Ashes to ashes

I am tired. I have emerged from yet another bath. I sometimes take two a day. Baths are a blessing. Outside the sky is a bit clearer. Inside not so very much. I have finally done the meter readings for gas and electricity. The first reading involves lifting a heavy gate. The second manipulating a cunningly folded panel. I had to lift that heavy gate twice as I had been looking at the wrong meter, belonging to another flat. It turned out the reading didn’t match at all with what the online system told me. So I had to go back and check the right meter. I was proud I went down again and went through that gate yet again. In the end the readings were correctly done and submitted. They are the first ones I have done without KS. In the background there is considerable anxiety about the memorial service, numbers etc. But between all of this I sense my heavy and jittery heart.

Kamalashila’s body was cremated this morning at the Lambeth Crematorium. I have been feeling very stirred up and sad between trying to do those things that come with living an ordinary life, such as meter readings. He wrote ‘I am nourished through solitude and [… ] I die inside if I cut myself off for too long from that source…’. I feel sad he didn’t get the solitude he craved in these last years of his life, particularly the past half year. I hope he is getting some now. I feel sad that I was sometimes not able to grant him all the solitude he needed. I feel sad that sometimes I didn’t receive the companionship I needed. I just feel sad. No companionship at all anymore now. My eyes are dripping. Some teardrops reluctant to fully take the plunge. I look at the shadows the sunlight is casting in this room. I see the sharp shadows blur when the sun disappears behind the clouds. Then they sharpen again. Like the edges of my sadness.

I gave this to KS’s sister Esther this morning.