Daisy: May 2020

I’m not going to lie – despite the fleeting moments of hope and elation, I’m struggling. I know I’m not alone in that. The world is in mourning now, not just for the ones the pandemic has taken from us but for the life we thought we knew, the freedom we used to take for granted. I count my blessings every day, reminding myself how lucky I am. Instead of being locked down in my lonely London flat, I’m having the adventure of a lifetime. In this isolated place, which is probably a lot safer than most other places on the planet right now, I can enjoy the freedom of walking in the hills, working in the fields and visiting the Valley of Flowers to watch as spring turns to early summer there, bringing the rains, and the blue poppies begin to bloom. I’m surrounded by new-found friends and family, who couldn’t be kinder and more generous. Violet’s words bring me a new-found appreciation too, a sense of gratitude for where I am.

But the price of that freedom is being trapped here, thousands of miles from home and from the people I love the most when they are suffering. There’s been no proper funeral for Davy. He was taken in a body bag to the crematorium, straight from the makeshift mortuary set up at the hospital. Under lockdown rules, no one else could be there. And so Mum has told me she feels stuck in a kind of limbo, unable to mark his death properly and unable to grieve properly until his ashes can be returned to Ardtuath instead of sitting on a shelf at the funeral director’s offices.

I told her about the puja for Davy and sent some photos of the flickering butter lamps, the smoke from the incense and the monks in their burgundy robes. She listened carefully as I described the ceremony and the traditions surrounding it.

‘I love that idea,’ she said. ‘Perhaps we can all use the forty-nine days of the bardo to allow ourselves time simply to focus on his life and give thanks that he spent so much of it with us.’ She sounded a bit less strained, the strangling grief lessening its grip on her voice just a little, and I was glad the thought that there had been a ceremony for Davy – albeit on the other side of the world and conducted in such an unfamiliar way – was comforting to her.

Grief takes time. Forty-nine days may not be enough, but it’s a start. It has given lockdown a new meaning. And it’s given us all permission simply to sit with our thoughts, our memories, our feelings, without pushing them aside or judging them.

Unlike Violet, though, as the days tick by and the time passes, my desire to get home becomes stronger. Being apart is tough, no matter how hard I try to see the positives. I need distractions to keep me busy, so I go in search of Dipa and ask her again if there’s anything I can do to help.

She looks at me a little doubtfully. ‘Today I go and get fresh yak dung, make into pancakes for drying. Maybe you don’t want to help me do that?’

But any task that keeps me busy is welcome, so I pick up a tin pail and follow her out to the pasture.

‘Must be fresh,’ she tells me with a grin as I survey the piles dotted across the grass. As I roll up my sleeves and begin to scoop dollops of damp dung into my bucket, I discover it’s surprisingly un-smelly and not all that unpleasant to handle. Once we each have a bucketful, we carry it back to the wall beside the lodge. Dipa takes a good handful from her bucket, shaping it into a ball. Then she slaps it down on to a flat stone in the top of the wall and begins to pat it into an even circle, nodding as I follow suit. We carry on until the top of the wall is dotted with dark brown discs of dung, which will sit there for a week to dry in the sunshine before being added to the stack beneath the porch.

‘Other way to do it is like this,’ she tells me. She makes another snowball of dung – a dungball – and throws it with some force against the wall of the teahouse, where it sticks with a satisfying-sounding splat. She gives it a few pats to even it out. ‘When it fall off we know it ready,’ she says. ‘You try too.’

My first attempt fails miserably, slipping down the wall and falling apart in the dust. ‘Throw harder,’ urges Dipa.

And so I do. And I find there’s a huge amount of satisfaction to be derived from throwing clods of yak poo against a wall. I can highly recommend it as a way of relieving stress and lifting the spirits when you’re feeling down. By the time we go back indoors my right arm is aching, but my heart feels lighter. The fresh air and exertion have helped clear my mind and it’s satisfying to think that not only have I helped do something useful, I’ve also added a new skill to my CV.

As I sit in the kitchen with Dipa afterwards, sipping mugs of tea (having given our hands a very thorough wash first, of course), she grins at me as she begins to prepare lunch. ‘You feel bit better now, Mrs Daisy?’ she asks.

I nod. ‘Much. If you need help with any other jobs like that one, I’m your woman!’

‘You learn a lot, I think. You have mind like sand. But becoming like water.’

‘A mind like sand? What does that mean?’

She takes a sip of her tea, before reaching for a pile of herbs to chop. Her hands are never idle, I’ve noticed. ‘Buddha say three kinds of people. First kind have mind like rock: thoughts are carved there, like on mani stones. Stay angry or sad or frightened a long time. Second kind have mind like sand: anger, sadness written there but pass away quickly as sand shifts. Third kind most pure and undisturbed: mind like water. Thoughts never can be written there, just flow through. Mind like water best. Let thoughts pass through. Doesn’t mean don’t be thinking them, just not holding on to them.’

‘Hmm, I don’t think my mind is always like sand, let alone water. Some of my thoughts are set in stone. They can be hard to let go of.’ I think about my divorce, the pain and feelings of betrayal and abandonment it carved into my heart, alongside the fear I’d lose my girls.

‘That’s okay, we all working on it. It just like yak dung pancakes ... Practice make perfect!’ Dipa hands me the knife she’s been using, then wipes her hands on her apron. ‘You finish herbs. I put spuds on to cook.’

That night, as I lie in my bed waiting for sleep to come, a memory of the beach at Slaggan comes to me. Davy and Mum used to take us there, carrying a picnic from Ardtuath across a few miles of moorland to reach the isolated bay hidden between two rocky headlands. I would write my name with a stick in the damp sand near the water’s edge, drawing flowers and hearts around it, then watch as the first waves of the incoming tide drifted over my creation, smoothing out what I’d written there. I remember one day Davy came to watch as I worked and when I’d finished my drawings, he took the stick from me and drew a big heart of his own. Inside it he wrote our names: Lexie, Davy, Daisy and Stuart. And then we stood side by side, watching the sea erase it, bit by bit. There’s no sadness attached to that memory, only a sense of happiness and deep peace. I smile in the darkness, imagining I can hear the gentle shooshing of the waves as they wash away our names.

I think I must have fallen asleep still with that smile on my face, because the next thing I know it’s a new day and the sound of the sea has been replaced by the sound of Dipa humming to herself as she begins to make breakfast.