It’s two months today since everything changed and I had planned to get out of the house, distract myself–as if I could!–but instead I have been home, sitting with it.
Yesterday I began What Comes Next and How to Like It, Abigail Thomas’ 2015 memoir. I hadn’t yet read it, partially because A Three Dog Life is one of my favourite books, ever, and I was afraid I wouldn’t like this one as much, that it would maybe disappoint in some way. It was, however, perfect, or at least perfect for me right now. I finished it today.
This poem has been in my mind often over these two months:
Funeral Blues
by W. H. Auden
Stop all the clocks, cut off the telephone,
Prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone,
Silence the pianos and with muffled drum
Bring out the coffin, let the mourners come.
Let aeroplanes circle moaning overhead
Scribbling on the sky the message He Is Dead,
Put crêpe bows round the white necks of the public
doves,
Let the traffic policemen wear black cotton gloves.
He was my North, my South, my East and West,
My working week and my Sunday rest,
My noon, my midnight, my talk, my song;
I thought that love would last for ever: I was wrong.
The stars are not wanted now: put out every one;
Pack up the moon and dismantle the sun;
Pour away the ocean and sweep up the wood.
For nothing now can ever come to any good.
The last line has felt the most true to me, though in the spirit of hope and the book I have just read, I am giving allowance for the fact that it may not always be this way. Just now, I stepped outside and saw a kite flying, just a light square against the blue, blue sky. It felt like hope, it looked like joy. Maybe not quite, not really; but enough for me: enough for today.
