Roads to Joy

Today we’re saying goodbye to a new friend. Our first friend here, our neighbour beside the little bolthole from which we began our lives in Scotland, has died. We shall be at the crematorium for the simple service, and then we’ll attend a memorial service in the little church here at the bottom of the village. After that we’ll raise a glass in his memory at the local arts centre where he was a regular volunteer. He’ll be missed.

And then, life for the living will go on. There’s such promise ahead, as we think about new projects, projects that will build on our own experience, and also ones that will help us delve deeper into ourselves. I don’t know how else to consider these juxtaposing concepts, of sorrow and of anticipation, other than to note that they are happening on the same day.

I shall hope to dig into a new scene in my developing novel, thanks to intriguing critical comments from a lovely group of writers with whom I was delighted to interact yesterday evening. There’s a certain clear chime in my head of joy with the anticipation of working on this project. Too, there’s the new poetry workshop that I’m so happy to be part of, which is beginning to inform my prose in ways I hadn’t anticipated, like finessing out the word that does multiple jobs all at once. Describing, characterising, moving the narrative along.

And there’s a meeting, too, at the end of this afternoon, to try to resurrect a concert musical project that had foundered, that another neighbour and I had spent so much time with earlier this year. Perhaps the music will be heard, after all. The promise of these things creates a definite frisson against the backdrop of goodbyes and memories.

If death is always, always an ever-present shadow in our own lives, living too is a constant, and somehow, as humans, we must hold both of these realities in our minds as we trundle along through the day.

The joy of a lived life, the joy, and promise, of continued living.