The swimmer

It’s an hour and a half after midnight, Thursday 27 August. 

It would have been my dad’s eighty-seventh birthday.

I’m sitting in an empty living-room – seems apposite, somehow.  Today will be the last day in this home of ours – the day in which we officially leave and hand the place over to a letting-agency.  We’re going to squat for one more night – crashing in unfamiliar rooms in our sleeping-bags to save a night’s hotel bill. It means sneaking out of our own flat by 7 am before anyone discovers us.

Sitting here, I’m reminded of a poem I once wrote about a swimmer.  He was a speck, lost in the current, ploughing on, focused on the task in hand, oblivious to the onlooker, who considered the swimmer’s plight a hopeless one.

The swimmer knew that he had no option but to keep kicking and pulling and put his faith in his arms and legs, hoping that his lungs would keep breathing and his heart would be strong enough to see him through.  He had no end in mind.  He looked neither left nor right, but fixed his gaze on the place where the expanse of water met the sky.  He just knew that that was where he needed to be.

There’s a lot going on - responsibilities, commitments, heartache and worry.  It’s been this way for as long as I can remember.  All I can do is keep going.  The day I stop is the day the water will claim me.   You’ll just have to take my word for that. 

I read somewhere about waves representing grief.  At first the waves are impossibly high and come one after the other, so rapidly there’s no time to recover from one before the next one swamps you.  Over time, the waves become lower and more widely spaced – still a huge one occasionally bowls you over, but you become better at predicting when they’ll come.  It's one of the best descriptions I’ve seen. 

For many of us, one set of waves is joined too soon by others whipped up by cruel winds, shortening the swell to bump and buffet as we push on through.  We tire, but there’s no option other than to keep striking out for the horizon.  Else, we go under.

For long periods the swimmer appears to make no headway – losing ground or drifting off course – but stroke upon stroke he pulls through the water. 

I have a habit of drifting into strong currents from time to time, searching longingly for a point along the bank and an eddy where I might haul myself out to dry in the sun - I might never move from that spot. Instead, I struggle on.

Tonight, I feel a lull.  The swell is long and even.  The tide is carrying me.  I know that up ahead are waters that might once again test my resolve, but change is in the air.  I just have to keep swimming.

Perhaps this is an auspicious day.

Happy birthday dad.