This bed has been with us through all our peregrinations, handling life in the Weir household with nary a creak. It has travelled to three different provinces of South Africa. It has balanced on top of a trailer; it has been stowed in a pantechnicon; it has been stored in a double garage; it has been rained on and hailed on.
It has had all five of us jumping on it to celebrate a birthday. It has been a kind of “camp-site” for the family on cold winter week-end days when we have just sat around playing scrabble and talking rubbish to one another. It was part of our life.
Last week I did a strangely “sacramental” thing. This is how it went.
On the afternoon of Sunday 19 August—exactly ten months after Linny died—being stone-cold sober and of sound mind (so they tell me)-—I DESTROYED IT! I kid you not! Verily, I tell you, I took a crow-bar and a hammer and reduced our nuptial bed to firewood (literally—see below).
The thought of someone else using it for the purposes to which we had put it seemed—somehow—sacrilegious. Not very good stewardship, I suppose—someone else could have used it—but I needed the symbolism. Somehow, I had to have that sign of going on alone and with minimal chattels. I claim it as a sign of healing.
I needed to prove to myself that I do not keep things just for sentimental reasons. My sentimental stuff can all reside in my head.
I don’t need things to remind me of the happy days with Linda. She was cremated and we scattered her ashes on Table Mountain, so we don’t have to visit a grave anywhere. I have her name tattooed on top of my foot—a metaphorical gravestone that is always with me. I want to be as mobile as possible, so I want gradually to diminish my “goods corporeal” and to liberate myself to travel wherever my spirit wishes to fly.