Slip Away

Dissolver of sugar, dissolve me,

if this is the time.

Do it gently with a touch of a hand, or a look.

Every morning I wait at dawn. That's when it's happened before. Or do it suddenly

like an execution. How else

can I get ready for death?

You breathe without a body like a spark.

You grieve, and I begin to feel lighter.

You keep me away with your arm,

but the keeping away is pulling me in.

Pale sunlight,

pale the wall.

Love moves away.

The light changes.

I need more grace

than I thought.  Rumi

When we were all gathered in Pam's house just before her funeral I plied her friend Sue with questions. Sue told me that a week before this moment, Pam's death, they sat together here. In this Pam's living room we sat with our grey faces where my sister spent many hours knitting and reading and watching television. With it's pea green walls, it's glass doors and it's gossamer curtains covered in bees. Sitting in her little white armchair she said to Sue a week before this awful shock, 'Sue, don't you sometimes wish you could just slip away?' Like she might have wished to do at one of mum's parties, slip out of a side door into the night, unnoticed. Like she used to do as a child, everyone talking up a storm when suddenly someone would say,'Where's Pam?'

Punch-Drunk Singer

Me on the left and Pam at a cabaret she arranged at The Slipper Room, New York

Singing has been a big issue in my family. From as early as I can remember I was forced to sing. Oh come, come Jane 'forced' is a strong word isn't it? Not in my book I say, twitching nervously. I have been blessed (or cursed?) with a robust singing voice, and since my mother passed it on to me she thinks she gets a say in what I do with it. Singing was the be all and end all to my mum. For God's sake don't tell her about this bloody post. Look mum if you do happen to read this, I love you it's just some of your hopes and wishes for me that were hard to take OK? Anyway the pressure was on from the start. I am the eldest of three girls and since Pam came in last she kind of got overlooked in the singing department not to mention everything else. A memory that encapsulates this for me is Pam as a baby in a baby bouncer. They’d just come in fashion so Pam got to test-drive one. She would droop over in this contraption as she fell asleep and just well hang there. A little baby hanging by a thread. Anyway being gentle by nature Pam didn't have a loud screaming voice so she mostly wasn't heard in our family.

I’ve got to the point in life where I’ve stopped singing. It has lost all its joy for me. I got all the praise and the pressure around it. I had a panic attack when I was seven whilst singing my first solo at Sunday school. It resulted in me singing the same line over and over as I watched the expectant grin on my dad's face turn into a look of horror. Then a teacher kindly led me away. This event may well have been a pivotal moment regarding my future as a singer. Anyway I’ve been pushed too much and now singing sticks in my throat. I’ve lost the will to sing. If I hear my parents complain one more time because I am not on the X Factor (English version of American Idol) I think I'll have to be locked away in a padded cell. This is how I feel at the mention of the S word now...

I did join a madrigal group last summer and this I enjoy, no overtones of Frank Sinatra here. Instead a welcome hey diddle diddle of country fayre a far cry from the crooning that now makes me feel like throwing up. The whole sorry business was summed up for me after Pam’s memorial service when we gathered at mum’s golf club. About six friends of my parents were left chatting with us when dad suddenly said, “Jane are you giving a song?” You know like it was any old party. When I declined a woman friend of theirs who runs a night club, grew up in the fifties and has severely latent and blatant 'Rat Pack' tendancies said, ‘Well I’ll say this much Jane, what a waste of talent!”  I should have said, 'Oh sorry Norma you are quite right,' grabbed my top hat and cane and started singing ‘Give me the moonlight give me the girl and leave the rest to me!’ That would have been so fitting don't you think?  

Pam on the other hand didn’t realize she could sing until she was in her thirties. She didn’t even try to sing before that, well it wasn’t her place, she was the flute and piano girl. So one night at our parent's house mum was watching the Three Tenors on TV, her then favourite. Pam started to sing along in the next room and proceeded to surprise herself by how good she sounded. Mum shouted out, 'Is that our Jane singing?' To which Pam replied, 'No it’s me!' That was the start of Pam singing and she didn’t stop. I was already well on my way to my current dried up singer on the shelf self so as far as I was concerned she could have it. You see there was also the small matter of us being a highly competitive family so this could have been a problem. But since it took the pressure off me I was delighted. Although it was becoming increasingly difficult for me to muster enthusiasm for the business of singing no matter who was doing it. I had to snicker to myself at parties during Pam’s coming out years though. ‘Friends’ of the family would strongly imply in my general direction that Pam was by far the better singer. That old competitive spirit rearing its ugly head again. Who was competing? Not me, I’d had a belly full. Still it was nice of them to remind me what a precocious, big-headed singer I used to be thanks to the grandiose praise that had been lavished on me by my parents in their hope that I live out their dreams and become the next Barbra Streisand. Funny thing, it turns out Barbra suffers from nerves singing on stage too. Have you seen the film Shine? Let’s just say I relate. Not that I am in any way as gifted as this you understand...just the film is about too much pressure on him from his father..

Anyway Pam sang and she sang and she sang after that. Like a bird. She could sing like a coloratura and go much higher and faster on the trills than I could. This might have had something to do with the fact that she could make her eyes go very fast from side to side too. Quite amazing to see, like a nature spirit. She made lots of opportunities for herself to sing. She joined a band for a while in New York, sang in church every week and in the last year before she died she joined a dinner theatre cabaret in Newport. She could always be heard singing and whistling in the house something I never did. She could sing opera and even got into a prestigious music college in Leeds, which she decided not to pursue but that’s another story. She loved to sing that’s the top and bottom of it. She loved it, she wanted it and she did it. I’m so glad about that now.

 I have been transferring DVD tapes onto my computer, the ones that aren't getting chewed up by my stupid old camera that is. Oh I have to save them! There is a lot of footage of Pam that I can't transfer for fear of ruining it all completely. I do have some though like the Christmas I spent with her at her place in Long Island in 2002. Watching this film is heart-breaking. It is like she's just walked into the room, as I watch I feel how totally and utterly whacko it is that she is, you know... dead.  WTF?  Honestly I can watch it for a minute and then I have to turn it off because it is so freaky. That Christmas, just the two of us, I spotted an old Jackson Five Cd so I put it on and started singing along loudly, 'Whoooo's lovin you..' I was in the Jackson Five fan club when I was a kid and used to sing my heart out to them. So off I bellowed somewhat territorially, well I had been in the fan club! Pam became furious, her eyes flashed. She went into her 'I'm the youngest and I'm always last in line' stuff.  Like I said at the beginning of this story, singing is an issue in my family.  

Below is a hilarious recording of me singing along to the Jackson Five just like I used to when I was a girl. I taped it last week because I figure Pam would want me to sing. So I'm singing when I remember to. Every time I listen to this it makes me giggle I hope it makes you smile too! You never know I might rekindle a desire to have singing be a part of my life again..



Want to hear something lovely?

Click below to hear Pam singing Somewhere Over the Rainbow, 2008

Valentine's Day

                                

    Red roses from Ron to me to you Pam..

   with love as always..

But to be frank, and give it thee again.
And yet I wish but for the thing I have:
My bounty is as boundless as the sea,
My love as deep; the more I give to thee,
The more I have, for both are infinite.

Singing the same tune..

Day 5 of being sick. Not up to writing stories for the blog, been reading other blogs and finished reading a book. I've been grieving pretty hard this past week, maybe it's because I'm ill and feel weak. I read a couple of pages of one of Pam's journals yesterday, after mum mentioned that she wouldn't mind taking a look at them. I didn't advise it. It was painful to read as usual, tears left me exhausted but then I felt a sense of calm after the storm. Later in the evening I read the same pages to Ron, he was reassuring saying that Pam's writing about her difficulties with me was positive. That she was individuating. I wonder if you could describe her death as individuating?

Ron said she sounds so like me. We were very similar women. Often I would call her or she me and we'd both been thinking the same thing or had bought the same clothes or had the same kind of dream. Our sister Angie says we had a special bond because we were so alike.  It feels like part of me has died. I'm glad I've got her journals even though they are so upsetting to read. I said maybe I shouldn't be reading them and Ron replied maybe you are meant to. Maybe I am. Maybe in time they can be my guide? To remind me of the path that we were on together. And perhaps I can let it keep me on track even though I'm on that path alone now.

These lines from Rumi seem appropriate...

Friend, I've shrunk to a hair trying to say your story.

Would you tell mine?

I've made up so many love stories.

Now I feel fictional.

Tell me!

The truth is, you are speaking, not me.

I am Sinai, and you are Moses walking there.

This poetry is an echo of what you say.

A Pamopolitan!

Ron and I are having dinner at Pranzo’s.  After we order I pick up a little table menu as we wait, glance at it and put it down.  A little while later a waiter brings two red-coloured cocktails to the young romantic couple on the next table.  I call him over and ask, ‘What are they having?”  ‘They’re Pamopolitan’s.’ he says.  Blinking I say, ‘What?’  He repeats  ‘Pamopolitan’s.’  ‘Are they on the menu?’  I ask.  ‘Yes, call me over if you want one.’  And he darts away busily.  I grab the little cocktail menu and scan it quickly, there at the bottom is a cinnamon Pamopolitan!  Well I never.  The reason for said name is the ‘pama’ pomegranate liqueur.  Well of course I had to have one, in Pam’s honour.  I often imagine her now when we are out having dinner saying, ‘Go on, have a drink!’  And this was one of those moments surely.  ‘Yes but don’t call me Shirley,’ I hear her saying!

This jogged some drinking memories. In our teen years we would plump for vodka and orange or rum and coke, always sweet drinks, Cinzano and lemonade, which Angie our middle sister sometimes still has, she never lost her sweet tooth.  Then we graduated to half a lager.  Not wine, wine in pubs is always crap.  

Over the last ten years Pam liked a glass of chardonnay with dinner.  I, on the other hand, gave up alcohol.  I was totally off it for five years.  Sugar was the problem, so I quit drinking. I didn’t miss it hardly at all, mind you I was being very strict with myself.  I was in nun mode.  I usually go into nun mode after some kind of excess, usually that was men not alcohol, but you can’t be too careful. Pam would always roll her eyes at me during such times. Oh Jane you can be such a schoolmarm!

I'm trying to remember Pam drunk. She didn't get pie-eyed in front of me.  She probably watched herself when I was around, as she didn’t want to get lectured by her bossy, over protective eldest sister.  My only memory is when we went on holiday with our parents to Tenerife, a Spanish island off the coast of Africa.  I was seventeen, Angie maybe sixteen and Pam was fourteen. One night we went to a bar without our parents and started drinking.  Pam didn’t drink yet as she was too young but that night she did.  I looked at her while we were having a good laugh with some people and said, ‘Oh God she’s drunk!’ She was rolling around and giggling, her long dark hair and pale freckled skin all innocent and squiffy, in the pink cheesecloth dress that she loved.  ‘Yikes, we’d better get you back to the hotel!’ I said and walked her staggering back to the room where she fell on the bed and passed out. Phew!

                                                              
                                                   Pam and Angie

Me and Pam drinking

We went a bit wild in Tenerife, well me and Angie did, Pam was a bit young yet.  We had mum and dad worried sick. One night I was strolling romantically with a waiter on the beach, it was getting late.  Next thing I saw my dad scanning the beach with his hands on his hips looking for me.  I grabbed the lad and ducked behind a sun bed.  Meanwhile mum was looking for Angie in a disco. The next morning at breakfast mum said,  ‘Blimey, I hope to God you lot are being careful in those discos.  Last night looking for our Angie I crossed the dance floor and got picked up three times!’  She needed to be worried. I nearly got raped one night escaping just by the skin of my teeth. And Angie was all goo goo gaga about a handsome young dude who told her (and she believed him!) that he was a brain surgeon. You should have seen him, a brain surgeon he was not. We went shopping one day and there he was working in a local boutique. Busted!

In the nineties I lived in London and Pam would come to stay.  I remember we went on a girl’s night out with some of my friends and ended up in a club near Piccadilly Circus.  We were getting drunk, well I was.  Pam was a little subdued, as she was shy around new people.  She told me she liked a young barman and I was all… go for it!  But she was too shy and sober… so I started flirting with him!  He was quite ‘fit’ as we used to say.  Since I was drunk I started doing my sex kitten impression, draping myself along the bar like a cat, pouting my head off and flapping my eyelids.  I must have looked like a right fool.  But to my delight he responded beautifully.  Oh well I thought drunkenly, Pam didn’t want him.  Little did I know that Pam was seething.  Before we left, the barman said to me, ‘I’m having a party tomorrow, want to come and help me blow up balloons?’  Want to help me blow up balloons?  I loved it!  He gave me his phone number and I was happy as Larry.  Pam and I got into a taxi outside the club and the driver proceeded to zoom like a fair ground ride around the streets of London.  He was driving so fast and I was so drunk that I was tumbling from one side of the cab to the other.  Pam got worried,  ‘Jane where are we going?!  Where is he taking us?’  ‘Oh it’s all right, he's sort of going in the right direction’ I said as I flew through the air too drunk to care and landed giggling in the corner.

When we got home we pulled out the sofa bed for Pam and I flopped down on it in a heap.  We chatted for a while but I soon started to fade.  I had to go to bed.  'Will you pull me up?’  I said, and held out my hand.  Pam grabbed it and yanked me up violently.  I shot forward and hit my nose hard on the arm of the sofa.  Blood poured all over the clean white mattress.  'Oh God, Jane I’m sorry!'  'Blimey Pam,' I said, 'you don’t know your own strength, I hope it's not broken.'  Feeling very sober all of sudden I said, ‘You’re angry with me aren’t you?’  She said that she had been furious with me all night.  She hid it very well!  ‘Pam why didn’t you tell me?  I’d have stopped immediately.’  She shrugged.  ‘God I’m so sorry Pam I thought you weren’t bothered.  I wouldn’t have done it if I’d known... well maybe I would.  I was so drunk, I’m sorry.  What a slut I can be.’ 'Oh never mind, it’s done now' she said sobering up from her anger as she watched blood streaming from my nose. We were friends again. Pam I'm so sorry I ever hurt you.  I love you more than anyone, I wasn't very good at showing it sometimes. I can't believe we will never go out and get tipsy together again.

I hereby encourage everyone to have a Pamopolitan.  To Pam!  Cheers Pam!  Look I'm doing my face from The Party!  The 'What is it?' scene.

If I could taste one sip of an answer,
I could break out of this prison for drunks.
I didn't come here of my own accord, and I can't leave that way.
Whoever brought me here will have to take me home.

Rumi

Born on the Fourth of July

"Your fight is just beginning. Sometimes no one will want to hear what you are going through. You are going to have to learn to carry a great burden and most of your learning will be done alone. Don't feel frightened when they leave you. I'm sure you will come through it all OK."

Said to Ron Kovic by a priest in Da Nang.

Pam died on the third of July.

Mystic Us

My sister Pam went to see her first psychic when she was 21.  Mum went first, then she took us then we took some friends.  One of my dearest friends Sue, an unlikely candidate for this kind of thing, came running out of her session with "Ivor" and burst out, "You should have heard what he said about you Jane!  Oops he told me not to tell you!"  And she slapped her hand over her mouth dramatically as if to say, not telling.  I said, "You better bloody tell me!"  He had said that I wouldn't meet the right man until I was much older.  Great!  Actually it turned out to be true.  He told Pam she would live in America, he also told her she was psychic.  She went to see various psychics over the years, all of them told her she was psychic.  She never thought she was but she had a kind of knowing was how I described it.  She just knew.  One time she had an out-of-body experience after reading a book on the subject which scared her.  Pam was always into metaphysical stuff, well she was a Scorpio.  I on the other hand got into it later on.

When I was 39 I was having some sort of midlife crisis.  I resigned from my job selling apartments in Covent Garden, London due to clinical depression.  I did this work in between acting jobs but ended up doing it full time hence the clinical depression.  I got involved with The Landmark Forum a personal development course that used to be called EST but left because they maintained that 'life is empty and meaningless' which kept giving me a severe migraine.  I then got involved with a female new age guru type (it's not sounding good is it?) which is where I met Nikki, a tarot card reader. "Do you teach tarot?"  I asked her one day.  Well of course she did for a little matter of 100 pounds. And so, since clothes shopping wasn't having the same hit anymore, I began a spending frenzy focussed on healers, astrologers you name it. I started going to Nikki's flat in Swiss Cottage to learn how to read the tarot.  I liked her flat she had new age paraphernalia all over the place.  Buddhas, angels, crystals, altars, candles, incense the lot.  Mmm mystical and goddessy and all that jazz.... much like the picture below.

 Nikki used the Rider Waite deck to teach me, the cards that she worked with.  I was certainly enjoying learning about these cards, their ancient symbolism intended to assist the hero on his journey. I didn't feel like a hero but I could have used some help on my journey! At the end of my training Nikki got me to try what she called psychometry.  You hold an object and try to get some psychic information from it.  She started me off with photos.  She put a photo face down so I couldn't see the picture and told me to put my hand on top of it and 'tune in'.  She kept saying not to judge what came into my mind, to trust what I saw.  I remember the first photo very well because what happened surprised me.  I lay my hand on it and closed my eyes.  Shaking my head and shrugging unconfidently I said, "Well I'm kind of getting a woman in a long white robe and she's hugging everyone."  I looked at her and smiled doubtfully.  She smiled back and turned over the card giggling.  It was an Indian woman dressed in a long white robe!  "She is Amachi,"  she said.   I didn't know her.  "Is she famous?"  I asked.  "Well she is quite famous for what she does... she hugs people."  "You what?  Hugs people?  Honestly?"  I got it right, I was amazed.  "Let's do another!"  I said excitedly.  I went on in varying degrees to describe something of what was in the rest of the photos.  Another photo that stands out was when I got an image of the circus.  Nikki kept saying no and finally turned the photo over.  I looked carefully at the picture of a man standing by a wall.  "There!  I said, "In the background.  Look he's standing in front of a poster of a circus!"  Nikki missed it as her mind was focussed on me figuring out who the man was.

"Right,"  she said, "I want you to do a reading for me now."  I became nervous saying, "Oh no I don't think I'm ready, I'll probably get it wrong."  "Don't be so hard on yourself Jane, it's just practice."  She handed me a photo of her mother who had died and I tuned in.  Straight way I got a very strong image of bunnies, rabbits. "She's holding a baby, she's nursing it happily from side to side and smiling like she's giving the thumbs up."  Then Nikki gave me a photo of her grandma.  "Again," I said "I'm getting a child, something about a child but I see sticks, like sticks knocking against something, like there's some trouble....  I don't know Nikki, I feel like asking you...you're not pregnant are you?"  I laughed amateurishly.  "Actually Jane I am."  "Get lost!"  I blurted out totally stunned.  "You're bloody joking!"  "No Jane, I did a pregnancy test this morning and it was positive."  "Honestly? This morning?  Really?  You didn't."  "You see Jane I told you you're good at this."  And it was true, she was having a baby. "I am going to have an abortion," she said.  "But your mum is all for it!"  I protested loudly, surprising myself a little.  "Yes but Jane the sticks are right, it is a troubled situation." So Nikki had an abortion and I felt strangely disappointed.

Of course my sister Pam was getting a blow by blow account of these sessions over the phone in America where she now lived (I wonder why!  Psychic reading by any chance?)  When I arrived in Newport RI a couple of months later to spend the summer with her, Pam had me holding people's watches, doing tarot readings galore!  I was mortified, sitting there holding some bloke's watch as not a thing came into my head.  But Pam, not bothered about being 'cool', pushed me into it with unabashed awe and wonder.  Still it didn't seem to work the same and I was dead uncomfortable and embarrassed as hell doing readings for people so I put my foot down and told Pam she could copy all my notes from my tarot lessons, let her read the damn cards! Anyway she was the one who was supposed to be psychic, not me! One spooky thing sticks in my mind from that summer.  Pam kept getting me to do tarot readings about her relationship with Keith.  He was her boyfriend at the time and they were having plenty of difficulties.  They split up for three years before they got back together and got married.  Anyway I would do little five card spreads over and over for her. We would constantly get the Death Card and the Tower card.  It was weird. Nikki taught me that the Death card is hardly ever negative, that it means the ending of something, transformation, major change, a snake shedding it's skin.  The Tower is sudden, bolt out of the blue change.  Life falling apart, a shock that feels like something has been taken away from you. Pam and I would end up shrugging unable to figure out what it meant. Pretty bloody obvious now what it bloody well meant. In this case death meant exactly that, death. I sometimes think back to us doing those spreads together like little girls playing.  If only I had been a real psychic, I could have warned her.

A few years later Pam went into a little new age shop in Long Island where she was living and the owner said to her, "Why don't you work here and do psychic readings?"  "Me?  I'm not psychic."  Pam said.  "Oh yes you are.  You can do it."  And the owner marched Pam into it (as Pam did with me that summer in Newport) and set her up in a corner of the shop like Gypsy Rosalee.  "Thing is Jane," Pam told me on the phone, "I'm getting it all right!  This lady came in with her husband and I started describing an old woman in red-framed glasses in a red gown, next thing the lady burst out crying and said, "That's my Grandmother!"

Over the years that we 'dabbled' Pam and I visited Glastonbury a few times.  A supposed spiritual hot spot.  Pam visited this place on her own one time. Below is her word for word account of breakfast at The Barn.

Breakfast Scene

Woman: (female, mid-fifties, sick of not getting enough attention)  Do you want to know what I do?

Pam:  Yeah, what do you do?

(Interruptions from other guests)

Woman:  So do you want to know what I do?  I'm a Shaman and I work with stones and do lots of exorcisms.

Pam:  Do you?  Do you do exorcisms?!!

Woman:  Oh yes.  That's an interesting stone, what is it? (pointing to Pam's ring)

Pam:  I'm not sure.  That's a lovely ring. (pointing to shaman's ring)  What's that stone?

Woman:  Actually there's a funny story about this.  It was interesting what my friend picked up when she held it. Here, hold this. (she gives it to Pam)

Pam:  Oh, er, I won't get anything from it.  I feel daft.

Woman:  Go on!  See what comes.

Reluctantly and embarrassed Pam holds the ring with closed eyes sighing while the others chat.

Pam:  Well the thing that comes up for me is meridians, blood flow and the heart.  Is that right?

Woman: (shrugging irritably)  I don't know.

Pam: (feeling a fool) Oh.  Hold my ring and see what comes. (She hands her ring to the woman)

Woman:  Oh this needs cleaning!! (thrusts it back patronizingly)

Pam:  Oh does it?!  How do you do that?

Woman:  (irritably)  I don't know.

Pam: (feeling a fool) Oh.  It's a shame we haven't got one of those crystal books.

Adrian (B&B Owner)  I've got one...here. (He gives it to Pam)

While they are all chatting Pam looks up the woman's stone.

Pam:  Eh!  I got it right!  It's about meridians and the flow of blood through the veins and the heart!

Woman (coldly)  Could you pass the muesli?