After the Stroke Read Free Page A

possible—it felt strange not to be pressured for the first time since I moved here fourteen years ago—and I tried to learn from it, to learn to take the chores as an exercise, deliberately slowing down, savoring the smoothing of a sheet, the making of order as delightful in itself—not just something to get out of the way.
    Often when I lay in bed after my breakfast which I take up on a tray, the light shone through the stained glass phoenix Karen Saum had had made for my seventieth birthday. It always felt like a good augury to watch it glow, blue and red.
    Perhaps the phoenix can only begin to rise from its embers when it has reached the very end, death itself. With Bramble’s death I felt the wilderness die in me, some secret place where poetry lived. She was so wild—passionate and distant at the same time. When Pierrot comes so easily to be petted early in the morning I remember that it took five years for Bramble to creep up from the end of the bed and lie in the crook of my arm. But then the bond was very deep.
    The hardest thing for me to give up after the stroke was writing to Juliette Huxley. Forty years ago we were intimate friends, but time and change intervened, misunderstanding broke the bond, and only now in these last months has she opened the door—and we are communicating again at last. She is eighty-nine. Time is running out—and the frustration of being unable to keep the slight thread intact between us is very hard to bear.
    So I made up a dream of flying over to England in June and taking her to a country inn for a few days where we could talk instead of writing. That was the final thing I realized I had to give up. I’m not well enough, and she has had several bouts with flu and herself hesitated to come.
    I spent a sleepless night trying to accept that I shall probably never see her again—that was the death of the spirit, the end of dreaming impossible dreams. Strangely enough, the next day I began this journal, and knew that my real self was coming back.

Sunday, April 13
    At last a real spring day, brilliant sun, no wind, the ocean murmuring or rather roaring gently in the distance. It made me remember that when I first came here I often thought I heard a train going by—but it was the ocean, not passing through, always to be there.
    Having a disability has one good effect. I am far more aware of and sympathetic about the illnesses some of my friends are struggling to surmount than I was when I was well. It is companionable to share some of the day-to-day triumphs and despairs. I’m afraid terribly cheerful, well people are no help at all!
    I am aware for the first time perhaps what courage it takes to grow old, how exasperating it is no longer to be able to do what seemed nothing at all even a year ago.
    And I am learning some of the things not to say to a person who has had a stroke. It’s a good idea not to seem to expect great improvement. “Are you feeling better?” when there is no chance that the person addressed can feel better quickly. For instance: work. Several people suggested I keep a journal—in the first weeks after February twentieth. This caused me to shout and weep. “I can’t write a line ! I’m not myself and shan’t be for a long time.” It felt like cruelty—like saying to a cripple in a wheelchair, “it will do you good to take a walk.”(!)
    A month ago writing a few lines in this book would have been impossible. Will simply had no effect. I had to give up doing anything fast. And the worst has been to have poetry dead inside me—not a line runs through my head.
    I have not been able to listen to music at all since early January—perhaps because it has been so closely connected with poetry. I don’t dare, for fear of breaking into pieces.

Monday, April 14
    Warm sun and a calm blue sea. Maggie Thomas is here raking leaves along the fence. At eight I got out the rakes, the