I started my blog in 2011 with ideas that I might one day write something useful, but it has really metamorphosized into something mundane: the musings of an average fellow living in Australia in the first quarter of the 21st century. Nothing earth shattering or groundbreaking. I enjoy it and I leave something for those who come after to me to muse about. I often wonder about my own forbears, who they were, what they thought and wish that I could reach out and find something of them, I guess to try and find something of myself. So, I write this blog for posterity and hope someone gets some insight from it in the years to come.
I have written it before but will reiterate that most blogs die and the internet is filled with the corpses of blogs that people lost interest in writing or fell by the wayside for other reasons.
Linda’s journey of course revitalised this blog and I know many joined her along the way, and a few have stayed the course since her passing to see how I am going which I appreciate.
I guess the thought of writing a memoir was never far from my thoughts and I was encouraged by Linda’s cousin, a remarkable lady and no mean author herself, to think about doing it. I wrote an opening, an introduction of sorts and I am going to share it today. It’s rough. It’s raw but see if you think you might keep reading if I write anymore:
Look at Those Beautiful Mountains
A Memoir by Matthew Sumner
To Linda…who loved me the best
July 2022
It was a sombre drive home. The oncologist had laid it out plainly. Stage 4 metastatic breast cancer. Linda played it straight faced but I could feel myself wobble. The familiar feeling you get as the tears well up. I managed to hold myself together…just. I doubt it really hit either of us in those first few moments, those now precious seconds. Linda was terminally ill. No one comes back from here.
“How long do I have?”, Linda asked the old professor. He must have had that question thrown at him a thousand times over his long and distinguished career and yet by the look on his face it pained him to answer it. They don’t like to be pinned down on such things.
“Two years”.
I can’t remember now what it was like to leave that office that day and wait patiently at the reception desk to be checked out. The memory of the lift ride down to the first floor and exit to the car park escape me…. we have done it so often now it all just blurs into a mosaic of memory. Negotiating that horrid car park and driving out onto the road past the hospital was a chore we surely completed…but I can’t remember exactly how we did it. But I do remember the crushing feeling that life would never be the same. The plans we had to retire early, the riverboat cruise on the Rhine we had planned for the next year, the endless days of fun and laughter we would surely share together with our little grandsons…hopes now all crushed like dust and blown away by the wind.
The usually busy road home was quiet and a black cloud of despair hung over us. Linda broke the heavy silence. “I’ve had a happy life. There’s been the obvious hiccups of course…but I’ve enjoyed it.” It occurred to me that it was the first time I had ever heard anyone say that. We crested the hill past Long Gully Road and all of a sudden, the Tuggeranong Valley lay strung out before us, the majesty of the Brindabella ranges laid bare, blue sky crowning the picture, our home showing off again. Linda’s gaze reached the distant ramparts and as we headed down into the Valley, I knew the words which were about to fall from her lips.
“Look at those beautiful mountains.”
So, there we go. Upon reading instructional manuals on writing memoirs, it seems you shouldn’t start with the protagonist’s diagnosis when writing of such things, but I guess I was just looking to put something down.
It’s a lot of work and realistically it may never get written, but the idea is still in my head and with a bit of time on my hands-you never know!
Feel free to leave a comment but be gentle!
Take care.
Strange Notations From a Laborious Life 