One of the accompanying losses to the loss of Steve has been the loss of the ability to sustain an extended portion of time of reading. I had coffee recently with a pre-Steve friend. She mentioned a title of a book by an author I loved, but one I had not read. Yet.
So I borrowed my mother's copy of China Court by Rumer Godden. And each day I find myself able to stay engrossed a titch longer. Two nights ago I read this:
"'Memory is the only friend of grief,' Alice, the village girl who comes as maid-companion to Tracy, writes that on one of the tombstones she designs. Alice likes ot draw tombstones for all the people she knows and Tracy colours them from her paintbox. 'Memory is the only friend of grief,' writes Alice. Tracy shows it to Mrs. Quin who says it is not true.
Even when one is stricken, much remains; often creature things; drinking good tea from a thin porcelain cup; hot baths; the smell of a wood fire, the warmth of firelight and candlelight. The sound of a stream can be consolation, thinks Mrs. Quin, or teh shape of a tree; even stricken, seh can enjoy those. To hold a skeleton leaf, see its structure, can safely lift one away fron grief for a moment, marvelling; and sunrises help, she thinks, though sunsets are dangerous, and moon and stars; they stir too much. Shells are safe, and birds and most little animals, kittens or foals especially, for they are not sentimental. Dogs sometimes know too much, though it is then, after Tracy, that she gets a new puppy, Bumble. "I have been happy in food," Mrs. Quin is able to say. How ridiculous to find consolation in food, but it is true and when one is taking those first steps back, bruised and wounded, one can read certain books, Hans Andersen, and the Psalms, Jane Austen, a few other novels. Helped by those things, life reasserts itself, as it must, even when one knows one will be stricken again: Tracy, Stace, Borowis, those are her private deepest names." (p. 79)