Family Trouble

I didn't post in Feb/March, my actual life became far too hectic to have a virtual life as well. My Gran, in her early 90's, suffered a series of small strokes and over a couple of weeks the woman i had known disappeared. The care of her family is now not enough- she needs constant medical attention and lives in a world of talking squirrels, princesses, airmen, bombing raids.


Since my early teens we as a family have cared for her- looked after her accounts, done her shopping and gardening, read her letters if they looked in anyway "official" or "financial", been her only visitors. She didn't need looking after to such as degree, but after my Grandfather died she seemed to give up. She couldn't cope with the real world and retreated into the home they had shared, reading books, watching TV and cooking.


As a child I spent hours with her in the kitchen and developed my love of baking there- insisting on rubbing the butter into the flour, whisking the custard, mashing the potatoes. Infact, the hotter the food stuff and higher the risk of serious burns the more I wanted to do it. She was the woman who made me heavy english comfort food- potato pie, apple pie, stew and dumplings- and occasionally fed me illicit meat products..."would you like some ham? I'll slice it really thinly...?". She never really approved of or got my parents' vegetarianism.




Anyway- in the midst of my man trouble I came across this poem that made me think of her and the situation she created for herself:




Sonnet II




Time does not bring relief; you all have lied


Who told me time would ease me of my pain!


I miss him in the weeping of the rain;


I want him in the shrinking of the tide;


The old snows melt from every mountainside,


And last year's leaves are smoke in every lane;


But last year's bitter loving must remain


Heaped on my heart, and my old thoughts abide!


There are a hundred places where I fear


To go, -so with his memory they brim!


And entering with relief some quiet place


Where never fell his foot or shone his face


I say, "There is no memory of him here!"


And so stand stricken, so remembering him.

By Edna St. Vincent Millay