And still I celebrate!

I don’t know how you have felt these past 18 months, but I have been ducking and diving around death. She has been lurking around every corner, invisible but powerful in her disguise. Death sits silently on the Tesco delivery. I am sure she is having a giggle at my attempts to wipe her out of existence with my sanitizers made by the local gin distiller. People transmit her so well onto petrol pumps as if they are invincible. I shut our country gates without a care and I catch her out by washing hands before the picnic sandwich, pleased that she hasn’t got me this time. I swerve off pavements into oncoming traffic to avoid her sauntering my way. I accumulate little triumphs and micro celebrations against this invisible enemy.

So we didn’t get it at first, we didn’t know the power of this miserable little virus, but now we know that it is waiting for us, especially if we let our guard down too soon. We can no longer duck and dive our mortality now we know she is here. The truth has arrived and we know we will all die. But just not yet we say in a whisper. We had better do some living first. Death, despite her finality knows that she is life affirming, affirming of you and me. So I decided to gather up some celebrations, just in case.

My yellow wellies have given me such delight. I now dance along the shore and stride through rock pools. Pleased that I am touching my toes and collecting seashells in my sixties. Each day I walk in the same place, same beach, same time and same good mornings. But the anticipation of a celebration is there each day as I emerge out of the wooded glen to a freshly painted vista. With relief the sea is still there as a changing picture of grey metal waves as the storms roll in, white crests and startling blue as the sun shines through. Cold water swims and warm water summer bathes. I am proud of my accomplishment to squeeze into a winter wetsuit; I am like a bobbing Christmas turkey, but celebrating nonetheless. It doesn’t matter who else is there. I can celebrate alone. I am greedy for the empty beach. You can keep your virus to yourself.

I have stopped noticing the container ships stacked up and languishing in the Forth, the cruise ships have disappeared somewhere unknown. I have stopped counting the waves ebbing and flowing, pretending each one is a death remembered by me. Each crash of the strong wave petered out and withdrew at a pace. Unsettling the sand and pebbles, churning them up from their peace, as each wave returned to the ocean. There are too many souls to remember and I don’t have time to count them up and anyway the tide will return before I have finished. Once it was 100,000 souls and now three million and increasing. So I have stopped death in her tracks. I can’t forget that in December there was that rainbow. A complete rainbow and the whole town stopped and said there is hope for us all.

I am celebrating every day. I am all right Jack. I am still here with my photos on Facebook of a life well-lived. Showing off my outside spaces and ever-changing garden. See me I am celebrating. I am still here, still standing. I am grateful to wake each morning. I am gloriously happy on my beach - child happy, as the weight of death is lifted off my solid sore shoulders. Lockdown birthdays are on beach and Zoom. Anniversaries are tucked under sheltered cliffs. Christmas is really too painful to record, but we did try a wee celebration in the December cold and put on our very positive faces that won't be beaten. When our lockdown birthday returns for a second time we slightly flinch but celebrate still. Our celebrations are slicker. Picnics and flasks are assembled with utmost ease. Sitting on benches dying for a cuppa is our social life. But my yellow wellies are beginning to look worn, misplaced perhaps.

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