GOODBYE TO 2022

 As I won't be sending out cards this year end, this post is an update on our year. Many thanks to the people who have kept in touch at this time over the past fifty years. The tree went up today after stubbornly refusing to be found. I was persuaded last year to buy a fake tree by the carers. Here it is with built-in flashing lights, erected in 20 minutes It was hiding in the loft.

 We always had a real tree and Jean used to enjoy spending all day dressing it. Here is one in happier days, with a visiting friend

My wife Jean has been seriously disabled for 7 years now after three difficult decades for her. She has acute brain damage which has stripped her of language, reading, knowledge and ability to process radio and television. She does respond to music though and lives mainly in her own inner world. I look after her at home after a brief stay in an awful care home arranged by social  care. They neglected to feed her a main meal four times in five days (fortunately I was there to insist) and once even forgot to put her to bed. We have evolved an effective routine at home, with carers coming in for an hour morning and evening and some respite/companionship time on some weekday lunchtimes. A year ago she was in hospital with malnutrition and dehydration (she seemed unable to swallow) and I was advised by the A&E doctor to arrange her funeral. Fortunately I was allowed to spend 5 hours a day at her bedside and make sure she built up her strength by eating properly and she was allowed home after ten days. Her room is what used to be the dining room, containing a hospital bed with air mattress, a hoist and a chair which prevents skin sores.  She spends her day either in her chair or bed (both provided by the NHS) and sleeps a great deal, usually with Rosie the cat. 

The cats are 18 now and both have a hyper-thyroid condition which require two tablets each daily, morning and evening.. One is incontinent which makes life interesting. First job of the day, cleaning it up. 

The garden has been a struggle. I pay two young gardeners to keep hedges  trimmed, shrubs pruned and odd jobs done, and a local plantswoman to help sowing and planting. I grow runner beans, beetroot, chard, rhubarb and green salad. Flowers include penstemons, salvias, cosmos, fuchsias and there are lots of shrubs - roses, weigela, mock orange, buddleias. Sadly it is not the joy it used to be, just a chore. Here is a callistemon, 'bottlebrush' flowering last week unseasonably.

Alas Covid has meant very fewer visitors over this year, but neighbours, nurses and carers have been good company. I have kept writing. This blog is a kind of day book, a bit more than a diary and you might enjoy some of the entries. Recently I have been reflecting on aspects of life and have found poetry to be helpful. I am strictly an inexperienced amateur but I have found the process therapeutic, challenging yet enjoyable. 

I sadly have to report the death of family members Ian Madden and Matt Dagg, friends Viv and Sue, and several former colleagues. I hope you all have a good 2023. That may be optimistic but we can but hope.  Stephen

Obituary, Vivian (Viv) Bartlett.

I learnt about Viv’s death on Monday. He and I worked together in Swindon in the first decade of this century on a project to raise self-understanding in school children. At first the children we worked with had opted out of schooling and learning, with acute social and family issues. The project began shortly after the millennium exhibitions in The Dome and Viv’s part in the work with children was called The Discovery Zone. This consisted of exercises with difficult children to draw out discussion on the consequences of actions and attitudes, and how to cope with the emotions driving us to a pro-social or anti-social outcome. The detail simplified over the years, asking the young people to decide whether to be consumers or contributors – that is, whether to be part of a wasteful throw-away society, or to contribute to creating a better world.

Viv had been a secondary teacher who based his teaching philosophy on patience and respect. Viv and his wife were members of the Baha’i Faith, a monotheistic faith which teaches equity, justice, the continuity of religion, anti-racism, anti-misogyny, environmental protection and many other issues which chime today with ethical living.

I first encountered Baha’is in the 1980s but almost did so in 1967. This was the year I went up to Manchester University to study Biblical Studies. My theology was fluid since I had unhappy experiences with the fundamentalist Christian sect I was brought up in. I saw a flier for a Baha’i meeting in my first term and had I attended, the outcome may have been different. The Christian fundamentalists continued to campaign abusively against my critical understandings and we parted company in early1969. I became a school teacher from 1973 since no university posts were available. My wife and I met in 1967 and we became close in summer 1968 and married in 1969.

Since the 1980s I built up a substantial number of Baha’i books including scriptures, and met many Baha’is. . I agree with the ethical underpinning but my rationalist understanding of theology is not compatible with Baha’i theology.

Viv and I collaborated on his book on the Youth Empowerment Programme under the title Nurturing a Healthy Human Spirit in the Young (published by George Ronald 2014) which described and explained the empowerment process in detail. He asked me to write an introduction, which I did. I had been an external evaluator of the programme throughout 2004 to 2008.

Viv was a man I was privileged to know and work with.

POEMS: An Introduction

 Below this Introduction are six poems, the first I have written. I don't claim quality for them but they forced themselves on me and I had to get them out of my system so I can write other things which are blocked. They are not the rhyming sort of poem, though they are occasional purposeful rhymes.  I have not studied literature or poetry

A bit of background. I am full-time carer for my wife of 53 years who now has no language she can communicate with, and has lost all knowledge she ever had. Things are as they are. I have tried various ways of writing autobiographically without success. These poems satisfy me most and give me the flexibility to explore things that come to mind. I appreciate it is hard for readers who have not shared my journey to tune into my personal reflections. But be assured that for me it has been a positive experience, maybe therapeutic. Much in the collection is celebratory and I hope this can be a starting point for readers.

I use a pen-name for the sake of privacy, 

Poem 7. Grief, a persistent stalker. by Stevie Dufyn

Grief, a persistent stalker.

Stevie Dufyn, December 2020

A child is born, and eight years later is dead.
Grief, they say, gets easier over time.
They are wrong. That 8 year old
Would now be fifty four, with children and grandchildren.
So a grief trebled.

A child not born, or miscarries
Might-have-been children, a daughter, a son
A dream, a hope, a future, redirected.
Or a child born who might have been a friend
But decided otherwise.

A mother, once an artist and carer
Found an imaginary family
But lost her own for twenty years
As they sadly saw her disintegrate.
Compounding the grief.

A wife, planning a life with a husband of her choosing
Hearing the knock on the door with the news
That she no longer has a husband.
Grief, they say, gets easier over time.
They are wrong.

Grief is a stalker, striking when not expected.
When reading a book, or watching a film,
Or hearing a song, or talking with a friend,
Grief breaks down the myth of control
After a year, a decade, a lifetime…

Grief, they say, gets easier over time.
They are wrong.

 © Stevie Dufyn December 11, 2022.

POEM 6: WORDS

    WORDS

by Stevie Dufyn   

December 2022.

Thoughtful words are all too rare,
Words of love, of hope, of care.
Words can harm, all hope to sever,

Their effects can last for ever.

She spoke her first word. Daddy
She read her first book. Rupert.
She spelled out her first word, Bear.
She joined the library, and went to school.

She was friendly and talkative,
But mother said Stop mithering
So she stopped, and read
Every book in the town library.

She liked her Dad reading with her.
A working man, cloth cap,
An old dad, the age of a granddad.
Who worked too hard and died too soon.

She was fourteen then, in a school
That did not appreciate her,
Or other working class girls,
Preferring the rich and connected.

At home she only had her mum,
And mum only had her,
Expecting to be looked after into old age
As she had done long ago.

Pleasing words are all too rare,
Words of love, of hope, of care.
Words can harm, all hope to sever,
Their effects can last for ever.

Conversation once refused could not be mended,
The girl went to university
To the surprise of her school
Or at least that’s what they said.

University was hard, thanks to an injury
To the head with a hockey stick,
A concussion to last a lifetime.
But she met a boy, and married, and became a teacher.

She told the boy about her favourite books,
And they became his favourite authors too,
And they met these, their children, their admirers
But bore no children to share books with.

No children the authorities wanted adopting
Only white babies, since we are white.
A family for black and brown children
Clearly did not matter. Alas.

A Masters degree led her
To a senior job in a comprehensive school.
But the head injury deepened
And with it gradual decline.

Yet there were twenty more working years
Until the words and memories departed, from a dictionary
To a few, Yes, don’t, lovely, good
Thanks, hello, goodbye, oh dear, oh God.

Wisely use your words of love
Words of cheer, with hope to prove.
Words can harm, and bring in strife,
Their effects can last for life.

© Stevie Dufyn December 2022

Poem 5: Mothers

MOTHERS

© Stevie Dufyn November 2022

The mother bore her fifth child, in a dark cave.
Sheltered from the heat, cold, and wild creatures.
Married not by choice or for pleasure
Within the relentless cycle of life and death.

Her daughters minded her little ones, as she had done
In her own childhood, until her first pregnancy.
She knew her role, child-bearing and rearing,
And with her sisters, preparing food and clothing.

For the girls at their menarch, marriage will be arranged,
As hers was. She had no say then or now,
Her father and uncles choosing a cousin.
To keep wealth within the clan.

So the cooperative cycle of childcare continued
As the way life happened. No room for self,
Nor remembered names for wives, mothers or daughters,
But they had a kinship excluding fathers, brothers, uncles and other males.

Evolution at a crossroads, the male path leading to conflict,
The female to cooperation. The paths collide in war
When women are raped, captured for sex, murdered,
Men and women a separate species to each other.

Time moves on, but the patriarchy remains, now contested.
Women are beaten, killed, raped, without consequence,
Mutilated, forced into marriage and childbearing,
Subjected perpetually to the male gaze. The past is the present.

Women childless not by choice are cursed now as then,
Feeling at fault, unblessed by God, despised by others
Whilst men not supporting their children are condoned
In a society ruled without equity with double standards.

But from of old, Bible women had spirit. Eve took charge,
Lot’s unnamed daughters seduced their father
Leah cheated cheater Jacob, and outfought her sister Rachel.
Tamar accused father in law Judah, her accuser,

Zipporah circumcised husband Moses, bridegroom of blood
Fighting demonic peril. Miriam his sister sang,
Deborah led a battle, Jael plotted and killed,
But most suffered, humiliated, scorned, killed.

Much like today. Every effort made to ignore women’s voices,
To inhibit their progress through barriers and gatekeepers.
Coercive control not just at home, but in the streets
And in the workplace too.

Progress cannot be taken for granted.
Politicians are not rational, nor the voting public.
The popular voice stirred by prejudiced propaganda
Is not divine, but easily led, deceitfully unjust.

Mothers nurture children’s enthusiasms and relationships,
Honesty, cooperation, self discipline, politeness, creativity.
Schools have incompatible interests, of compliance,
Obedience to authority, challenging nothing.

I was a child carer, mother to younger sibs, 
So school was not that great, and I was not great at school.
Suffering physical assault from some staff, emotional assault from others.
Every effort made to make learning unpleasant.

Mothers build family values, for good and bad,
Maybe in spite of fathers with fractured egos.
The mother child bond may be strong even when, especially when,
The mother/father, husband/wife bond is weak

© Stevie Dufyn, December 2022.

Poem 4: Being Human

 

BEING HUMAN

by Stevie Dufyn

Eve was joined to Adam by the hip, to be fruitful and multiply

To fill the earth, and to keep it healthy.
But they divided, Adam making Eve his assistant.
Who fed him, clothed him, blamed for gifting wisdom.

The patriarchy told the story, condemning Eve and sparing Adam,
Cancelling the serpent, cursing us all.
Men distanced from women, humans from animals
Which they killed, skinned and ate.

The hunter Cain killed gardener-grower Abel
Cutting final links with paradise,
Requiring nakedness to be covered
And lives to be lived in pain.

Our human predicament contained within a myth,
Hard to reverse now patriarchy deifies itself.
A patriarchy greedy for power, riches, land,
Who make and police their rules.

Jealousy and violence creates war and violence.
Revenge, disrespect, lust.
Even the chosen family of Noah divides
Black, brown and white families via Shem, Ham and Japheth.

Of the women, Sarah bullied Hagar, almost to death,
Rebecca favoured cheater Jacob over Esau the Red.
Dinah was raped, the rapist’s family slaughtered.
Worthy Tamar condemned to death for having rights.

These were not peaceful times, at least in these fictions.
Heads roll, bodies cut up, girls kidnapped for marriage.
Their plots match police TV dramas today,
About wealth, power, jealousy, misogyny, greed.

The poor were made slaves, captives and foreigners too.
Vicious war against neighbours common.
Recent wars, and social violence worldwide, make this a human condition,
A genetic flaw, a contributor to human extinction.

Humans are custodians of a burning world, an oven
Which our grandchildren will inherit.
Political lies unchecked, misinformation of the rich
Small minds, small thoughts, corrupt leaders,

©  Stevie Dufyn   December 2020.

Poem 3. Ghosts.

 

GHOSTS 

Stevie Dufyn, 2022

Are there ghosts in this house? a young carer asked. 
Yes, I replied, there are ghosts. Oh yes, there are ghosts.

Ghosts of the young, who never reached adulthood.
Of the diseased, who died in pain, too early.
Of might-have-been children, parents of grandchildren
Never born,  remembered in memory, talked to as living.

Ghosts are not all dead but memories of loss.
People lost to us now who were important once.
Some may re-emerge, some lost for ever
Except in memory, photos on mental mantelpieces.

On my actual mantle photos of dead friends,.
And water-colour sailing boats, luggers,
Cards from an absent sailor friend .
Close by, mementos of parents, their relics of long lives.

A young carer asked, Are there ghosts in the house?
Yes, I replied, there are ghosts
After all these years, there are ghosts.

Ghosts not all dead. People fall out of our lives,
For reasons neither remembers, the busyness of lives,
Sleights that should have been repaired,
Some for offences hard to forget, where ghosts are unforgiving.

Ghosts fill our nights with sadness, pleasure, fear and regret,
With guilt if we have offended or caused pain
And anger where pain was caused to us.
A ghost is a hole whose emptiness needs memories.

I too am a ghost, a hole in another’s life, an unresolved trauma,
Hoping to communicate still but hearing only silence,
Wanting to apologise, or hoping for an apology,
But finding it is too late.

Life is a communion of ghosts, unwilling or unable to cohabit,
Unable to mend what was broken.
In a world of easy communication, where folks don’t stay hidden,
We choose to hide, to remain ghosts to each other.

Memories of family and friends now gone, colleagues, influencers,
Some I never met – authors, musicians, artists, unaware of my existence
And unaware of the debt I owe them. Some I helped, I think,
They will know, and may remember.

Ghosts mix with the living, maintain relationships,
Refresh memories. Ghosts of the dead live on in us.
Ghosts of the living can be found again, as can I,
To rekindle what was once broken.

A young carer asked, Are there ghosts in the house?
Yes, I replied, there are ghosts. Oh yes, there are ghosts.

©  Stevie Dufyn (pen-name for Stephen Bigger), 8.November 2022.

Poem 2: Chance Meetings

 

CHANCE MEETINGS

By Stevie Dufyn, 2022.

 

X marks a point where two lives cross.
A pause on long journeys, an exchange of spirit and soul
‘I have come from afar. I greet you’, each affirms.
Will they cross by? or travel together?


Roads divide, with choices to be made,
Crossroads, with destinations unknown,. demanding decision.
Choices with consequences, controlling our future
Blocking alternative might-have-been lives.


Such an X marks the day my father and mother met,
A Bomber Command boy invited for Sunday lunch.
Five children owe their being to this moment,
Who otherwise would never have existed.


So the person called ‘I’ was born by luck
By fortune good or bad, Cards were dealt
Which need skillful playing. The might-have-been ‘I’
Would have held and played a quite different hand.


So who am ‘I’? A body, a brain, a bundle of thoughts,
A chaos of feelings, emotions, ambitions, loyalties.
The moral path is narrow and tortuous. A giver? a just contributor?
Or a taker, a greedy self-serving consumer.


A voice inside says ‘I’, ‘me’, ‘my’, ‘mine’.
It imagines that we exist for ourselves, for our own purposes.
It is a fragile picture, a changeable, breakable image.
When ‘I’ becomes ‘we’, relationship is born and community begins.


‘I’ was taught to obey, but failed that lesson. I questioned.
‘I’ was required to accept, another fail. I argued.
‘I’ publicly dispatched Santa at 4, enraging local parents.
‘I’ discovered that goldfish die in polluted water.


‘I’ was curious, an investigator, a questioner, an experimenter.
A reader, a watcher and a listener. Memories are as if yesterday.
Even in my own way, a performer, story-teller and musician.
These fragments loosely jostle. And then I went to school.


School has left few memories And certainly no good ones.
Thirty silent children in rows, embarrassed even to laugh.
Shamed, controlled by sarcasm, bullying and shouting.
But it failed again. I became subversive, a rebel.


We recited the catechism. ‘I believe in God…’, the Christian myth,
Jesus and his implausible parentage, descent into hell, resurrection and ascension.
I was not Christened, so not ‘a child of God’, not ‘an inheritor of the kingdom’,
An outsider, thoughtlessly created, now proudly subverted..


‘I’, written off by school, got a First and PhD at university
Manchester but I might have gone to Sheffield,
Meeting my wife from Bradford who might have gone to Leeds.
‘Might-have-been I’ might have met a different might-have-been wife.


Different lives, with different consequences.
Lives cross, touch, feed, guide, learn and teach.
We are the prisoner of choices, luck, and live with the consequences
Responsible for the lasting relationships that emerge.


Real ‘we’ had no surviving children, and hence no grandchildren.
‘Might-have-been-we’ might have a family, and grandchildren,
Who might have kept in touch. How hard human life can be.
As we live with what is, not what ‘might-have-been’.


Now in old age, some might-have-beens are friends,
And ‘might-become’ take the stage.
New choices emerge, children, grandchildren, sisters and brothers
By choice not birth, as friendships widen, deepen.


X records a treasure, not measured in gold or stones
But in a healthy world with a sane future.
And X is a vote, not for power, grift and greed,
But for selfless public service, with moral vision.


Who am ‘I’ when faculties are dimmed?
Will I have a sense of who I am, and why I am?
Will the fragments of self and understanding cohere?
Will ‘I’, me, my self, my soul, still be whole?

By Stevie Dufyn (Stephen Bigger), November 2022. 

Poem 1: June, 2022.

 June, 2022 © by Stevie Dufyn (pen-name).

JUNE, 2022.

Stevie Dufyn 26 June 2022.

In an English village a millennium old,
Lies our hedge-lined hill, overgrown now,
Growing new memories, chirruping families mixing with the old and frail.
Our house, older than its years, has seen joy and sadness,
ts garden oozing colour across the seasons, planned and wild.
In this spot, life goes on in a world that has lost its way.

June is the month when folks sit in their gardens,
Talking, drinking, phoning, enjoying the cooling of the day.
The month of roses, competing for the attention of bees and butterflies.
I am with those I know, who comfort me, strangers but friends
Who offer me food, drink, music and love,
Whose smiling faces offer words of joy, hope and pleasure.


I hear nearby sounds, Blackbirds complaining about cats,

Magpie thugs threatening smaller neighbours,
Looking for plunder to feed their young on the young of others.
A robin defends its territory, noisily but uselessly,
It perches on my table, seeking food and company.
Scents spread, honeysuckle, jasmine, roses – a blur, I knew each one once.

Breezes rustle through shrubs and trees. I hear a road.
A car goes by, a motorbike rasps,. a steam train rattles far away,
Lorries beep warnings, insistent alarms, a helicopter, a plane..
They are noises, indistinct, unrecognized, whose purpose escapes me,
But compete in the soundtrack of that moment.
Toe-tapping music rings out close by. Arm-waving, I gurgle joyfully.


Some noises I understand, children laughing, cats pleading.
Adult voices, talking about life, problems, disasters, the family.
Faces smiling, checking, sometimes weeping. They say hello, and goodbye.
I laugh. Their words remind me of things I can no longer grasp.
I chuckle, but have few words to offer them.
The words are in my head, but the journey to my mouth is hard.


The sun is low in the sky. It is getting cool.
The sky turns shades of red, orange, maroon, like on fire,
Blue patches struggling through until everything fades.
Flower scents drift over, heady perfumes I remember.
The moon shines bright, a globe, a full moon behind shadowy trees.
Starlings crowd the skies with their dance and roost.


Time for my sleep too, as eyelids grow heavy.
Cuddled in blankets and pillows, a cat on guard, in bed.
People I scarcely remember, but who know me, and are my friends.
Familiar faces and voices care for me, and bring me peace,
Faces and voices grow dimmer each day. No one will tell me who I am,
Or what I did, or who I was once, or who I will be. My name only remains..


I dream, where life is real, with folks I like, doing what I enjoy.
My dad, husband, daughter and niece are there. And lost friends.
Humming tunes and songs where old loves and friends still thrive.
A world I cannot share with those around me now.
Since they have no window into my mind and soul.
It is my secret world, my only world now with no way back.


Yet I am not alone, or lonely, fret not,
Old friends are with me, in vivid memory.
My head still has my lost words, thoughts and pictures.
In there I know who I am, my essence.
Who I used to be is more than what I did,
And I know now the mystery of who I will become.


In the world I have left, a fox screams, an owl hunts, silent.
Clouds scud across the sky, drops of rain seek out plants.
While other pump out their night scents seeking out moths.
In my dreams I live my own story, happier, without disappointments.
Flowers close up for the own sleep, the water lilies and poppies,
So farewell for now, I have another life to live.

Stevie Dufyn, November 2022.

Some new poems.

Time to give some serious time to this blog so there is something to fall back on if Twitter dies. That is something no one would have believed if we put it in a novel. There are bits of unfinished business that needs polishing. Looking at earlier posts you will see I am a full-time carer to my wife, who has brain damage and paralysis. That is 24 hours a day every day.. Starting in November 2015 that covers 7 years.

The danger of being a housebound carer is to be isolated and social media has protected me a little, Facebook for family and friends, Twitter for people I don't know face to face. Many of those are carers too giving each other moral support. 

I wrote a few observations for a research group of which this is a part.

Loss of personhood..
We take for granted a body/spirit dichotomy and when my mother died she was sure that she would go to heaven to be with her late husband. It is not a belief I share which made giving her eulogy quite tricky. It did however help her decide that the end had come.

In this section I deal with self-hood / personhood. From that moment in time in November 2015. things that mark us off as human persons began rapidly to disappear in her. The accumulated knowledge and wisdom of a lifetime disappeared overnight. A keen historian who volunteered in Kelmscott Manor (William Morris's home) lost all the knowledge that made her outstanding at her role as guide. A keen plantswoman, that knowledge disappeared and she could no longer differentiate between garden plants and weeds. She became unable to read even children's books although for a while practiced decoding words, but without comprehension. Her vocabulary decreased from whatever is normal for a Masters Graduate to around 50 words. Now she speaks no words at all with comprehension but plays with sound like a baby. For a while she lost normal behavioral controls which made her difficult to deal with as her condition had given her vice like upper body strength. She cannot use knife, fork or spoon but will feed herself if food can be picked up in finger size portions. She can no longer pick up a mug but will drink from it if it is presented to her mouth. I advise friends if they come to see her that she will not recognize them, as she indeed does not recognise me.

However she is living a life in her head and will sometimes appear to have inner conversations and sometimes get the giggles. All this raises the question of how this person now relates to the Jean who once was, who had a husband, close friends, views and insights. To me that blasts a hole in bodily/spiritual dualism and points to the body/brain as a single entity within which we construct our personhood and values, and lose these if the brain malfunctions and deteriorates. In Jean's case a blow on the head playing hockey at 16 began a slow process of brain damage of which I am now seeing and dealing with the terminal stages.

In the posts which follow, I  introducing a few poems I have written in 2022. I am not a poet, but want to comment on the life of a caring carer. and giving voice to someone who now has no voice.

© Stephen Bigger 2022