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It is the manner in which you have put your possessions together that melds into such a pleasing whole. I am sure you own nothing that you do not think to be beautiful or know to be useful.”
To me it’s been a revelation, how simply one can live.” “And happy?” “Happier than I ever thought possible.”
Perhaps that was the worst of all. Not having someone to remember things with.
Sympathy was another. I send my deepest sympathy and my thoughts are with you, he would write, and sign the letter and duly post it with the knowledge of a necessary task performed to the best of his ability. He knew now that he had not had an inkling of what he was talking about. Grief was not a state of mind, but a physical thing, a void, a deadening blanket of unbearable pain, precluding all solace.
“If only is like hindsight. A useless exercise.
“Life is sweet,” Peter went on. “Beyond the pain, life continues to be sweet. The basics are still there. Beauty, food, and friendship, reservoirs of love and understanding. Later, possibly not yet, you are going to need others who will encourage you to make new beginnings. Welcome them. They will help you move on, to cherish happy memories and confront the painful ones with more than bitterness and anger.”
It was a spectacular drive. The road led through farmlands and over bridges, and on the high ground the tyres of the Subaru scrunched over snow. It followed the shores of a long tidal sea loch, and ran through small villages with grey stone cottages flush on the pavement, along with pubs and shops and sturdy no-nonsense churches surrounded by old graveyards filled with lichened, leaning headstones. Then the last bridge, over another firth, stretching like a long arm of blue water up into the folds of the western hills.
Life is so extraordinary. Wonderful surprises are just around the most unexpected corners.
