Six Months Later

It has been six months since I wrote a blog following my mother’s death late last year. I have been too busy letting go of Stuff, ‘stuff’ needing a capital ‘s’ and possibly a Mister or a Field Marshall affixed to it given the way it has tried to take charge of my life. I am coming out of six months of some of my darkest days of (the twisted roots of all of this lie in my childhood) but at the same time I am tasting the freedom of being permanently divorced (rather than having periods of separation) from several people whose affect on me has been so debilitating that for long periods of time, were it not for therapy and prayer, I would not have been able to function at all. My only connection to them and their cohorts was through my mother.

The last year and a half of having to be in touch with these people during and after my mother’s illness and death, reads like an Agatha Christie novel – sorry Aggie – complete with plotting over my uncle’s inheritance that my mother received soon before she died, carefully orchestrated lies, threats, verbal and emotional abuse, legal action, inheritance stealing and public family scraps from the baser family elements, that would leave Jeremy Kyle agog. Fact is often fiction and fiction is often fact and sometimes there is a muddling of both – just ask the ‘other’ side. You’d need to be Poirot to figure out who was lying and who was not. Or have someone hand over the text, email and Facebook evidence. One of many lessons I have learnt: Do not ever read a will without a drink stiffer than your grandmother’s hair do in 63.’ Brutal. Also: The love of money (and a large Georgian property in Cheltenham), is the root of all evil.

Anyway, to borrow from Priestly, the past really is another country now. I have emigrated. From the dark country of my childhood that I initially tried to escape when I left Africa alone at age 17, and which I continually had to revisit in order to try and come to terms with my beautiful, enigmatic mother whom I loved despite all, and now too, from England to Wales. Yes, I am now permanently in Wales. Giving up the flat that Luca and me were given when I was a homeless mum with a baby has been very tough – almost 20 years there and 30 in London. London was the breaking as well as the making of me; I shall always love it, though I no longer believe its streets are paved with gold. It was something of a messy break up, but Wales is now my land of promise.

Between the last time I blogged I managed to finish ghostwriting a book before the ghost of my past tapped me on the shoulder to announce that I had been cut out of my mother’s will and my and my children’s share of my great-grandmother’s inheritance has now gone out of my mother’s family. In the words of two of the three who oversaw the many months of scheming: “There is nothing you can do about it.” As my solicitor put it, I would likely win in court, but I would need tens of thousands of pounds to contest the crooked thing. But thank God I had been kept in the dark (What’s new Pussycat? Woe…) or the book would never have been finished. Another, has been edited for a client and delivered last week, and still another put through the first stage of editing. 

Why I am still reeling from my mother’s latest betrayal is beyond me, but a battered heart still beats. I believed her when, after having anticipated it all given the actions of several of the key players the Christmas before, I wrote to her and she promised she would never do such a thing. It does complicate the grief somewhat, but my relationship with my mother, though I loved her dearly, was always complicated, mostly by a choice she made in the mid-seventies that on occasions, almost completely blighted my life – she was her most brilliant, gifted, free-spirited, beautiful self before then. I too, am now free, but it is not a freedom I would have chosen.

On another note and in the letter and key of ‘H’ for happy, and in haste, home schooling the kids has continued to be a joy and seeing them develop in all their creative and sparky ways continues to be a river of happiness. On the subject of education, I have been able, through a dedicated and brilliant woman, Yolande Richards, who set up assistance for Mutake School in Zimbabwe, begun supporting the school through my book, After the Rains and through sponsorship. I am thrilled about the Barroso Bursaryhttps://www.facebook.com/MutakeSchool/photos/a.1440709992855273.1073741828.1409631029296503/1883520055240929/?type=3&theater. 

I also have a new part time job, developing arts projects for children with a local Anglican church, (Church in Wales as it is known in Wales) and there are new events and a festival coming up. My eldest continues to produce stunning artwork and music in London and my dear husband is now a town councillor, but no longer working part time for a local politician so that our publishing company can be given a much needed boost. Ring the changes and put bells on them, change is good, but oh, it can be uncomfortable, even painful.

But oh, it’s good to be writing again. Writing has always been therapy for me. Welcome back, writing with a capital ‘W’ for well, and wonderful, and well, most good things. Tomorrow I will be writing my third book. It’s been almost five years of working on other (wonderful) books since my last one. It is time. Good to be back.