See the children run as the sun goes down
Among the fields of gold
You’ll remember me when the west wind moves
Upon the fields of barley
- Sting 1993
October 2nd-5th, 2004
The sun is fading early across my evening run, the first of many this autumn that will take me through the twilight and out into darkness on the other side. A hilly run to lift me from the cosy lamplit streets, along breathlessly climbing ancient lanes and nervily dimming woods, to confront the skyline at Newlands Corner.
The trees open up to reveal a monochromatic and greyly luminous sheet of coolly dewy air, stretching far above the blackening yew and scrubby oak of the Drove Road. I’m on the mediaeval sheep trail treading to and from the old market town which now forms my home.
Across the fields I run, to a different day, the sun still high in another autumn’s jealous sky, and a threatening horizon’s shadow advancing relentlessly to overtake us. A mile of open grassland is never far enough to bridge that gap, to turn that tide. And yet it’s here within me, this spared new life with an energy and vitality linked inexorably to a life no more.
Far beneath me, in the folds of ground below the hill, the first mists are sparsely forming. Hedgetops float down there, conspiring to divert the laws of physics. It’s not quite dark, and the light’s diffracted, bending through space and time. And then I see it – the brightest light of purple fire in the western sky, alternately revealed and then hidden behind the ridge. Transcending reality, just out of reach. It always is.
The softly pine-serrated silhouette of St Martha’s Hill lies ahead, rising up to meet the purple embers of the day. The brightness finally fades, and at White Lane the Drove Road is just a puddled tunnel of black tarmac, no longer giving up the tales of time. Across Halfpenny Lane, and into a darker tunnel still, of pitch black and tiring tracks. Then Pewley Down, and my old familiar route, descending back to the Saturday evening of a life lived now.
* * * * * *
Three days later, as I step out into the afternoon sunshine, the images are unfamiliar. It’s because I wasn’t here, not at the beginning. Only in the middle, and at the end. But this is where I choose to come, right now. On this October day that brings me to this place.
There’s a swirling breeze blowing through the trees today. These Crawley feeder roads and cycle paths look their best with beech and silver birch leaves brown, still clinging to their mother branches. The memory of a brighter season just about to burst, a burning blaze of energy, with withering death still kept at bay in the yellow autumn light.
The sixties houses and buildings here stand unchanged. Exactly as they stood on that autumn day, forty years ago. An unrepentant lack of change, straddling strange twist of circumstance to bring me now, four decades on, to make my living so near this hospital where you were born.
One door closes and another opens, and in many ways that’s true. You never saw me run. You never stood beside the road at 8 miles, 12 or 20, waved me into the seething throng of a London race, or saw me stagger home through Thames towpath torrents or snow-swept lanes. You never shared my tears of finish line joy and pain, or forgave my pride for a race well-run. You never did.
And yet perhaps you are the reason that I began to run. At first to free the spirit, to unchain the shackles of a loss. To feel the energy of a life that’s left, each step the furthest bound within the limits of this tie to Earth. Time goes by, and still I run, the reasons why so different now, and yet the taste of living every moment fully is just as sweet.
It’s an anniversary of sorts, today, and yes, a birthday, too. But there’ll be no candled cake, or fast-wrapped gifts for this birthday you didn’t live to see. Forty – a feared and regretted time of life for some, but a gift far too precious to want to wish away. Many years have passed, these seven years I’ve run, since you had to leave your summer days behind you. It’s another autumn now, and it’s not a wretched day, today, of fear or purple flame. A tear or two would be fair enough, but that’s life gone by, not life today.
And yet, you’re with me, you’re all around me, on each and every day I live. In the contours of the hill, the colour of the evening and the voice within my mind. In an eight year old boy’s unexplained, and unexpected, cry at bedtime. And in a miraculously forming and beautiful young woman, smiling to me with her mother’s eyes across the breakfast table. A task that’s started, but nowhere nearly done.
It’s life continuing. A life that started here, forty years ago, today. A life that ended, and yet goes on still. A legacy for tomorrow – two flames we forged from autumn leaves and sunsets so long ago, that yesterday which lives on, and runs through my today.
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16 responses so far ↓
SD // 12 September, 2007 at 00:56 |
Beautiful…and heart wrenching.
Roads // 12 September, 2007 at 17:51 |
Thanks very much, SD. Carpe diem.
Sweder // 15 September, 2007 at 11:17 |
I started this journey knowing it was going to be a tough read. Tough because I know you and I know how difficult it’s been (for many reasons) to commit this to ‘paper’.
I’ve struggled through so far, emotions bubbling and boiling right at the surface, but I’m so pleased I started – and grateful to you for publishing – this moving and unique confessional.
Love and Respect.
Roads // 15 September, 2007 at 12:37 |
Thanks very much, Sweder, for your kind words. I’m looking forward to catching up with you again soon.
Lady Luck // 23 November, 2007 at 18:19 |
I hope you don’t mind me quoting some words that seem relevant:
“Do you not see how necessary is a world of pain and suffering, in order to school an intelligence and make it a soul?”
Paramahansa Yogananda “Autobiography of a Yogi”
I am sorry that you and yours had to experience this pain – but you have grown your soul in the process. It shines out.
Very best wishes.
Roads // 23 November, 2007 at 19:06 |
Lady Luck
You’re right with that philosophy, Jan.
That quote reminds me of the words of William Blake, he who penned our English hymn Jerusalem.
‘Without contraries is no progression,’ he wrote. In 1793.
Character-building stuff, indeed.
sparkle333 // 19 March, 2008 at 07:07 |
You have a beautiful way of writing, and immediately I am engaged in the story, as though I am living it–not as a spectator. I am so sorry there has to be a story, but you tell it poignantly, and I can tell that you value every day of your time here. Your children are so fortunate to have you as their father. Lonnette
Roads // 19 March, 2008 at 11:50 |
Many thanks for your kind words, Sparkle.
My intention in writing about this journey is to take you there, right inside the experience, so that you can understand how it really feels to walk this path. And if I can even start to achieve that, I’ll be very happy.
Thank you for reading and for your support of this project. My book has important work to do – and I’ll be delighted if you wish to pass details on to anyone who might benefit from this story.
sparkle333 // 19 March, 2008 at 22:03 |
Roads: I read for several hours last night. I could not stop. It was so intriguing. I look forward to many more nights of reading your story. You are a wonderful, sensitive writer. Lonnette
Roads // 20 March, 2008 at 01:23 |
That’s excellent, Sparkle, and many thanks. I’m pleased you are finding the story so absorbing.
I look forward to hearing more from you as you progress through the tale. You’re very welcome here.
Goldie // 3 April, 2008 at 20:09 |
You write of your children with such a tender ache. My heart breaks for them and the loss that they must learn how to bear.
Roads // 3 April, 2008 at 20:56 |
Thank you, Goldie. Looking after children is a huge responsibility for any lone parent.
Children are adaptable and robust and resourceful. They can thrive, in unlikely circumstances. Mine certainly have, so you need have no worries there. But the enormity of taking up that task alone, and committing fully to it is not to be underestimated.
I have the greatest respect for single parents. They so often get a bad press, and they receive very little credit for carrying out such a challenging role with precious little consideration and support from society.
lirone // 10 July, 2008 at 00:33 |
I have been very moved by your story and am glad to have come across it.
What particularly stands out for me is the way you speak of finding that you did, in the end, have the strength to survive such grief. That there is a light at the end of tunnels that seem endless. And although you’re approaching the darkest part of your story, I will keep reading because I want to understand the journey that brought you back from the dark. Such an important human story.
I’ve come to know this unexpected strength myself from a very painful break-up. In most ways, I’m sure, it was much easier to deal with than a bereavement, but it hurt me very deeply and the recovery process has been slow, but also very revealing and strengthening.
There is a great strength in knowing that we can survive the things we feared would break us.
Thank you for having the courage to share this.
Roads // 10 July, 2008 at 13:32 |
Thank you, Lirone, for your comment and your kind words. You’re very welcome here, and I appreciate your encouragement and your empathy. We all have hard times to deal with in life, but as you say, there is hope to be found in every story.
I see you’re a writer, and an accomplished poet, too. I look forward to reading more on your site. Best wishes to you, from London, and spirits up.
Sheila Joyce Gibbs // 11 September, 2009 at 18:19 |
Lovely web site !
Let me know if I may share my story…hopefully to help others…
God Bless.
Roads // 11 September, 2009 at 19:22 |
Hi Sheila
Thanks for calling in again. You’ve told us your story here a few times now. We can recommend wordpress.com as a good place to set up your own site and write it all down !