It’s only been 2 weeks since I was last in Suffolk but it feels like ages. The change in Dad is clear. He sleeps a lot and half coughs, half chokes now with the secretions in his mouth. Last time I was home when I said hello there was a delay of a few seconds before his face lit up with recognition and pleasure at seeing me.
There has been none of that this time. He looked at me blankly for a brief moment then turned away. It’s been 6 months since the diagnosis. 6 months when it was supposed to be 3. We are nearing the end.
I can hear mum reporting to him about his old pal’s 80th birthday party, which they’ve been invited to. There are pauses after each comment she makes. She is greeted by silence. She is now telling him about who all the cards are from next to the bed. I walk in. He is sitting up in bed staring at her and looks up at me but there is no spark, none of the glitter that used to live there.
It’s heartbreaking seeing mum be the ever dutiful wife.
Now she is showing him a replica Victoria Cross that someone has sent them for both of ‘their dedication and bravery’. She is explaining why it’s been sent.
‘For valour’
On a crisp, bright Friday I arrive at Aldeburgh beach. The sky is a dark metallic blue. There’s barely anyone about. One man fusses over his little dogs. A girl sits in her car looking into her lap.
The scene is completely serene. The light is stronger now, closer to a Summer’s evening but the light is turning a mellow gold. Imagine arriving from another planet and seeing the world on a night like this. Your little martian heart would break in two and you would never go back.
The sunlight seems made for the copper pebbles of the beach and the bronze of Maggie Hambling’s Scallop which hold its warmth, glowing with the softest fire.
I love the flat lines of this coast. I’ve looked at them and photographed them hundreds of times.
Beach. Sea. Sky. Simplicity and symmetry.
Upsetting this linear view, the roundness and fullness of the shell are reflected in the small pale sphere hundreds and thousands of miles above the earth, his face looking down mournfully, his mouth open as if sick of seeing the life and vibrance of his cousin around whom he must spin for all eternity.
Through the words carved out of the top of the shell I look at the sea.
‘I hear those voices that will not be drowned’.
I think of dad’s voice. Please, don’t let his voice ever be drowned.
I start to walk, as if in a trance, ignoring the path and pulled as if by the moon away from the shore towards the sea.
This particular part of coast has witnessed every twist and turn in my own journey. Winter walks. Summer swims. Mostly alone. Sometimes with friends. Sometimes with girlfriends – cavorting and laughing hysterically out there. A child, a teen, a man.
It is the hand mirror that I hold up to myself. The one and true constant. Fittingly it’s the place where my brother told me at the end of the Summer that there was nothing we could do for dad.
What had the doctor said? ‘We think 3 to 6 months. All we can recommend is good care in the community.’
The moon becomes gradually brighter as the blue of the sky grows darker. Aldeburgh is so low above the beach and below the sky it quickly recedes into the darkness. A vast luminous cloud rests above the stillness of the sea like a continent on a map. It catches a pale yellow of the dying sun and once again my heart seems to momentarily stop like a breath held in.
The crunching of the pebbles creates a slight echo like a tunnel from the depth of my boots. It’s a sound I know well.
I decide to veer towards the road, aware that I want to pick up the path from where I last left it near an abandoned red brick house next to the road.
The sun is setting, an orange splash above the marshes as the first houses start to appear in Thorpeness. One beach. 2 towns. And not much in between.
Like Aldeburgh no one is here. An odd dog walker. One man on his own in a house looking out to sea. Most of the houses are shut up for Winter.
Thorpeness was designed as a purpose built Summer resort at the start of the 1900s. Glencairn Stuart Ogilvie decided it should be his own idea of a fantasy holiday village for recreation and play. And a hundred years later it is much the same: a Summer holiday village. In Winter, a refuge for escapists.
The path follows not at all clearly the beach. Heading directly North with the silent houses watching on from the left out to sea.
The clouds have silently formed a broken ceiling so the Suffolk sky – normally so vast – has been blanketed. The space feels more contained. Almost cosy. Again I’m struck by how indistinct the towns seem on the shoreline, small shape silhouettes and the beach and sea and sky.
I was devout once. As a child. It was the way we were brought up. In recent years I’ve often wondered about if Mum and Dad really believe in God, heaven and all that stuff that the bible teaches you. As intelligent and progressive people I guessed not, that it was more tradition than true belief but I cannot tell and wouldn’t dare ask.
I always assumed Dad’s faith had less conviction but several times he has asked for the vicar to visit to pray with him and to give him communion. Isn’t this why we have religion? To make some understanding of the void that suddenly, inexplicably opens up in front of us.
I see a God in the scenery on an evening like this. Or is the God inside me and brought to life by the inspiration of nature? Whatever the case, I feel fortunate to have the ability for such an intense, visceral reaction to the near world. And what a blessing and a relief it has been through this period of trauma.
The Slow Walker 