An Australian friend, Cathryn Lloyd, recently sent me this cartoon by Michael Leunig. I’ve enjoyed his work since I first came across it in Melbourne 10 years ago. I’ve got several collections of his cartoons and Chris once bought me a book based on his larger artworks, which we both loved.

Unbeknownst to Chris, another friend wrote to Leuning while she was ill, asking if he would send her an original drawing. He agreed but Chris died before the plan came to fruition. So it was a double pleasure to receive this gift.

The grief adaptor is an inspired idea: when grief flows from our hearts instead of being trapped inside, it carries us through life. Leunig’s special genius is to recognise that joy functions in the same way. His insight chimes with my experience of bereavement: that I am only open to joy to the extent that I acknowledge my grief.

Somehow the heart has to expand to allow both at the same time. Leunig tells us to plug the cable into our bicycle and let our grief and joy carry us through life, he doesn’t ask us to understand them, which reminds me somewhat of Rainer Maria Rilke’s famous advice to a young poet:

And the point is, to live everything. Live the questions now. Perhaps you will then gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer.

We all suffer loss and bereavement; we all mourn something or someone. If I have learned anything in the last two years, it is that grief and joy are inseparable aspects of the human condition.

Thank you Cathryn for sending the cartoon, and thank you Michael Leunig, for reminding us that although we cannot choose when grief and joy will appear in our lives, we can choose how to respond to them.

It’s been three weeks since the previous post, which is an unusually long interval. That’s partly due to being distracted by the headlong rush of work since the end of a long summer break. But I’ve also been finishing the manuscript of a new book.

Writing has been my solace since Chris died: a memoir of her last 18 months; 150 blogs; and 40 or so poems have poured onto the page. I found that as I wrote these stories and verses, I could hold my memories more lightly. I no longer had to cling to them like a drowning man to keep my head above water.

Although I wrote primarily for myself, some of you have kindly said that you’ve also found my writing helpful, which encouraged me to approach a friendly publisher with the idea of a book based on my experience of loss and bereavement. Now the manuscript is ready, I need some “critical friends” to read it and let me know how well it works and what else I need to do before sending it off to the publisher.

I’m hoping that it has something of the immediacy of The Year of Magical Thinking: Joan Didion’s memoir of the year following her husband’s death. Her account helped me to understand how such a bereavement suspends the usual logic that governs our lives. For example, when Didion wrote that, for months after he died, she couldn’t bring herself to throw out her husband’s shoes “because he might need them” it made perfect sense to me.

If my book also provides such moments of insight and recognition then writing it will have been worthwhile. Although each of us must find our own way through this terra incognita, it is comforting to know that we do not voyage alone.

Hedda and I have just spent six glorious days in Shetland for the 10^th Annual Screenplay Film Festival. Hedda spent an hour or two filming blogs and interviews on most days, but otherwise the time was our own to explore the island and to enjoy the cinematic riches of the festival.

Favourite films were Love is All (2014) directed by Kim Longinotto with music by Richard Hawley, who gave a brilliant concert afterwards; a famous old black and white silent documentary about Herring Fishing, Drifters (1929) directed by John Grierson with an astonishing live soundtrack from beat box virtuoso Jason Singh; and an extremely funny, laugh-out-loud, must-see comedy from New Zealand, Hunt for the Wilderpeople (2016) directed by Taika Waititi.

On Monday evening we entered the Screenplay Film Quiz (coming a creditable 8th out of 25 teams since you ask). The quiz included a round of famous film quotations spoken in Shetland dialect. Can you guess which films were the sources of these three cracking quotes?

Luke. I am de faider!

A’ll hae whit shu’s haein

Yippee Ki-Yay Muckle Flugga

The last one is a particularly clever pun as Muckle Flugga is the name of a rocky island off Unst, which is said to be the northernmost location in the British Isles. I’ve been laughing at this joke all week, but then I’m a simple soul.

As well as laughing at suggestive place names, Hedda and I watched seals and sea otters; walked on pristine beaches; photographed spectacular cliffs; visited an architect turned silversmith; had many cups of tea and cake; found a couple of good selkie tales; and bought locally made jumpers at half the price we would have paid in London.

We both missed the comforting presence of Captain Midnight but we still had a lot of fun hanging out and getting to know each other better. Tonight, I’m back on my own in Folly Cottage and counting the days until we’ll be together again. Meeting Hedda has been an extraordinary and unexpected delight: she brings love, beauty, and joy into my life.

Answers:

Darth Vader in The Empire Strikes Back
Fake orgasm scene in When Harry Met Sally
John McClane in Die Hard