Walking Ye Olde Forth Road Bridge

Wanderings along new and worn paths. Wanderings these days are simple to add to a growing collection. All you have right now is what’s on you and inside you. Unburdened by dusty ornaments. How much can you gain by taking away?

Setting off on foot, cosied in a warm jacket, scarf, cap and supported by decent shoes upon a route mostly driven. One route, no roads forking. It’s difficulty is it’s ease.

South Queensferry to North, via a now less used bridge. Buses, Taxis and motorcycles. Any ordinary Tuesday.

A big bus speeds by. It unsteadies what felt rigid under foot. A fright shakes your legs and churns your tummy when you stand, looking across murky water and listening to a train on a picturesque Rail Bridge. Feel it shaking when standing still, but not when absorbed in walking rhythm.

You marvel and beam at its architecture, construction and maintenance. Initial awe settles and you begin to free senses and notice thoughts more close and with ease.

Saunter shoreside, a cold wind to take an acne attack off your face.

This Walking wish, no longer a dream. Holidays do not impose a duty upon chores and your daren’t test lifeboats. But you wonder from high up here, how cold it is way down there and what might happen to your body when with water it connects. How solid a surface until your body strikes it and makes that noise?

Dizzy looking down, a strange pleasure. But fear strikes a step back. Bring your attention upon a distant yet close rail bridge. Eyes play tricks.

Just walk again, get on with it. Ramble indirect routes, but stay within boundaries of road and solid rail. Roam frequented lanes marshalled by thick white lines. One for pedestrians, another for bikes.

Glum tan water flows North, wintery solemn reflections upon depressions gate.

Turn around after a brief visit to North Queensferry. A listen under UNESCO’s Forth Rail Bridge. Its eerie and assuring that this structure is solid and works well.

Feel your calves and thighs stretch and ache scaling a hundred-plus steps. And walk free again at pace into a light sweat at altitude.

To health, gather thoughts and breathe slow. Thrash out emotions of recent events, no one to see tears flow. Happenings from which there appears no holiday. 

Clouds streak, twelve o clock shards of light escape and gain independence. Nice to make use of a break in showers.

You bow your head contemplating. Soon you’ll return to your house where a loving home was created. 

This life, these days, yet this wondrous life is fading, but still, much to do.

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What Did You Do?

Under a slow-to-shift low mood, you’re almost ready to begin. A spell cling’s on from last nights losing conversation.

You fix your glasses and sharpen your sketching pencil. Flip chart standing ready.

Chairs set up horse-shoe shape. A first sitting of a new mixed bereavement group. You worry about disengagement, apathy and indifference. Worry always.

People usually some get lost in their own disregard. Some fidget, are self-conscious and nervous. Others feign interest, while some appear eager. More are wary of others and sounding silly.

After introductions, expectations and setting guidance, you begin. We begin.

Initial hesitancy is understandable. Hold your silence. But always switched on.

People, in trickles, bear sorrow. Outpourings of anger and disbelief, sometimes non conversational, civil over convivial. You ensure everyone who wants to speak is heard. You respect those who wish still to remain silent.

Make feint pencil notes.

Some fidget. Some cry and tissues are passed around. Inside their essence lie looming consequences.

Experiences of work and familial change. Ideas of and for change. Alterations within incessant cogs, backwards, still and forwards.

Anticipatory grief. Personal ruptures and pain digging in.

Unknown and uncertainty, standing in your humble reality. A variety of self-soothing is passed around without prompt.

Some process as best they can, still lost in a fog of not understanding. Wish it wasn’t as consuming. So what to do? Deliver listening, show attention.

A serious disposition hangs heavy, predictably heavier at times.

Till death does depart us, a final breath splits living and dying. Glum suicidal thoughts. Best not to be here. Listen first. Safe to challenge, if necessary, second.

Pending death and escapes loosens how people show up. Lives, loves and loyalty ties aliveness. Looser is a precious choice, sunny, dark or clouded.

What did you do on this day? You watered a seed in others, and they in themselves.

You thank everyone.

How quick an hour passes. Aware of what stirs, offer to wait behind. See as many as possible next week. Thanks again. Your flip chart looks empty, yet its filled with pencil words. You invite all to look at it before leaving. Point to some professional literature on a table.

Pencil is light. Erasers are cheap.

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