The Sere and Yellow Leaf

It’s late afternoon on the first day of November. Outside the bedroom window, copper, ruby and yellow leaves wave gently in the breeze, falling softly on the tennis court and the football field beyond the bungalow. The elderly man, dozing in bed beside his wife hears the back door opening. Getting carefully out of bed, he shuffles through his house, to be confronted by a tall, muscular young man with a mop of red curly hair. 

“Who are you?” he asks, unworried, because this is rural Suffolk and everyone leaves their doors unlocked. The answer puzzles him. “Do you live here?” He frowns, his green eyes clouded now in extreme old age.

He has known this red-headed stranger for all his eighteen years of life. He rejoiced when he was told he would be a grandfather in eight months’ time on Christmas Day, 2002. He was the first visitor, along with his wife and younger daughter when the little boy was born. He’s watched him grow from a chubby baby to a roly-poly toddler, to a school boy and now to an adult with a girlfriend and a love of music. But he has no idea who he is. 

“I need to find where Jean’s living so I can go back and see her,” he tells the young man.

 “Grandma’s in the bedroom, Grandpa,” his grandson assures him. “She’s having a nap.”

Gently, he takes his grandfather’s arm and steers him back to his bedroom. His grandmother is asleep in bed, the covers pulled up to her chin. He settles the old man back in bed, reassures him once more and goes home, having cut the grass and trimmed the hedges.

And this is now my reality. My parents moved up to Suffolk from Essex nearly three years ago. They were still living fairly independently until a few months ago, but now, after a series of falls and illnesses, they’ve got a live-in carer and are starting to give up on life. They are 91 and 96 so it’s to be expected. 

Many of you will read these words and wonder how I am, if I’m coping, what I’m doing to deal with this difficult situation. Writing. That’s what. The older I get, the more I find that emotions, particularly difficult and tangled ones, can be addressed and illuminated via the written word.

Of late, with two full-time jobs, my parents and three teenage children, I’ve found myself writing my MTW blog late at night on the 6^th or even, catastrophically, on the morning of the 7^th itself. Just eighteen months ago, like the excited newbie I was, I was brimming over with ideas and often scheduled blogs months in advance. 

Not no more. 

I’ve often quoted Wordsworth. “Poetry is emotion recollected in tranquillity.” So what is prose, then? I came across some words from Virginia Woolf which hit the spot for me. “The poet gives us his essence, but prose takes the mould of the body and mind entire.” 

The way I learned to get through life from an early age was to deflect, to construct a smiling exterior which rebuffed awkward questions. I’m still really good at pretending, but I don’t do it so much anymore. It’s true what they say. The older you get, the less you pretend. It’s just too tiring and anyway, these days, like my on-trend creation Isabella M Smugge, I prefer authenticity. 

I always loved reading and yearned to write. Now, I write every day and don’t have so much time for reading. But that’s OK, because the tens of thousands of books I’ve consumed since the age of four are still residing in my mind, releasing half-forgotten words and phrases whenever I need them. 

As a child and teenager, I lost myself in the world of books. Going to parties and having lots of drinks to help me to be the life and soul was the way I dealt with difficult feelings in my twenties. Working far too hard and taking on a million and one projects took me through my thirties. The children and work dealt with the forties and now in my fifties, the right side of nearly five years of counselling, I’m back to my first love. 

Whatever happens, and there is only one direction this kind of thing can go in, I’ve got the joy of reading and writing left to me. These days, spending more time in tranquillity and relative calm, I’m far more likely to hear that still small voice offering words of comfort. 

“When you were young you dressed yourself and went wherever you wished, but when you get old you’ll have to stretch out your hands while someone else dresses you and takes you where you don’t want to go.” 

I’ve often read those words, but they’ve never been truer than they are today, as the vibrant, beautiful leaves are blown from the treetops and drift in great heaps towards the earth.

Images by Pixabay

Ruth is a novelist and freelance writer, the author of “The Diary of Isabella M Smugge” and “The Trials of Isabella M Smugge”. She writes for a number of small businesses and charities, reviews books for Reading Between the Lines and blogs at ruthleighwrites.co.uk. You can find her on Instagram, Facebook and Twitter at ruthleighwrites and at her website, www.ruthleighwrites.co.uk.