Normandy

To leave the past behind. That old notion, which I have never believed or sought. My day announces itself not as newness or promise, but as a present burdened by my most recent past. Each day is, at best, an hour added to a shapeless time after Gladys, after the decision I took. I know these hours will turn into days, into months, into years until perhaps, one day, Gladys will not be the first image when I wake, and the last before I sleep. There will be, in time, a ‘leaving behind’ of sorts. But a fragility has entered me and I am not sure when it will go. It lingers over the things I do, the places I walk, the words I write.

I have come back to Normandy, a most-loved place. It is good to be here, as always. Outside the house, there are sheep and chickens and lush green growth all around us. There are ghosts in the farms and villages, the hedgerows, and on the beaches. The lads of the troop carrier group and Parachute Infantry Regiment who died only five minutes from the house, well, they are still there. I walked down the lane to see. An old Labrador from the neighboring house wanders over to visit each evening. I stroke her but this makes my heart ache.

Don’t get me wrong. I’m not miserable or wallowing. Normandy is always a good place to be, in time and place. There are walks and talks with a dear friend. There is laughter. Joy over a glass of good wine. Café talk. The deep pleasure of speaking French, remembering how it recasts me. I find an Amy who does not quite show herself in English. The Amy of the France years. I liked that girl, and still do. So no, this is not misery. It is recovery. It is to exercise the freedom and mobility I gave myself when I took the painful decision about Gladys. I know all this, and I am grateful for the release. It’s just this stubborn fragility, this sense that a single act, committed by me, altered the life of another being, a faithful dog, and altered the person I am. I am still learning to live with this self that has newly arrived, another self, brought about by a single, irreversible, unhappy, ever-part-of-me, decision.

So no, I don’t believe the past can be left behind, nor would I desire such a thing. I certainly would not come to Normandy if I did desire it. If ever there were a place struggling to leave the past behind, it must be here. No, it’s how to carry our pasts that is the question. And I cannot yet know how I will carry this one.

The ever-haunted Normandy has put on bright colours for the 80^th anniversary of D-Day. The town squares and markets are festooned with bunting. There are signs, new memorials, an excess of visitors in some places, and never have I seen so many American flags. They hang from houses, cafes, shops, town halls. The supermarkets sell shopping bags emblazoned with 80^th-anniversary reminders.

But this time, Normandy is haunted by a possible future as much as the past. The far-right has trounced Macron in the European elections, and he has responded by calling a snap general election. There are a few photos of Marine Le Pen plastered on walls alongside the D-Day commemorative signs and fluttering flags of the old warring nations of 1944. There is anger in the countryside that is not pretty or hopeful. And finally, as if these political turns were not sad enough, Francoise Hardy, voice of so many of our youths, has gone and died.

In the company of a good friend, I tiptoe beside this hard and real, public and private present. Our feet warmed by the sand, faces washed by salty sea breeze, we gaze at the sea. The Normandy beaches, even in June, even with all these visitors and events, are remarkably quiet. Often, we are the only walkers. I experience moments of healing. Under clear skies, the waves roll in, making their forever sounds and white caps for as long and far as I can know. They care nothing about the workings of time. What I do or have done matters not to the sea. The waves don’t mind me. The waves don’t mind my fragility. It’s a kind of peace.

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The sea: after/words and Francoise Hardy

The cure for anything is salt water: sweat, tears or the sea.  Isak Dinesen

Look at the sea. What does it care about offences?  James Joyce

When anxious, uneasy and bad thoughts come, I go to the sea, and the sea drowns them out with its great wide sounds, cleanses me with its noise, and imposes a rhythm upon everything in me that is bewildered and confused.  Rainer Maria Rilke