Saying YES… to What?
The preceding pages give the background to my being in Mpande on the Wildcoast at a tantric workshop. I had returned from Tanzania and flown to East London almost immediately. I was, quite frankly terrified of further contact, or any physical contact. A weekend of exploration, of letting go, and allowing myself to be in an environment of sacred sexuality was what I had called in for myself with a smallish group of strangers. J collected me from the airport on my return, bemused and a bit intrigued by where I’d been after Tanzania, and not a little awed at the pace and scope of my life.
This was the last week of May 2009, and Ronald had told me he was taking a week off to go to Brazil; his third or fourth meeting with a journalist, a young single mother who had set her sights on him (another cliché ). He had had a sense of gravitas in our last skype call the week before in Tanzania. He was not buoyant. During all the years, I had been his excuse for no permanent engagement – the reason why he could remain a butterfly and not commit to anything more lasting, except with me. But now, something had shifted.
We had last seen each other in October 2008, and with a total of eight months apart, much growth and soul-searching had taken place. My process with the sangoma three months earlier of consciously cutting the cords which bound me to Ronald had clearly put me, and therefore our ‘us-ness’, into a different space altogether.
The final week of May was hugely eventful. There were deep and powerful energies at work. On Saturday 30th May, fifty-five whales beached themselves on Noordhoek/ Kommetjie beach sending ripples through our psyches. Waves of pain and loss and a plethora of emotions and responses of all types. Conflicting passions, opinions and an overwhelming sense of grief mixed with disbelief.
On that same night my tenant, now friend, downstairs was having a small dinner party which turned into something very different with a group of weird strangers arriving and ELF vibrations[1] thumping out through the ceiling up into my bed! Very negative energies; I felt nauseous and impotent as this dark energy engulfed my home and sanctuary.
The next day, Sunday, J came to lunch, the first time I had really invited him and we had a talk. Quite direct, open and honest. And we/I talked about my marriage to Ronald and our moving onto different ‘trajets’.
‘Tomorrow, 1 June’ I said, ‘will be our twenty sixth wedding anniversary’. I had my return ticket for ten days later when we still had a holiday booked to Corsica for the 13 June. Our usual anniversary planning. A car had been hired and tickets booked with EasyJet.
J was solemn. ‘Are you seriously considering separation? Twenty six years is a long time to be married’ – (or something like that).
What flew out, unambiguously for the first time, was ‘Yes!’ It was clear. I was clear. And the clarity in the message was received in the ether and traveled to reach a part of Ronald, whom I assumed was almost back in Thonon-les-Bains after his trip to Brazil. Yes. I had said Yes, I was considering separation from Ronald. I had verbalised it. I was now prepared to live my life without Ronald, and we would discuss all this when we met up in a week or so. I had no idea what I had agreed to, or what was now being set in motion, orchestrated in the higher realms. This greater mystery we can only glimpse from time to time.
Fortunately, he had to leave for family reasons, and I was left alone on Sunday afternoon at 15 pm. I went downstairs to play my grandmother’s beloved Bechstein, which I always did when I found myself on a roller coaster. Now, the tumult was inside of me. I played… hugely….loudly…emphatically…dramatically. Later that evening my neighbors inquired who had been playing? The music was so out of character!
And then, what? Waking up alone on Monday, 1st of June 2009, our twenty sixth anniversary, there was a certain sadness in me. I felt a vulnerability, a tinge of loneliness, an unusual feeling for me as I was accustomed to solitude. But this feeling was deep and somehow different.
At the beach I asked Christa whether I might borrow her late husband’s accordion? I had a longing to play the instrument, something different, a different ‘voice’ and expression of heart. I collected it from her house and went home with it, to await the anniversary call from Ronald, which didn’t come. I called him and left a message, trying to sound bright and upbeat, wondering if I had got the date of his return wrong. But then I remembered it was a public holiday in France, and he was due to arrive this day.
What happened next, almost defies imagination. It was about 4pm. and I was sitting in a doctor’s waiting room. I received an SMS from my sister and then one from Beth re: Air France disappearance of the flight from Brazil to Paris.
And the little question ‘Was Ronald on the plane?’
Numbness. An SMS from J. I replied with the news I’d just received and then I was at his cottage on the phone to Air France, to Ronald’s brother, and I was floating. Numbness. Words are inadequate.
I remember J cooked me a meal (polenta and broccoli), drove me back to Kalk Bay, leaving Kay’s car, which I’d borrowed to be collected at some future time. And then the vigil began. I sat, held in the embrace of my two young loving tenants, Andy and Kay, candles lit and waiting for news.
At around 11.30pm it was clear. Ronald had been on that ill-fated plane. He was boarding the plane when I played my furious, frenzied outpouring the day before. Air France Flight 447 never reached Paris and the world held its breath. Passengers from 32 countries were on the plane and the feelings following the news reverberated around the globe – disbelief, denial, then numbness and a welling up of grief.
My return ticket with BA was now re-booked for that same evening of 1 June – and as the universe conspires to facilitate things with grace and ease, my dear friend Rose was on the same flight and escorted me to London. I was then guided through to Geneva, arriving mid-morning on 2 June and was met at the airport by Air France staff, my sister Bev and brother-in-law, Eric and Beth.
I was flown to Paris immediately and Beth accompanied me. I was in a daze. A service would be held in Notre Dame cathedral for the families of the victims. I was carrying a long-stemmed white rose from Bev for Ronald. We met up with other members of families at a hotel and then in a cortege of buses moved through the streets of Paris with an escort of police on motorcycles at a speed only seen in movies of a police chase. I was seated next to Philipp, my brother-in-law from Zurich. We clasped each other’s hands and stared out in disbelief.
***
Returning to Thonon-les-Bains after the ceremony in Paris and a night in Geneva with my sister and brother-in-law at the Hotel Ambassador where they had booked us a room, I slipped into a fog. The Ambassador Hotel on the lake of Geneva was where Ronald and I would stay before he left on missions, and the last time had been when he left for Angola in August 2006. Now on the terrace, feeling his presence (or was it his absence?), we drank several toasts to him with Kir, me clutching the white rose, which had accompanied me to Paris and back.
I now found and felt myself under the guidance of Beth’s watchful eye, very practical and anticipating what I would need to do, and what I would need to do it with. She had been through this when Roger died, nine years previously, but he had been very ill for over six months and the circumstances I found myself in now were shockingly different. A sense of the surreal. Unreal, a dream-like quality to my life and how I moved through the motions of my day…
And getting back to our apartment and finding it as he had left it prior to his departure ten days before. Depressing. It had an air of depression. It was unkept. Not too dirty, but the toilet did not function, and the water had been turned off. There was nothing in the fridge, which was always abundantly stocked when I was there! Nothing! Oh Ronald. There was no joy. Despite the luminous quality of the apartment, with windows everywhere, there was no lightness.
His book collection had grown. I noticed the shelves reflecting his passion for 17th and 18th century French books on social and political thought. A small but interesting thematic collection, which included a couple of rare editions of Voltaire and Rousseau. He had obviously started to catalogue his collection as there were notes and photographs in a journal on his desk. Ronald was an historian and a political scientist, and his information was well ordered and classified. He always had a tidy desk, cleared of clutter when he went to sleep at night. No unruly piles of papers.
On his neat desk I found the card and quote of a plumber, whom I called immediately. He said Ronald had already ordered and paid for the toilet before he went away. The replacement had already been delivered and he was ready to install it the next day. Grace and ease. I found myself thanking Ronald once again for his foresight in organising this small but important detail. Because in a week or so we would have some fifty people climbing the three flights of stairs for a musical evening in his memory.
[1] ELF Extremely Low Frequency vibrations are the thumping sounds which passengers in overcrowded taxis are exposed to. ELFs are known to affect the body chemistry… changing behaviours…