Today is VE Day. 75 years since the end of war in Europe. It’s 3 days since we lost Dad.
Tuesday was queasily unpleasant. The carer had left the day before. Her time was well over due and there was nothing more for her to do. He wasn’t eating. Drugs were being administered by a syringe driver. Mum was hoovering. Ivy barked at the Hoover. I was getting angry with my computer, unable to complete the assignment that I was working on. Instead I’d gone outside to try to pump up the tyres on his bike. Puncture.
As I walked into the kitchen, Mum simply said ‘I think he’s gone.’ And so he had. Where his chest had been rising and falling intermittently, now there was no movement. His face was turned towards the window, his skin pale and soft like candle wax. The pallor of the dead. I couldn’t get it. Dad. Dead. Dad still there in front of me, but not.
We were grateful in the end that there was no one else here. Grace the carer had left the day before. The sibs arrived and we had a day of waiting: for the doctor to register his death, and the undertakers who came after tea. The sun continued to shine and Dad stayed where he was. ‘Why shouldn’t he?’ I thought.
None of us wanted to see him leave and the undertaker told us to wait elsewhere while they got him ready. We waited outside at the other end of the house on the little lawn beside the conservatory. The same lawn where we had had so many cups of tea and chats on the old deck chairs with stripey seats that he had got remade. Where he had many afternoon snoozes or a glass of wine. Where he sat calmly with his walking stick when he first got ill watching me carefully mow his lawn.
Eventually the man from the undertakers came round to see us and a couple of minutes later we heard him leave for the last time. My brother had already gone and my sister left soon after. When I walked back in to the room there was a perfect hollow in the middle of the pillow. The last reminder of him. I stared at it blankly and then smoothed it out.
And so I return to the path. This started out as a way for me to let off steam when visiting dad through the progression of his illness. It also replaced my infrequent walks along the SWCP which I knew I would have even less time to do.
Now he’s gone, there’s probably even more reason to carry on – to Lowestoft if I can – and since Sunday the government has allowed travel to take exercise. What else am I going to do? No one is going anywhere. We are in a state of lockdown for the foreseeable future. Besides, even if everything was as normal, I would be here looking after Mum and helping make preparations for the funeral.
So to Sizewell I return, to that huge grey block surrounded by the incongruously beautiful white dome behind it (Sizewell A and B respectively). B can be seen from miles around on sunny days, the light glinting off its dome looking like some futuristic mosque.
There’s a bit of activity here today. I give a local a shock when I sneeze. He has one of the cottages on the front. A few dog walkers on the beach. A man pushes a younger woman in a wheelchair along the path. I say hello to 2 people and get no reply.
There’s a big bank of clouds to the North over Southwold. Here and there vapour contorts itself into shapes. One moment a cloud has curved itself off the top of the main block like a cornice off a mountain. Moments later there is a perfect round hole of blue in a little bump of white. Like an eye. And then it’s gone.
‘I see Dad everywhere’, my sister said yesterday when she had come over yesterday. Perhaps it helps some people seeing reminders in nature. I don’t want to be reminded.
The path here is a track with dunes on either side. I can’t see the sea. I start to feel itchy and there is a greyness to the near world. I start longing for a change.
Before long the dunes peter out on my left and the lush greenness of Minsmere starts to unfold itself. Water. Meadows. I still can’t see the sea but am accompanied by its continuous, soft roar somewhere in the background like awakening and remembering a dream just departed.
Minsmere sluice is the next landmark and where I leave the path so that I can walk in a big square via Eastbridge. Although not much to look at there’s something a bit magical about this place. Swallows like to nest under the arches. And this is where the water from the reserve spills into the North Sea. Eels wait in the drains that meet at the lock here and wait til a high tide before they make their way out to sea and then travel 3000 miles to breed in the Sargasso Sea.
I think of them on a moonlit night queueing up readying themselves for such an epic journey knowing they won’t come back. Once they’ve bred they’ll die. Everything about them is mysterious.
I realise for the first time why the local pub at Eastbridge is called The Eel’s Foot Inn.
Once again I turn away from the sea and head inland across Minsmere Reserve. I kick myself for not bringing Dad’s ‘bins’ with me. He would love it here. I don’t try and comfort myself with idle thoughts about carrying him with me or feeling him beside me. Besides, he would hate such sentiment. I probably wouldn’t know what half the birds are called even if I did have the glasses. It’s a glorious day and the green cheers me. It’s what I love most about England.
The remnants of the old chapel passes me to the left, an original site for Leiston Abbey I read later but too prone to flooding. Thus the move inland at a later date.
There is a lot of water here and reeds too. I hear the intimate chirping of something in the reeds and guess it’s a warbler or bunting.
I enter one of my walking trances and soon realise I don’t remember much of what had surrounded me for the past 20 minutes. I cross from meadowland to arable and soon the path reaches Eastbridge. I can picture the pub but it’s not en route this time, not that I could visit anyway.
Time to turn South. The road is newly surfaced and the grey dustiness reminds me of August. Old red brick cottages and farmyards doze in the mid afternoon sun. Nothing moves.
Soon I’m turning onto a bridle way lined with horse chestnuts. There is no tree quite as spectacular as this at this time of year. With its thick, bright green leaves and little towers of white flowers they always seem so full of life magically transforming roadsides and fields at a time when countryfolk are crying out for the cold days to end and for the long days of Summer to begin. These trees are harbingers, hope bringers, crying out ‘Look at me – all is not lost!’
The Slow Walker 