Last night i had a dream. I dreamed i was in my garden. I was in my garden and my garden was flowering as it is now, all cow parsley and cherry blossom, and honesty, and bluebells and forget-me-nots, it was coloured white, and purple-pink, and blue, and green, green, green. There was darkness in the dream, perhaps night falling or a storm cloud passing over. I am me, but i am also a younger me, a me with a baby, my third and my two older children are children as they were when my youngest was born. And my mother is there as she is now. And two police women. The police women are benign figures, comforters not disciplinarians, they are there to help. One is more distant, but one is talking to me, trying to understand some deep problem that i am trying to unearth. They are talking about depression. I cannot get past my words, after a while fall silent. When words cease to be useful communication they are not worth uttering. The police woman asks if she should talk to my mother to hear her story. The problem seems to go back to when my older two were very small and i was left alone to fend for us and we really did not come out of that situation unscathed. My younger one knowing no other life was less disturbed but my daughter and i learned feral ways, survival instincts that perhaps no longer serve us but which are ingrained in our being, as marks and stains and scabs and scars and still open wounds and ticks that we are barely aware of. But all is not bad. While the police woman talks to my mother, and the other is stood closer to the house by the lilac tree, which is covered in unopened flower, determining from a distance and held in a patch of light, I go further up my garden with my two older children and we begin digging around a rose bush that Jon and i planted. We are digging the rose bush up, not to kill it but to tend to it. As we dig we discover new buds forming on the roots, masses of of deep red sprouting shoots signifying new life and abundance. This is where the dream closes. 
Dreams, i think, are born out of felt knowledge, knowledge that is obscured and ambiguous. They rise like steam from a cauldron of soup emitting mixed scents that act as sensual guides. I had a dream the night before last too, that dream was not like steam. Some dreams are meant to be recalled and some lurk as dark ghosts. The dream i had the night before last was more disturbing. I dreamed i heard an intruder, the cellar door being opened. I dreamed i was frightened and went downstairs. When I went downstairs i could hear people in my garden and see the light of a fire, i was scared of the people and did not want to confront them for being in my garden, drinking beer and lighting fires and talking in loud aggressive tones, taking ownership of my space, i did not want them to see me, i went back upstairs and made myself wake up and go back to sleep. That dream felt like opening a jar of darkness and fear and waking up was like quickly closing the lid, was an "i don't want to know, i cannot stomach that yet" 
Listening to someone else's dreams is rarely as interesting to the listener as it is to the teller because the teller has the back story and the listener is given too much and not enough. Apologies, I am guessing that reading dreams is much the same but i am going to allow myself to wallow in self absorption and speak of a month of dreams i had last summer. 
If you've read my blog for a while, and i'm not really assuming anyone does, or that anyone gets much beyond the first couple of lines before they drift off to more interesting things. But if you do then you'll maybe recall my month of being a sculpture at the Waveney River Sculpture Trail last year. This was a change of foot for me, a new way of making art, of creating dialogue about art. It was also a coming into being, my being, a natural passage, but not an expected one, from the piece i had made for Cley '17 that I called Love is a Long Road, in which i tried to depict my experience of unconditional love, of loving unconditionally and allowing myself, maybe for the first time, to love myself without conditions, to love my self as a whole rather than cherry picking the acceptable bits and refusing to acknowledge my flaws, my fails, my ugly, allowing myself to see them and understand that i too am imperfect and yet still maybe lovable. Trust me, give this a try it is really hard to love yourself unconditionally. 
Strange things happened over the summer. of 2017. They maybe didn't feel so odd until after Jon's death but afterwards they have haunted me. Peculiar connections were made and creatures crossed my path or made impact, different creatures, a humming bird hawk moth, a swift, a hare. Forgive me if I am giving too much weight to common occurrence. My relationship with Jon had a  fairy tale quality and encounters with creatures are significant in fairy tales. As are certain encounters with people. And there were dreams that summer too. I cannot remember the story dreams, maybe i blogged them maybe i didn't, but what i can remember is night after night waking up to banging on my door, thinking "it's Jon at my door", it wasn't Jon, it wasn't anyone, it was me dreaming that Jon was banging on my door, i put it down to wishful thinking then. I wonder now if it was deeper runnel of quantum energy, a secret flow that ran between us whether we wanted it to or not. 
Over last summer, from April in fact, i had made myself give up on Jon. He had a new (maybe not so new) companion and I figured she would be better able to build a relationship with him if  his stupid ex was out of the way. I was a bit jealous. And he was being nasty about her, and to me, and goading me to fight. I didn't want to fight with him, i loved him. And i thought that if what made him happy was drinking and sleeping with women he claimed not to care about then maybe i had to let go and let him be happy. To back off, to withdraw. I actually paid myself not to make contact with him, like you'd bribe a child to be good with stars on a chart, or how you might give up smoking by putting coins in a jar every time you don't have a fag when you want one, i was aware that on some level i was hooked on Jon. 
Another peculiar thing that happened was discovering that a stranger-friend on facebook, a blogger i used to follow, was actually the partner of Jon's ex-wife. That was a very odd moment i wondered if he had known who i was but just because i read someone's blog doesn't mean they read mine so likely our closer-than-comfortable connection was unknown to both of us until that time. It was another fairy tale twist. I wonder if they told Jon that I had said he was the love of my life and that every day without him was pain. I doubt it somehow. The blogger told me to "move on" his words still echo through my head. 
I'm talking about Jon and maybe it seems like after visiting his grave in Gozo i should now wrap up, say nothing, let go, move on. And moving on isn't a choice. Moving on is inevitable. Layers of life accrue. Initially coming home from Gozo i felt as if i'd tied up some loose ends. Arriving in Malta airport i hit up against hard rock emotions, regret, pain, ifs, and this continued for several days until the day that we went to see Jon's grave and the village he lived in for the last few years of his life. After that i was curiously more at peace. I wasn't sure if the grave i'd given flowers to was his grave as it had no headstone and it was conceivable that his family had given me the wrong "address" but i said goodbye anyway to the man i loved and saying goodbye seemed to help. 
We stayed in Xlendi which was the place Jon had holidayed in just before we broke up. Our choice of residence had been determined by price and chance, but staying there allowed a circle to close. Jon had asked me to come with him but my focus was on my degree. I thought, wrongly, that we'd have plenty of time after. 
I wondered when we arrived if i had gone with him in 2013 if things would have turned out differently, if in a new space we would have recovered our well being, who knows it wasn't what happened and reality was something our brief trip allowed me to encounter. The reality of Jon's death, the reality of physical rather than imagined existence. Walking paths and streets that i knew from his emails that Jon had walked, in Xlendi, in Victoria, and Xaghra and also Ramla Bay afforded me a glimpse of the life we might have had, the life he actually had and how far imagination falls short. To hear the birds and the bees and the sea, to see the flowers and butterflies and quick lizards, to feel the warmth of the sun and talk to locals, to meet the light, and the sound of the wind and thunder and lightening and rain, to try living a little as Jon would have lived, initially as a holiday maker, then as a new arrival full of expectation, and then later still as an inhabitant was too much experience to crowd in to one week. And no one knows what another experiences, shared experience offers connection. But this was something Jon denied me. Maybe that denial was a kindness. I came home from Gozo feeling like i'd found a part of me i'd lost years ago, a piece of me that maybe Jon had kept safe for me by taking it away, a piece of me i found with him, in his company when we were beautiful together. Going to Gozo to see Jon's grave opened up a treasure chest of memories. I will never see him or speak to him again and that hurts but i was lucky to have the time i did with him. And maybe his leaving was the only way those memories could be held intact.   
Also, and this is perhaps something i should have begun my blog with, going to Gozo made me feel loved and thankful. Firstly to my daughter who took time out of her life to be with me and make sure i was ok, she was kind and patient and super organised and got us from one place to another with very little fuss, i am quite timid and a bit flittery and delicate, her sure-footedness was much appreciated. Also my lovely ex-husband drove us at the crack of dawn to Gatwick and picked us up just after the rush-hour from Heathrow. And my youngest son looked after my cat. And my mum paid for our air fares which were more expensive than i'd hoped and she didn't even wince when i told her the price. And friends who have troubles of their own messaged me to wish me well. Kindness makes a big difference.
Perhaps this is some of the new growth on the roots of the rose.  I love many people. I loved Jon, i still love him, but i also love Archie, and Jessamy, and my sons, Richard and Amis, and my grandchildren Luca and Elidi, and one love does not preclude other love. And love, i think, helps the world to keep spinning.