I finally figured out...

what I get from going out to Wauchope cemetery every Sunday...apart from marking the week...

I was out there last Sunday and it was really hot. A dry heat. Cicadas were so loud I couldn't hear anything else.

As I replaced the flowers and washed the bird poo off the headstone, I felt an overwhelming sense of peace. When I stood up it felt as if time had stopped and the heat didn't matter anymore...nothing mattered which was as frightening as it was wonderful...if this makes sense.

The bush in Australian summer seems to hum, not just with cicadas, but with something...the quality of the air... the incredible feeling of age which has a way of putting you in your place. It can be a bit unnerving almost alien at times. I think just about anyone who has spent anytime in the bush or close to it has had this feeling. Its almost unAustralian to mention it.

Wauchope cemetery is just on the edge of town...so that you can't see any houses. It is surrounded by tall gum trees and I often see kangaroos out there, all sorts of birds...whoever chose this place for sacred ground knew what they were doing. It has a feeling to it and I get this every time I go there.

It really hit me this last time that what matters isn't how bloody rich we are, how big our "McMansion" is...none of it...all that is inscribed on the headstones of most I could see were little endearments of love. What matters most. What matters most is how we are and how we treat people, not how we are treated...though at a lesser time I will rail about that as well...and take pure bloody enjoyment in doing so.

Now, I know Don is no more out there than he is anywhere ...but its a marker and we all have our sacred ground. For some its the edge of the ocean, for some a favourite tree, whatever...and in a hundred years unless the land becomes too valuable and is desecrated for profit, the stones will crumble as they should...and in that hundred years there will be people who will pass by and wonder and have exactly the same thoughts as I do now...

It really does not matter all the things that we find such a worry...in the end it really does come down to the sort of love that is without conditions, and is compassionate and understanding.

That was something it took Don and I our whole lives to come to. I remember one day about 6 months before he was killed, that we had been bickering...for no reason...just two people in the same room for too long will do it...and he looked at me and said "lets just not do this anymore." I felt the same, because the ones who love you, and who you love are the ones who can hurt you the most and who you can hurt...

after this we never had one more moment of even dissent...it was like as if we were on the same page...not just some of the time, but all the time...should have known something was coming along...and in a way we did...

On Sunday out at the cemetery standing there in the incredible heat, I had such a feeling of peace, a moment of something "other"...that it has stayed with me. The hard thing to do is to remember that feeling.

Sometimes from somewhere if you stop for the moment, you are given a gift like this from somewhere...



.. then there was a really strange dream I had in the wee small hours which had me crawling out of bed crying actually asking out loud "what the bloody hell was that all about?" Scared the cat! It centered around the girls...and their having gotten to a certain age so that we had to plant their feet in the ground as if they were part tree part human. Of course they didn't want do this, and hundreds of images of them seemed to fall about me of them free and human. It seemed to go on for hours and there was a dreadful feeling of loss...loss of freedom for them... but the inevitability of them having to have their feet planted... even had me encouraging them, but knowing that when this happened I would lose them because they would turn into trees... So I told them I'd stay in the middle of where they were...it just got too sad and I woke up crying... Nothing to do with headache tablets or booze ...nothing I could think of which may have created this.

I get very nervous when I have these sorts of dreams about my kids. After the experience the other day I should know better than to have useless fears...but am superstitious enough not to discount these things