I got a call from a friend. “Are you alright? Everything OK?” Well, everything is OK and everything has fallen into chaos. As it always has been. But for the sake of reassuring my friend, I asked him why he was so concerned. “Well, because, that last post about Lady Corvina was a little out there, AC.” So perhaps a little back story might be appropriate, if for no reason other than to illustrate the creative (?) process that ameliorates my ratiocination.For those of you expecting a wine blog post, this ain't gonna be one.
I was cleaning my house and running the vacuum cleaner. As I move through the various rooms, there are emotive markers in them. In one part of a room there is always a thought that comes up about a friend who I haven’t seen in years. In another part, I will think of a cat I once had. And so on. Non-linear.
The day before I was visiting a friend of mine that lives nearby, who has been battling major health issues (to put it mildly). He lives right up the street where my wife spent the last month of her life in another battle many years ago. On Feb 17, 2001, she left us. During this time of the year, I think about that month, when we would spend hours sitting outside, if it wasn’t too cold, in the sunlight, looking at the trees. Or if it was, we would sit by an inside bird cage filled with scores of little chirpers. It was a bittersweet time, because she was dying and there was nothing any of us could do about it.
Back to the vacuum.
As I was vacuuming I heard this voice inside my head, the muse. She wanted to tell me a story. I wanted to finish cleaning the house. We compromised. I finished up quickly, with the inner deal being that I would sit down and make some notes for another time.Well I finished, and sat down. And that’s when Lady Corvina sat herself right down next to me.
The only similarity Lady Corvina has with my wife was their initials (L.C.) and a shared anguish. In the case of Lady Corvina, she became one with the huge lake of Amarone that took her essence and joined it with the other grape souls waiting their time for immortality. This time of the year when the grapes sit and wither I often tell the story of those grapes waiting in the cold and the dark for their moment. But over the years they have become anthropomorphized within my cosmogony of the world as seen through the lens of the vine and the grape. It happened often in ancient Greek stories and in old Italian folk lore tales. I probably read too much of that in the last 30 years. Anyway, that was how it played out. I only hope my wife is at peace. I dreamt about her last night, for the first time in a log time. She didn’t speak, she just looked at me, smiled, and shimmered.
I do think of my dear Liz, often, but especially this time of the year when it was so witheringly cold and dark back then, and we had to wait out the last days in those bitter times. Like I told a colleague who just lost her husband before Christmas, there is never closure. You just get closer to the end of the tunnel, where there is more light and, hopefully, warmth.
