It is exactly a year since my partners mother died and 11 years minus a day since my own mother’s death. This awareness of anniversary gives me a strong sense of time passing and life changing around me. And it’s February and cold which makes me want to stay indoors and stare into space. Next week starts Lent or the Quaresma as it is called here. Traditionally it is a period of 40 days preparation for Easter. The three traditional practices are prayer, fasting and almsgiving. This is the first year I have felt such a strong urge to participate in this ritual, but in what way? I am trying to create a daily meditation practice – sitting or walking and making space for some inner peace.  I have decided it is time to take a break from wheat products and sugar.  I’m not good at self denial but perhaps now is a good time to stop trying to fill myself up and instead, feel the emptiness. I want to test my will to change. I also like the idea I saw somewhere on the internet of having a day/ a week/perhaps a month or more of saying yes to people’s requests for help. Letting go of the feeling that I don’t have enough -time, money, energy – just saying yes and helping when I can.
A friends mother died this week and we went to the Tanatori to spend some time with her. Have I written about these places before?  This was the third time I have been to one and I now understand a little better what it is all about. Usually after a death there will be two days when you can offer support to the family at the Tanatori. They tend to be tasteful but sterile places, each family has a room to itself and people spill out into the halls where there are chairs and tables. The death will be recent – that same day or the one before so people are raw and it is a chance to spend time together before the actual funeral. The person who has died is also there but there is no need to see them if you don’t want to or perhaps didn’t know them.  The Tanatoris are fairly recent and in the past the community mourning took place at home. I don’t know when the custom changed or why but I can see that it brings people together and when some friends of mine came all the way from Barcelona to see us in the Tanatori after my mother-not-in-law died it was a huge comfort

Funerals in the UK don’t happen so quickly – there are days of preparation and the actual funeral ceremony is the time when friends family and neighbours come together. Afterwards there is food and, hopefully, whisky or a cup of tea and a sandwich. Here refreshments are not part of the process but perhaps this was lost in the transition from home to Tanatori.
I don’t want to sound morbid but I do ask myself sometimes what would I want for my funeral if I died while I was here in Catalunya? And how would my friends and family be able to get here in time?

When you move country these things too go through your head – or through mine, at least in February.
I notice a reluctance to publish this post – I know many people don’t like to talk about or think too much about death. Sorry if this is you……but for me it is part of life and not taboo.

Just after 11am and the two minutes silence,  I walked up through the field outside my house to get some fresh air as I had suddenly felt very dizzy and sick.  I listened to the dongs of Big Ben and shared the silence while lying on my sitting room floor while the room whirled around me.
I think it was overdoing it to go dancing tango last night – not 48 hours after the anaesthetic!
At 11.11 I took these photos of the dogs, some rowan berries and the rather grey skies which were covering Penwith today

 I like the number 11 and remember spending another special cosmic moment ‘The Harmonic Convergence’ at Avebury stone circle in Wiltshire.
Can’t now remember why but then there was also some talk of the potent energy of 11.11

granollers is lovely and peaceful at lunch time. especially now as so many people are away on holiday. and at last the sun has broken through the clouds.

the final day of summer school. music. food. a film we made. dancing to On the Floor. clowns. and we all added to the mural. thanks to ideas from andy warhol we ended on a high note and all the goodbyes included see you next year1

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