Captain Midnight here, calling all musically-minded super-dog fans. I need your help to compile a playlist of my greatest hits. Himself has found some in the back catalogue that we’re pretty sure are mine, but I’m having trouble remembering most of them.

I’ve been around a while and you know how the scene was back then: I did a bit of Winalot (we all did) and pretty soon I was mainlining marrow-bone. I lost the plot completely for a while. Like they say, “If you can remember the 60s, you weren’t really there.”

You should know that I’ve been clean for years. It’s macrobiotic dog biscuit and yoga for me now. Sobriety is great but you still can’t bring back the lost years. So, this is where your help comes in. If you listen carefully to the following songs (click on title for YouTube link) I’m sure you’ll recognize my dulcet tones harmonizing with the human front-person unjustly required by Equity.

It’s outrageous how we canines are treated by the so-called entertainment industry. Did you know that Lassie died broke and they actually shot Old Yeller for the sake of realism? But, I’m getting off the point, which is to ask if can you think of any other tracks that I might have appeared on during my drug-fuelled years as a “dog-for-hire” session musician as well as these ones?

Hound Dog (Big Mama Thornton)
Red Rubber Ball (Seekers)
Walking the Dog (Rolling Stones)
Chasing Cars (Snow Patrol)
I Love My Dog (Cat Stevens)
Puppy Love (Paul Anka)
Spanish Flea (Herb Alpert)
Shake it like a Dog (Kane and Abel)
Leash (Pearl Jam)
Salty Dog (Procul Harum)
The Bitch is Back (Elton John)

That’s the quiz. Send me your doggy suggestions with url link, c/o Himself. But please note that I had nothing whatsoever to do with that god-awful dirge, How Much is That Doggy in the Window? I might have been boned out of my mind but I never sunk that low.

Get busy because the winner will be announced on 10 January!

Bye for now super-dog fans.

[Bill Nighy as ageing rock star Billy Mack]

Chris and I would often watch Love Actually at Christmas. I thought I’d continue this tradition yesterday so, after lunch, I lit the fire and settled down with Ted, popped the DVD into the slot and clicked PLAY.

Mmmmm.

I suppose I should have anticipated the tsunami of tears that flowed over the next 90 minutes, but I didn’t. Poor old Captain Midnight got so used to me bursting into sobs that after the first three or four times, instead of leaping onto my lap to sort me out, he stayed on the sofa across the room, briefly raised his head, opened one eye just to make sure I wasn’t about to stop breathing, and went straight back to sleep.

It’s easy to be sniffy about Richard Curtis films: middle-class characters (mostly white and mostly straight) falling in and out of love in posh surroundings. But, with a willing suspension of disbelief, both the beauty and pain of love are there to be relished. Love Actually has joy and passion and grief and loss in it; and love of many kinds from first love to last love; likely and unlikely couples are matched in requited and unrequited love. And not just romantic love: friendships, families and foolish fancies also have their place.

Chris especially liked the flawed Harry – Karen (Alan Rickman and Emma Thompson) pairing and Billy Mack’s (Bill Nighy) unlikely love for his manager Joe (Gregor Fisher). Over the years I’ve been touched by the plights of all of the film’s love struck and lovelorn characters but yesterday, inevitably I suppose, I identified most strongly with the recently widowed Dan (Liam Neeson) both in his obvious love for his late wife and – I confess – in the fact that his misery diminishes somewhat when Claudia Schiffer takes a fancy to him.

The scene I find most moving though, is the one that both opens and closes the film: dozens of people greeting each other in an airport arrival lounge. The candid shots were taken by hidden cameras (with permission later given by subjects for their images to be shown). The joy on people’s faces reminds me of what a dear friend said to me the other day: “Ultimately, everyone is loveable.”

This morning, I woke up thinking of Chris and with a song going around in my head. It wasn’t used in the film as it happens, though I think it should have been. Happy Christmas sweetheart.

You’ve got to give a little, take a little,
and let your poor heart break a little.
That’s the story of, that’s the glory of love.

You’ve got to laugh a little, cry a little,
until the clouds roll by a little.
That’s the story of, that’s the glory of love.

As long as there’s the two of us,
we’ve got the world and all it’s charms.
And when the world is through with us,
we’ve got each other’s arms.

You’ve got to win a little, lose a little,
yes, and always have the blues a little.
That’s the story of, that’s the glory of love.
That’s the story of, that’s the glory of love.

[Benny Goodman with Helen Ward, 1936]

Well super-dog fans, it’s been quite a year.

Obviously, the main thing is that it’s the first one without the Mrs. She went away 12 months ago but she hasn’t gone completely. That will only happen when I can’t smell her any more and I can still smell her, especially when Himself gets her clothes out of the wardrobe. Anyway, it makes Him very sad and I have to leap into action to supply healing wags and slobbery kisses.

Nice people have invited us round for meals and parties this Christmas, but He has decided that we’ll be hunkering down on our own instead at Folly Cottage, which is lovely for walking in the woods, apart from the pheasant-murderers banging away, and then we’ll be going to Lyme Regis for New Year so I can take him walking on Charmouth beach. People are more civilized down there… at least they don’t take potshots at the seagulls.

There’s a rumour of roast beef for Christmas dinner and the promise of a roaring log fire to follow, with the inevitable watching of old movies. I hope he doesn’t make me sit through Lassie again. I hate all that an-throp-o-morph-ism (big word for a small dog, I did have to ask Himself to spell it for me). You wouldn’t catch me getting involved in anything like that, it’s so demeaning.

We’ve had lots of visitors this year. Old friends from near and far including Australia, Canada, America and Scotland have called by to take Himself out for walkies (I go along of course) to cheer him up. I’ve also arranged for Him to meet some nice new people too, using my “babe magnet” super-power, because He’s a bit dopey at that sort of thing.

His lady friends – the tall one and the short one who come round and make him laugh and make sure he has nice food to eat – have gone to South Africa (wherever that is, somewhere the other side of Dursley, I think). Apparently they’ll be back, lithe and suntanned, in the Spring. Himself seems a bit put out but good for them, I say. I wouldn’t mind going; chasing a few Springbok, that sort of thing. But, I digress.

Himself says that he’s quite happy staying at home “being a writer” thank you very much. It took me a while to find out what he meant but I’ve now discovered what “being a writer” is. It’s sitting at the kitchen table staring at a blank screen until his head bleeds. I give him lots of encouragement by snoozing on the bench right next to him. He says it helps but I can’t really see how anyone’s going to be interested in his stuff when they can read mine instead, can you?

Another big thing this year was the five weeks we spent En France in the mobile kennel. It was pretty cozy, I can tell you (see picture above). I managed to get a long rope so he felt less constricted on the lead but he’s very slow so I had to drag him along. I watched a bit of The Dog Whisperer last night to get a few ideas but frankly I think he’s untrainable.

I’m OK now but I have had a few medical mishaps this year: the tail incident and some accidental “self-harming” on my foreleg, to name but two. Any excuse to bang on the cone of shame! It’s a bit undignified but I’ve got used to it. Speaking of undignified, he’s just discovered “dog shampoo” and is experimenting on me regularly. I’m pretty sure he’s in cahoots with those evil G.R.O.O.M.E.R.S.

Well that’s probably enough for now. I only opened the laptop to wish you all a very merry Christmas and a happy and prosperous New Year.

With much and many kinds of love

From your faithful friend

Captain Midnight

[and Himself]

When Chris was alive, I saw myself through her eyes. When we met, she was 34 and I was 51. We were together for 14 years and the difference in our ages was never an issue between us. I suppose the tacit logic of our relationship was that she would probably one day have to take care of me and that I would die first. In fact, our fates were the opposite of what we had imagined them to be.

Now she has gone, I see my reflection only in mirrors hanging on the wall. I expect to see myself as I was when she and I first met but, when I catch sight of my image, it’s as though I’m meeting someone I haven’t seen for a long time. I do a double-take: is that really me?

The cognitive dissonance between the person I expect to see (the one with whom Chris fell in love) and the face in the mirror, is shocking. I no longer know how the world sees me. Am I becoming invisible or am I still interesting and attractive and, if so, to whom?

I’ve known for a long time, because it’s much talked about, that invisibility is an issue for some women as they age. I hadn’t ever thought about it in relation to men, and certainly not in relation to myself. Arrogance perhaps, or maybe just the natural consequence of being in a mutually loving relationship in which each is seen by the other.

I felt profoundly seen by Chris. She perceived my weaknesses and wounds, but she also saw through them to the best and most expansive part of me. That generous gaze was her great gift as a partner, friend and teacher. Apart from her physical presence, being seen in that way is  what I miss most.

So maybe this is what I’m striving to understand by writing this blog: I haven’t disappeared completely – I do good work in the world and have many friends – but in the absence of an intimate, loving gaze, I am learning what it is to be unseen. If I am not beloved, who am I? I look for glimpses of myself in the eyes of others but I’m realising that I have to find new ways to calibrate my sense of self.

Of course, Captain Midnight thinks I’m brilliant.

But that’s his job.

It’s just two years since Chris and I got married. Our wedding spread over two days: on 13 December we got “street legal” as Chris called it, at Stroud Registry Office in the morning, then joined 20 close friends (our soul buddies) at Matara for a convivial afternoon followed by dinner. On the following day, we were joined by 50 more guests for a hand fasting ritual, feast and ceilidh.

Our friend Sue Hollingsworth, who describes it as the best wedding she’s ever been to, has been staying with Ted and me at Folly Cottage for a few days to celebrate our wedding anniversaries (she too was married on 13 December and she too is widowed). In the evening, we sat by the fire and shared stories about our partners’ lives and deaths, and of our lives in the aftermath of bereavement.

During the days, we’ve been sorting out Chris’s stuff and putting Folly Cottage straight, ready for Christmas and a fresh start in the New Year. I’ve even got an office now, with a clear desk. Regular visitors will be amazed to see tables, floors and windowsills free of clutter. Though, just to make sure things don’t run too smoothly, it looks like the central heating boiler has packed up overnight.

According to tradition, the second wedding anniversary should be celebrated with artifacts made of cotton, which put me in mind of the piece of embroidered fabric Chris bought in Minho, Portugal on her birthday 21 August 2013, just three days before she had the seizure that signalled the presence of a brain tumour. Made these days for tourists, these elaborately hand-stitched squares were once made and given as love tokens by young Portuguese women to their fiancés.

Chris and I had spoken about getting it framed, but I realised as I showed it to Sue that it’s really something to be touched and held, rather than just looked at.

Chris loved craft work and I think this lenços de namaduros (sweetheart handkerchief) is a fitting marker of what would have been our second wedding anniversary and a bitter-sweet memento of our last days in Eden, before the fall.

9 December 2015

Today, Captain Midnight and I went with our good friends William Ayot and Sarah Bird to Matara to visit Chris’s damaged memorial stone and to make a small act of remembrance now that a year has passed since she died. When we arrived, it was heart-warming to find a small bunch of Rosemary already lying on the stone beneath the broken body of the bear, placed there last week by other friends while I was in London on the Five Realms Course.

William, Sarah, and I looked together in some amazement at the rotten stump of the tree whose shattered trunk had improbably threaded it’s way through its neighbours to fall on the sculpture during a stormy night three weeks ago. We stroked the bear’s wounded torso and stood in silence for a while, before making our impromptu ritual.

As Captain Midnight rootled in the fallen leaves nearby, performing his own arcane doggy rites, we humans placed our offerings on the memorial: a few small stones, some sweet grass, and the year’s last rose from the garden at Folly Cottage. Sarah left a copy of William’s recent book Re-enchanting the Forest: Meaningful Ritual in a Secular World, which is dedicated to Chris’s memory, standing against the stone, in thanks for her contribution to its publication. We each spoke a few informal words of gratitude and farewell and then made our way to the Gumstool Inn for lunch.

Over dessert, William reminded us of the old practice of year’s mind to mark the passing of the first year of mourning for a loved one. Simply put, it involves consciously turning away from the memorial and walking toward the future without a backward glance. It’s not about forgetting (you can return at any time) but about giving a message to the soul and a commitment to the departed that you will live what life is left to you fully and with an open heart.

It’s hard to imagine that Chris – the most life-affirming and open-hearted person most of us have ever known – would want anything else for those of us who loved and love her still.

Over the past few months, I’ve been in email contact with writer, storyteller and polymath Leslie van Gelder. She lost her husband to cancer in 2008 and generously got in touch to share some of her experience of living with grief. It wouldn’t be appropriate to divulge our correspondence, which is private. But I can say that I’ve found it enormously comforting to be reminded that although every grief is different, we don’t have to navigate this territory alone.

What she writes on her website (www.leslievangelder.com) is in the public domain, and I want to recommend a piece called Letters to a Young Widow in which she writes to an imaginary recently bereaved friend. The fundamental question for the bereaved to address, she says, is as profound and simple as this:

Do I want to feel alive again or don’t I?

In the numb aftershock of loss, the question doesn’t even make sense. But she’s right. It’s taken me 12 months to realise that this is a real choice and that my answer (my deeply felt and embodied response) will determine every other choice I make.

Later in the same piece she speaks of well-meaning friends who – with misplaced sensitivity – would skate awkwardly over the surface of a conversation trying to avoid exacerbating her pain. It was a widowed friend of hers who knew exactly what to ask:

How are you getting by without touch? Have you found someone whose hand you can hold? Have you come to terms with the realization that you are now no one’s ‘first thought’?

My answers to those same questions would be that I physically ache to touch and be touched, that I yearn to hold and be held, skin to skin; that I don’t quite know how my hand would fit anyone else’s; and that I’ve never felt more lonely in my life, despite the comfort of my children, Teddy, and a multitude of loving friends.

And yet I do know that I want to feel alive again.

Two days ago, at the end of the Five Realms Course, we co-created a ritual space in which to explore something of the wisdom of the somatic, personal, systemic, archetypal, and divine realms. At one point, I lit a new candle for myself from the flame of a memorial candle I’d used to mark the anniversary of Chris’s death.

I did it without thinking, but in my mind I could see Chris’s smiling face, and the symbolism of the moment struck me as a powerful affirmation of a renewed openness to life and love. On the way home I wrote these lines:

Today I lit a candle
from the one I lit for you
to mark the one-year passing
of your passing into night.

I wonder what the meaning is
and suddenly I see
you’re trying hard to tell me that
this candle burns for me.

You’re giving me your blessing
to spark another flame
and, knowing that I love you still,
you bid me love again.

I promise you I’ll welcome love
as long as I’m alive,
for life and love are conjoined twins
and both or neither thrive.

The candle that I lit for you
will always stay alight,
but I will kindle this new fire
and let myself burn bright.

Thursday 3 December

It’s the first anniversary of Chris’s death. Memories of her are so vivid that it’s hard to believe a year has gone by since her passing.

Two days ago I took my desolation and grief at losing her into a constellation facilitated by Judith Hemming. When it began, I felt I had to choose between life and love (between loving her and going on living). When it ended, I’d moved to a place of knowing that I will always love her and that, with her blessing, I am available for life once more. Thinking of her right now makes me smile, not weep.

Today I remember Chris with joy and gratitude for the years we spent together and the love we shared. I think of the huge contribution she made to so many lives and I’m surrounded by the loving kindness of our friends and by glorious manifestations of her artful life: paintings, sketchbooks, notebooks, scholarly articles, clothes, hats, recipes, and bears, bears, bears.

I’ve chosen a picture and some music to remember her by on this day. The picture shows her in glorious wild-woman-artist mode, on a painting course at Esalen, California a few years ago. The music is Leonard Cohen’s Here it is which we played at her funeral service, as we wrote and doodled messages on her cardboard coffin. As the chorus says:

May everyone live,
And may everyone die.
Hello, my love,
And my love, Goodbye.

Fare thee well, darling girl.