AS YET TO BE

Tag: 2026

  • Loss of something familiar

    If I had gone before, I could have remembered

    Lilacs and green after-noons of May;

    (From Sara Teasdale, ‘Late October’)

    It is now feeling slightly autumnal writing this; spring has very much bloomed and gone, we have endured summer’s colours wilting over what has been a concerningly parching summer.

    Four months now since Cali left us, and for the first time in fourteen years, there was nobody sleeping beneath the lilac this time, where a small indentation of her remains in the grass.

    ‘What greater gift than the love of a cat?’ asks Dickens, and as someone who has grown up always with at least one nearby, I naturally agree. The love of a cat is one built from patience, trust, and is quietly earned. It is one appreciated on the worst of days, and sometimes when there really is nothing or no-one else.

    When we collected a very small kitten-Cali, she was actually watching Coronation Street. She could fit in the palm of my dad’s hand, and I remember printing a picture of her from the computer that weekend to bring into school. I can’t remember exactly which one, but it may well have been similar to the one below.

    Cali was something of a good luck charm for me (not just with her calicoed associations), a familiar, often my nurse, therapist, muse, companion and confidante. She saw me through life from eleven to twenty-five – from just before my year six SATs, all my time in secondary school, to beyond – sitting in on my online (lockdown) university exams and waiting at home during my first job. She helped me through many firsts.

    It was only towards the end that our roles switched and I was, instead, her nurse. During what was a generally low year of my life, caring for her was one of the only things on my calendar, and with how it/I was, it was a regular cycle of her improving, worsening again, and me convincing myself that each vet trip would be the last one.

    A lot of this time was filled with a pre-emptive grief, I suppose, which is why there is a particular emptiness surrounding the actual loss. I often get sad over how I never got a ‘proper’ goodbye, yet I seem to have prepared myself for one on many occasions before.

    And, at the same time, a guilt; a feeling I never fully honoured her, partly for how much of a close part of me she was. Like, why do I feel ashamed about spending time now with other cats? Why did it take me so long to write this all down? Am I worried I will forget her?

    I’ve found part of my grief is a feeling that I simultaneously have nothing to remember her by, physically, or that there is no full closure, with how quickly it all happened in the end. However, since moving away I have realised I am actually surrounded by reminders of her and seemingly carry parts of her with me every day. Suddenly, the cat hairs on my clothes are no longer a nuisance, and the things I purchased or made with her in mind bear a new significance.

    Cat, by Gwen John: I received this on a card from my brother shortly after starting uni – it is on the wall of my new room now

    Yet, in the same sense, it is also those small things that crop up occasionally and tend to catch me unprepared, as I don’t think I’m quite used to her being gone. I always used to sign cards to family from me and her, I’ve caught myself still saying I have two cats. I sometimes still expect to see her when I visit home. There’s only one food bowl put out in the kitchen now.

    Referring to her in the past tense is also something that still feels unnatural.

    She loved to bask in the sun, especially when the garden patio tiles absorbed the heat, and when she needed some shade you would spot her either in the border or beneath the lilac. She was such a gentle, loving, often silly cat, who always knew exactly when you needed her company.

    Cali on the garden wall

    Her trips to the vets dealt her a fair share of battle scars and hairdos, for which we were often reminded of Bagpuss:

    The most important
    The most beautiful
    The most magical
    Saggy old cloth cat in the whole wide world

    […]

    Baggy, and a bit loose at the seams
    But Emily loved him

    For all of the extra time that she gave us (years, weeks, days), I am so grateful.

    I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to fully commemorate such a special (important, beautiful, magical) cat, but this is at least a start. Jules Verne (I believe) wrote that, ‘Cats come into your house to teach you about affection, they leave to teach you about the loss.’

    I don’t think you can ever fully anticipate the feeling of losing a pet, but it does make you appreciate the time you have with them even more.

  • spring bowl banquet

    Tulips spotted on the streets of Amsterdam

    I felt inspired by everything in bloom to share a poem I have seemingly written through the perspective of a hungry bee (?)

    As someone who delights in fresh flowers in my home, this time of year with its daffodils and tulips (my favourite) brings me particular joy.

    I have appreciated this year’s springward step towards warmth and brightness again (though ignoring the bouts of hail and snow only a couple weeks ago…). I only hope that it carries on and that we all have ample opportunity to absorb as much as possible.

    Even the NY Times Strands puzzle recently celebrated the flowers of spring!

    Just wait until the foxgloves and sweet peas are here! Delicious.

  • when the sun strikes me like a gong

    It’s a cold day today, but in a spring way, and I love you.

    (24th March, 1937; Letters to Véra by Vladimir Nabokov)

    The slog of January to very early Feb was one, for us, submerged in greyness. The first month of the year seemed to last forever, yet with no real sense of the days passing by. Just fog!

    Our vitamin D levels dwindled as there was absolutely no visible sun; those select mornings when it did make a short appearance saw us all vastly uplifted.

    It was a Valentine’s Day visit to Whitby with family that I only properly remember a completely blue sky… I have a fond recollection of a couple sitting in a bus stop, sunbathing in five-degree cool. Romantic!

    Blue sky through Whitby Abbey

    As I experience more years (having recently (reluctantly) turned twenty-five), I grow increasingly impatient for spring’s arrival. Not just for the daffodils, lambs and chocolate eggs, but more so for the longer days and increased likelihood of sunshine. With longer evenings on their way, I feel less inclined to convince myself I’m running out of time.

    Over winter, I wilt – a plant without what it needs – I’ve come to find the transition back into green, yellows and pinks more and more welcome. Everything shifts, in a flowery sort of way (colour comes back).

    A usual indication of the change in season is our cat basking on the garden patio. She’ll only do this when the conditions are just right, and it seems that today the stone is at optimum temperature:

    Cali in the afternoon sun

    This is handy, as it often lets us know whether it’s suitable to let the tortoise out for a stroll too.

    Barley doing her yoga on the patio tiles

    A bit of natural sun makes all the difference to a heat lamp for her, which I’m sure we can all agree with (I’m terribly anti-Big-Light these days). I don’t know if tortoises contain or produce serotonin, but their heat-seeking (survival) instincts resonate strongly with me.

    It may sound extreme, but things simply feel more doable when the Sun is out. I have all the instincts of a hibernating animal, who has been cooped up much too long and all of a sudden feels much lighter (in more senses than one).

    Perhaps this is just a reflection on my grasping at any sense of optimism nowadays, if merely a bit of warmth through my joints: life feels that bit more liveable, I don’t feel half as unwell as the cloudy day before, and for some reason my body works a bit better than usual. I feel suddenly inspired, as though I’ve quite literally had some light switched on somewhere in my brain.

    Seeing Project Hail Mary at the weekend (enjoy it!) seems to have inspired me to think about our Sun and perhaps worship it a bit more than before. This, and a particularly glare-y bus journey home.

    I suggest we all pause and bask (responsibly) for a bit.

    (Title taken from ‘I have to tell you’ by Dorothea Grossman)

  • On the bright, and less so

    Durham, 2023 – surprisingly not in black & white!

    The passing of another year and plunge back into dark nights and crisp white mornings fills me with the inherent (albeit mouse or moomin-like) longing to hibernate.

    I should have an affinity with snow, having been born on a particularly blizzardous February night, yet creaky joints and a fear of slippy ground means I much prefer snowfall through the window when I’ve nowhere else to be.

    Snow at home, early last year

    There is something about waking up to a world transformed when there has been snow overnight. The landscape is suddenly limited to a minimal colour palette: black, white, then the palest pink and blue… It is funny how somewhere that can be once so green (that being the rolling hills of home for me) can appear so flat.

    Peter Brook is one of my family’s favourite artists, and at this time of year I find myself inside his paintings.

    Peter Brook, Sheep Coming In (December)

    Whilst every natural instinct insists I bundle up, away from the cold, I’m usually unluckily tied to commitments in places unaffected by my particular snow cloud. This happened this week, where everyone’s anticipation of a snow day from Storm Goretti ended in a disappointing Friday morning: arriving at work, it was as though not a single bit of ice remained!

    Still, the little hill upon which I reside (much like Peppa Pig) was a snowglobe.

    Durham snow day in 2023

    Approaching springtime and the return of all good things (namely light and colour), I am reminded of when I lived in Durham and walked my daily walk to the library to work on my third-year dissertation.

    I can’t remember exactly when I wrote most of this poem, but I will include it below.

    I wish everyone well as we start 2026 full of the usual mix of optimistic hesitancy. May you hear from me a bit sooner than before.

    Brighter days soon!