'sumthin wot I rote' back in 1997. I remember the day clearly  as one of those days that subtly re-inforces as yet unseen change. A jigsaw piece, one of many, slotting into place and slowly revealing a clearer image. Indeed it was 1998 when those changes matured. The picture took shape and I chose to end my agricultural career.

Here it is.

MEADOW.
(originally written June 1997)

I used to sell agricultural machinery and one day assisted setting off a large shiny and very technical new mowing machine. I was left standing amid the exposed underbelly of cut grass, watching as machine and tractor whined away down the field successfully cutting a wide swathe through a strong healthy mix of meadow grass and self sown green stalks of corn.
 
A slight movement and tiny screeching made me aware of a family of field mice at my feet scuttling in all directions, except for the one doing the screeching who was fatally injured. Their home was gone, their vulnerability exposed, their world irrevocably changed.

The mower wound down after the first circuit of the field. Farmer and manufacturers rep became deeply involved conversing technicalities. I, while trying to stay interested, observed and became totally fascinated by the thousands of tiny beings, grasshoppers, aphids, greenfly, butterflies, caterpillars, bugs  of every description moving en-masse on the flat shiny green metal surface of this brand new mower. They were a huge fearful and panicked 'bug' crowd trying to escape but only managing to run this way and that and getting nowhere. Just like the field mice.

A whole population of creatures. A complete swathe of Mother Nature forced from their active conscious life, into a different state of being. A totally alien state of being. From my vantage point, it seemed all they could do was revert to this instinctive and compulsive behaviour of running this and that way in the vain hope of what was before, if remembered, would return.

Such an abundance of nature's life in such a small place and time and just altered with not a thought to the consequences. And done by one fairly ordinary machine built by humans to help improve humans lot.

And, I am told, for now this improving seems to work and is beneficial.  Bigger, better, always better. More efficient too. Such machinery and technology are, so say, controlling and changing nature for my benefit. 

Oh! And yes, in the past nature has been harmed. No one is denying that fact. But not to worry.  We are environmentally aware now. Technology coupled with ever increasing knowledge and sophistication will overcome and give us the very best of  Mother Nature.
 
Which is? 

A Mother Nature that humankind will cherish, understand and carry on being environmentally correct with. A Mother Nature that humankind will be proficient and efficient with. We will safely alter and manipulate her so as to provide for our needs.

A laudable aim which humanity actively pursues and is relatively successful at in some areas, and for short periods of time. A sort of, ‘Look, if I throw enough intelligent resources and controls at this I can do it.

However, Mother Earth's nature is not a benign system taking in all and meekly subjecting herself to our will and needs.

Over time immemorial, and in guises as obscure as gaseous explosions of unimaginable force in the outer extremities of eternity, to, simple breezes rustling leaves on a balmy summers evening Mother Nature continually mutates. Mother Nature is highly interactive. Mother Nature is a flexible, powerful system and consummate mistress of change. She proves and shows to us on a daily basis how fast and adept she is at coping, combatting and defeating anything our brains, never mind our feeble machines and as yet prehistoric computers, can devise or challenge her with.

No. This shiny new machine will not assist in famine. It will not stop Global warming or the destruction of Ozone. It can do nothing for the changing weather patterns, the increasing floods or the rising sea levels. Or even the saving of field mice.

There are throughout time, many who have been, and still are, aware of  how superior Mother Natures brain is to our own. Our civilization has now labelled that brain  Chaos or, Chaos theory.

Chaos, is not hampered by having to think, or to do. Chaos just ‘is'. Neither does it have morals or values. There is no problem with, or avoidance of, death. No time limit either, only infinity. Chaos has no ego, greed, vanity, jealousy, pride or hate. Only beauty, vastness beyond comprehension, and the  power of continual evolvement and renewal.

Now I, a human, am simply part of that chaos, a part of  Mother Nature, no more and no less. So are the insects, bugs and field mice. I am not superior too, nor do I have anything that would remotely pass as an equal intelligence to that of  Mother Nature. I grow, like nature, am flexible like nature, and I survive alongside other individual parts of nature as a whole.
 
Extinction in nature is commonplace and I am not immune. Indeed the planet is not immune to changing its Natural State to one that would not support life as I know it. To Mother Nature that is simply of no consequence, just progression, a change of state, a normal and perfectly sane chaotic Happening.

I once listened to a radio program about a man who spent most of the latter part of his life planting acorn seeds by the thousands in an area that was remote and uninhabited due to humanity's despoiling and deforestation.  Many years passed with the old man long gone. But his simple action became a forest, with rivers, wildlife, and communities.

He had figured it out. He just became a part of Mother Nature. He did no more or no less than Mother Nature herself.  He gently fed back to Mother Nature that which earlier humanity had removed.  Mother Nature sprouted fresh life and offered back to humanity another small chance to learn a little more.

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