Pam's things..

Pam had this cat picture in her living room. I found it in a box last week. I brought it back here after we had to sort through her things. I've put it on my dressing table. She loved cats, so do I. Her cat Ellie who she called Ellie Maypoles was adopted by her neighbour Alan, who Ellie had pretty much gone to live with anyway. Ellie is still having her love affair with Alan according to a friend here in Santa Fe who told me she'd met him by chance in Newport on her last visit there. We met this guy called Alan with a cat called Ellie who knew Pam! She said he never stopped talking about Ellie. Wow he loves that cat! Pam saw Alan get tazered by the police right outside his house not long before she died.

I Remember Sky..

2001. Outside the inn in Newport, Rhode Island where Pam was working.  She is hugging our nephew Billy and one of the Irish girls.  With Mum and Dad and that's me behind them.

I remember sky is a song I used to sing when I was an actress going for auditions for musicals.  “I remember sky. It was blue as ink, or at least I think I remember sky.”  It makes me feel like crying.  Like now here I am today finding life a pain in the ass because my back is aching like mad, it’s really dragging me down.  How can I be so misery-ish when I’ve lost you Pam?  I’m sorry.  You probably think, “Well girl enjoy life, you are alive and I’m not!”  Or perhaps you are thinking, “Actually I’m frigging glad it’s over and I don’t have to suffer backache like you today ha ha!”  Well, which one is it Pam?  I wish you could tell me now.  It’s such a bore when I’m ill, it makes me very serious and at a loss as to how to respond to it.  I looked at myself in the mirror and I said, “You don’t know what to do to look after yourself when you’re ill do you?”  And the answer was no.

I finally lay on the tile floor with the dogs and tried to be a dog.  I lay next to Paako and I lifted his paw onto me.  Anyway I got bored being a dog.

I remember being able to call you Pam when I felt like this and tell you about my funk and then you could do the same with me.  I remember that was before we started working on our codependence and then we thought we couldn’t do it anymore.  But sometimes when things got really bad we would.  Like when I first started dating Ron and he didn’t call me that day and I went into a pit of horror I called you and you said, “no Jane I don’t think I should do another tarot card reading for you because I’ve just done one and it said everything was great.  Why don’t you just feel your feelings instead?”   And I did.  And then the next morning when I called you again to tell you I was still in a state you said to keep on feeling those feelings Jane!  

But I haven’t been able to feel my feelings lately.  I feel cold inside.  Perhaps if I could call you, you would know what to say to me.  I think you knew me better than I knew myself.  I want to remember and I don’t want to, it hurts too much.  That is the problem you see Pam.  I don’t remember the details and that’s what bothers me.  Oh I remember the room at the inn and the kitchen down below where you used to bake your little muffins.  The flat upstairs which was so cozy and you letting me come and stay there with you even though it was too small.  I remember reading a book that I found in that little new age bookshop about Jane Roberts and Seth.  And we cycled around Ocean Drive me talking like the Irish girls who also worked at the inn and you laughed.  I kept calling you Dervla, do it again you kept shouting, do it again!  And you laughed and laughed.  You watched me cry because I was so upset about men and you saw me get drunk out of my head that night and throw myself at that man who owned a boat called the Pearl Necklace.  You were right there by my side Pam, my sister all the way.  Right up until the end.  I remember the problems you had too and the way we would talk and talk about all the problems and the dysfunction and when we went home that Christmas your face looking at me as if to say what are you doing this for?  When I was singing those carols so loudly and acting out like an angry daughter.  You looked at me with disapproval I remember, you keeping a lid on it.  Sitting there in a grey cardigan keeping a lid on it.  Letting it all run on.

And the film below is me singing the song...