Ginger Ale At Three

It's just after three am and I'm squinting in the glare of the fridge light looking for the diet coke I know we don't have.

I wake up at around three most days. Sometimes just for half an hour, sometimes till five and occasionally that'll be it for sleep that night.

For me it's a good time for ideas, for writing and for visiting with the dead.

I wonder if other people get up in the night at around this time and think about someone that loved them, that they loved, that aren't here anymore. I like the image it conjures; people alone but together, sat by lamp light with a cup of tea, remembering.

The only thing in the fridge is half a bottle of ginger ale which is only ever used as a mixer.

I drink it all and put the kettle on.

Lucy would have said 'lashings of ginger ale' because there was a bit of the St Trinians in her manner or maybe Enid Blyton. She said things like 'jolly' instead of 'fun' and 'supper' instead of 'dinner'. She had a very distinctive voice that even in life sounded like a memory of happy times past.

Having known each other since our teens she was familiar with my sleep patterns and in recent years would sometimes text me at one or two in the morning;

'Are you up? Can I call? I'm in a bit of a pickle.'

A pickle usually meant she'd drunk too much and had either done something appalling or was just feeling afraid of the world and wanting comfort.

When she'd done something appalling the telling of it would begin with;

'We were having a simply splendid evening when....' followed by a heavily edited account of her behaviour which I would have to chip away at until I got to the truth of it.

She could go from soft and warm and funny to a towering rage in the blink of an eye. When we were young we attributed it to her shocking red hair and an Irish streak. In later years it was the wine.

She was a year younger than me when she died last summer. Her sister called me and asked if I wanted to speak to her as she didn't have much time left. As it turned out she only had about an hour left. I talked to her as I'd always done, about our happy memories and her terrible singing. I told her that I loved her and there was nothing to be afraid of. Her sister said;

'She heard you, she was listening and smiling, she raised an eyebrow.'

Morphine though, who knows.
I miss her voice, her humour, her wicked laugh.

You never really have a choice what you write about. I prefer to be funny, I like making people laugh. But this is what wanted to be written today and even though some of it is sad a part of me is still trying to figure out a way to make you laugh, put a punch line at the end. We'll see.

It's not really Lucy I'm visiting with this morning, it's Mutti, my grandmother, and it's because of the ginger ale.

She always had at least half a dozen bottles of it in the fridge to mix with southern comfort. She called it a Soft Shoulder and she discovered this drink because of the terrible migraines she suffered in middle age. She'd feel one coming and take to bed. She'd hear this terrible screaming in the distance which it turned out was her. When she came to a few days later her forehead would be covered in blisters from the boiling compresses they'd put on her head to draw out the pain. How efficacious this was I have no idea and who 'they' were I can't quite remember. I hate that about my memory. I can't just call her and say; 'Who looked after you? Where were you?'

I think it was a boy. I think she was in the Maldives, or the Bahamas.

Afterwards they brought her a bottle of Southern Comfort and mixed it with ginger ale and it was delicious. Thereafter it became something she associated with feeling better, a soft shoulder to lean on.

She lived in Spain for as long as I knew her, she didn't want to grow old in the UK, but would drive to England every easter for three weeks and bring us a car full of gifts that she'd been buying and wrapping since her last visit. There would be books, poetry, fancy notebooks, cartons of cigarettes, wine and southern comfort. One year she brought me a big easter egg made out of cardboard and bright yellow. When I cracked it open like a pinata it was full of mini bottles of southern comfort and five pound notes.

She'd wrap the cartons of cigarettes in cheerful paper and if stopped at customs would magically transform in to a helpless old dear.

'They're dolls for my grand daughters officer. Yes, I wrapped them all myself. If you must open them please be kind enough to wrap them again...with my arthritis it took ever so long to....'

And they'd let her through. A seventy something year old fag and booze mule.

She'd tell me all about it whilst sitting cross legged in the living room smoking a fancy little cigar and drinking a long glass of whiskey with plenty of ice and just a smidge of ginger.

She lived to be just shy of a hundred. The only shy I think she's ever been.

She's been gone about two years now and I can honestly say I think about her every day. We don't forget them, we just wear them. Every loss adds to us in some small way and we adapt so that we can carry them with us.

When I'm paying for something I see her photo smiling up at me from my wallet and I always brush my thumb over her face before putting in my pin number.

As we get older the people who love us unconditionally become fewer, particularly if we don't have children, and I suppose that part of grief is selfish but I don't feel sorry for it.

I think of Mutti as being perennially a very young seventy five. Ninety nine is a good innings but I think she could have done without the last couple of years which took her independence, her hearing and most of her sight. She stuck around by choice, she was single minded and very stubborn and determined to outlive her dog. A tiny griffon that was devoted to her as all the previous dogs had been.

She was never afraid of death. She told me that once you get old it becomes less and less a thing to dread, that whatever came next would be an awfully big adventure. I think she was paraphrasing Peter Pan. She became a buddhist late in life and spent a fair bit of her early morning, yes, usually around three am, meditating. She outlived two of her three children and when I asked her how she coped with the grief she said 'I enjoy everything three times. A good drink, a beautiful morning, whatever it is, I enjoy it once for me, once for Paddy and once for Trudi.'
I miss her voice, her stories, her blind and fierce love of me.

Co-incidentally Mutti and Lucy were the last two people to regularly send me hand written letters. Another thing I miss terribly. But then I have my old red suitcase, bursting at the seams, filled with years of correspondence from them. From Mutti, Lucy, Dad, Uncle Dione, The Aunt and a few other friends who didn't get to grow old. I carry them with me wherever I go and I can visit anytime I like. I don't. But I can.

The birds have just started their morning ritual of abuse and the odd car can be heard outside. It will be light soon on another crisp bright morning. He'll wake wanting coffee and we'll wrap ourselves up and head out for a walk so I can look at the trees and the river and he can say he's done his weekly exercise. We'll point out dogs we like the look of and talk about the someday when we can have one too. A dog called Atticus and a cat called Catticus. Then we'll have breakfast at our friends restaurant and decide what to do with our day off together. What to cook, what to watch. I'll call my mum, maybe see her for a cuppa. Text my sister and probably my niece. Email my brother. Confirm plans with friends. What an embarrassment of riches.

And I'll carry my loved ones with me, my moveable feast, and enjoy everything at least three times. And then three am will roll around again and I'll tell them all about it.