Snapdragon Gutters
This piece was initially written for our first Summer Special, published in July 2021.
I’ve walked this particular road many times.
It’s never really one that I have truly paid attention to.
In fact, in the fast and furious moments of arriving in this beautiful country, I would pound this path heading towards the centre. Determined to learn the language, absorbed and occupied by the ever growing list of to dos when you move countries. I would plot and plan out the quickest route to my destination, calculating the time I could save and the most optimum journey to complete the chores and errands I needed to do on my way. In between language lessons and the many bureaucratic appointments, I would stop off at a cafe. Greedily, I would gulp down coffee and inhale the portuguese pastries, learning their names as I went, but never stopping to truly savour the taste or texture and invariably forgetting the name I had just learnt.
As I settled into life here in 2019, my surroundings blurred into a quiet familiarity. The first-week-wisps of novelty soon merged into a cloud of invisibility, floating up above out of reach, as I learnt the newest, fastest, most optimised path. The once novel and delightful experience of the taste of coffee in a brand new place changed over time as my taste buds desensitised to the everyday, overburdened by to dos and consumed withfilling in the gaps, so that I didn’t have to linger with my thoughts for too long. That almighty, breath-stilling wonder that would settle when I reached the top of a long and arduous Lisbon hill or the joy in the discovery of an otherwise best-kept local secret, got lost whilst navigating slippy cobbles as the showers arrived. I would run for the bus, still not quite accustomed to the haphazard timetabling, route scheduling and uneven roads– the view a distant memory and the local secret a mere whisper–I stumbled over the cobblestones.
A slow steady pattern to my days emerged, dropping the children off then back to the to dos. In the absence of friends, the shadow of loneliness stood on each street corner waiting to catch up with me. The wrench of both children now at school and the guilt that accompanied that new found freedom and relief was tainted with the very same realisation that they really didn’t need me as much anymore.
So, who was I now?
I wondered, as I set about applying for jobs and learning the past tense in Portuguese. Filling my days and filing away the feelings.
Then came the news, one Saturday afternoon at a birthday party. I stood on the periphery, not accustomed to leaving my child alone, inadvertently making all sorts of cultural faux pas. I lingered in the background as my husband had dropped us off and I had no way of leaving. My phone buzzed in my handbag, I picked it up and the voice of my Mum–steady and reassuring–explained that she was on the way to hospital, that an ambulance had been called but that you were in the best place. In the face of any emergency she is a calm and pragmatic presence, never faltering or flapping. I put the phone down and tried to adjust my face to hide the emotions with a planted smile, tears threatening to escape and break the mask.
By the evening, you had suddenly and unexpectedly departed. It was just six weeks since we had arrived here. I scrolled back through my phone and realised the last message I had sent to you was a picture of your great grandchildren getting ready for our new adventure, a slapdash early morning snap as we boarded the plane for Lisbon. Their joy and excitement palpable–dancing across their faces –beaming out from the blurry picture.
Fighting back the tears on that early morning flight the following day, I try to be strong. Picking up my notebook, putting it down, turning the pen in my hand over and over.
How can you leave?
When your light still shines so bright?
Where will I find you now?
A poem starts forming in my head on the taxi ride to my Mum’s flat.
I arrive and we hug, fully, completely. Our sobs soaking each other’s shoulders. My siblings arrive one by one and with each arrival a new torrent of tears, we hold each other. None of us can quite believe it, for a moment there’s laughter as someone remembers a random memory of you and Mum recounts some morbidly funny moments in the hospital, then the next wave of tears engulfs us as the tide of grief ebbs and flows. Rocket fuel coffee brews, an ode to you, Chief Coffee Maker, but it doesn’t taste the same.
Walking up to the front door of your home, I hesitate, not quite ready, the house is synonymous with you. Normally the location for happy family occasions, now it is full with your family but you are missing. An aching, gaping hole emerges.
A week later. I return to Lisbon. Crying at the gates as I realise I have forgotten to book a carry-on bag for my flight. The airport staff take pity on me as paper petals from tear-soaked tissues fall around me as I scrabble to find my debit card to pay for the luggage. I still can’t believe you have gone.
I retreat and return to pounding the pavements, seeking purpose in each stride but not making progress. As the weeks merged into months, I developed an immunity to the glorious, muddled mess of this beautiful city. I am blind to the peculiar patchwork of buildings and the wonderful warming light that Lisbon basks in.
The grief and loneliness dull my senses, I become inhibited to the surroundings, no matter how beautiful the sunrise or how magical a particular moment, I can’t shift or shake myself out of it. The loneliness becomes a shadow stalking me, trying to darken the light that surrounds.
Then.
The pandemic arrives and life as we know it, shuts down. Planes stop, playgrounds close, we retreat behind doors and I hold your great grandchildren tight. I wonder what you would make of it all, whether you would have returned to the NHS to help…You were the living, breathing incarnation of caritas.
I hold my breath, keep holding it.
Plumes of grief, of longing and of loss linger around me.
I watch my children adapt and am amazed each day by their resilience amid this wild and relentless situation. I watch my husband work so hard, I see pain and stress wrought across his brow each night after another long day but my heart swells with his steely determination to see this through.
I hope... I can see this through too.
Ever onward...
One of your many sayings becomes a mantra that rings in my ears, as each twist and turn of these exhausting times threatens to unseat and disperse my being into plumes of fury, frustration and anger up, up, up into the clouds.
Yet.
Ever onward…
In the confines of our flat, I hold on to slivers of hope and joy.
I think about you often, my dreams are peppered with flashes of you and whilst you visit my siblings in their sleep, your appearance in my dreams is fleeting, a wisp of hope, that I want to capture, to cradle just for a while.
A YEAR LATER
We are emerging out of the latest longest, hardest lockdown and life is returning to Lisbon. I find myself back on that particular road again.
But today, the walk is different.
The sun is shining, warming and kindly caressing my face. The beauty of each building as it is illuminated by the magical morning light, makes me smile.
I slow my pace, consciously undo all my to dos and focus on the now. I soak up each and every ray amid the early morning quiet. Lisbon is a city that rarely sleeps. There's a constant background hum of activity but this morning it’s unusually quiet, the sound of birds predominates and the roads are empty. I breathe.
The tiles underfoot don’t unsteady me anymore, I’ve grown accustomed to the wobbly unevenness.
I look up and notice a burst of snapdragons growing in the gutter of an old abandoned property. The flashes of pink flowers defiant, rising out of the cracks in between and swaying in the slight breeze. A brilliant flash of pink against the blue sky.
And I feel like I am emerging again. I am seeing this life anew, buoyed by the possiblity that hope can still bloom in the cracks. Alive with the realisation that the final destination is not the final arrival, that the many self-seeded snapdragons scattered across rooftops are what can help carry us along.
Ever onward.
As you would say.
Lucy Beckley