Dear Stevie: Thank you for your letter. I hope your health remains good. It seems we must now begin a letter this way, with a Victorian tip of the hat to physical well-being: it’s become a social prerequisite, as leaving calling cards once was. And we must end by saying, “Keep safe.” What a ridiculous concept! There is no “safe”. At any moment the fragile thread by which we dangle may break, and we may plummet into the unknown. “Safe”, the word, ought to be outlawed. It gives people false ideas. Sorry. I’m becoming cranky about language, a thing you don’t do unless you’re past a certain age. For youngsters, things were always called what they are called right now, but for oldsters, not. We notice the gaps, the chasms. And the jokes of former decades have ceased to be jokes, while new jokes have arisen, jokes that are not always understood by us. Joking happens less frequently in the puritanical moment we are passing through – not that I wish to sound judgmental – but a few laughs are still permitted, it seems. Though each generation’s catchphrases die on the vine as a matter of course. What did “twenty-three skidoo” mean? I said it as a child, but it was old even then and conveyed nothing to me except as part of a skipping rhyme. A sinister skipping rhyme, now that I think of it: a number of robbers have broken into a lady’s house – grown-up women were called “ladies” then –and are giving orders to her, such as turning around and touching the ground. No good would come of this: there were twenty-three of the robbers and only one of her. But “skidoo” was this lady’s exit line, so maybe she ran away. What fun we used to make of death! Hallowe’en was a chance to put on a sheet and pretend to be a ghost, or to fill a bowl with peeled grapes, blindfold our little friends, and guide their hands to the bowl. “Eyeballs,” we would say in sepulchral tones. “Ewww!” was the expected reply. Next would come a chant about dying, being buried, becoming worm-infested, and turning green. All hilarious, to us, then. But how many of our once large basket of impish children are left? Not many. Gone, and with them the vestiges of the grape eyeballs and the green decaying bodies. A few old cronies clinging onto the cliff’s edge, having tea and cookies in the sun and spilling crumbs and milk on their not entirely clean T-shirts, or distressing their neighbours by trying – slowly, ponderously, slipping dangerously on the ice – to shovel the snow off their walks. Here, let me do that for you. Oh no, I can manage, thank you. Beetles near the end of their life cycles, still gamely making their way up the once familiar flower stalk. Where am I and what am I doing here? the beetle might be wondering. How long can they go on? the neighbours muse. Surely not much longer. Oh, don’t suppose for an instant that we don’t know what they’re thinking. We thought it all ourselves, once. We still think it. But none of this is happening to you, dear Stevie. You are much younger, although you don’t think so now. If you live another thirty years – which I sincerely hope you will, and more, depending on your condition by then, of course – if you live another thirty years and are still enjoying it, or most of it – if anyone will be enjoying, or indeed living, considering the huge unknown wave that is already rolling toward us – I expect you will look at a picture of yourself as you are today, supposing your personal effects have survived flood, fire, famine, plague, insurrection, invasion, or whatever – and you will say, “How young I was then!” But that’s a long digression. You asked me how I was doing, another social pleasantry. No one wants an honest answer to that one. What you mean is how am I managing to cope, now that Tig has died. Am I lonely? Am I suffering? Is the house too empty? Am I checking all the boxes of the prescribed grieving process? Have I gone into the dark tunnel, dressed in mourning black with gloves and a veil, and come out the other end, all cheery and wearing bright colours and loaded for bear? No. Because it’s not a tunnel. There isn’t any other end. Time has ceased to be linear, with life events and memories in a chronological row, like beads on a string. It’s the strangest feeling, or experience, or rearrangement. I’m not sure I can explain it to you. And it would alarm you unduly if I were to say to you, “Tig isn’t exactly gone.” You’d jump immediately to ghosts, or delusional states on my part, or dementia, but none of those would apply. You will understand it later, perhaps, this warping or folding of time. In some parts of this refolded time Tig still exists, as much as he ever did. I don’t intend to share any of this with you. I don’t want you calling my younger friends and relatives in a state of concern and telling them something must be done about me. You were always a well-meaning busybody. I don’t fault you for it – you have a kind heart, you are filled to the brim with good intentions, but I don’t want any casseroles or oblique, probing questions, or visits from professionals, or nieces talking me into buying an assisted-care condo. And no, I do not wish to go on a cruise. Meanwhile I’m hanging out with a clutch of other widows. Some of them are widowers: we have not yet got around to a gender-neutral term for those who have lost their life partners. Maybe TWHLTLP will appear shortly, but it hasn’t yet. Some are women who have lost women or men who have lost men, but mostly they are women who have lost men. More fragile than we’d thought, those men: that much has made itself clear. What do we talk about? The curious folding nature of time, the phenomenon I have just described to you: that has been experienced by all of us. The quirks and preferences of the lost ones. What they would have said – or are indeed still saying – on any given occasion. The death scenes. We are a little obsessive about those: we share them, we revisit them, we edit them, arranging them to make them, perhaps, more tolerable. Which dwindling was the worst? Was it better to have witnessed a lingering fadeout, with pain but with lots of time to say goodbye, or on the other hand was a sudden stroke or heart failure preferable, easier for him, harder for you? I could tell this was it. I left the room for five minutes and he was gone. We knew it was coming. Ten years? That must have been terrible. The tidying up. There’s a lot of that. So much accumulates, year after year. Then there’s a mini-explosion, and all the items that have been gathered together – the letters, the books, the passports, the photos, the favourite things kept in drawers and boxes or on shelves – all of this is strewn in the wake of the departing rocket or comet or wave of energy or silent breath, and the widows must sweep and sort and donate and bequeath and discard. Pieces of a soul, scattered here and there. The widows are thoroughly engaged by this task, and are being driven crazy by it in equal measure. We phone one another, all in a hand-wringing dither, and say, “What am I possibly supposed to do with … fill in the blank?” We offer lots of suggestions, none of which solves the central problem. We talk about our regrets too; or some of them. If only I had known. If only he had said. If only I had asked. I should have been more … fill in the blank. If only we had … fill in the blank. There are a lot of blanks. We’re bad luck, of course, we widows. We know it. Awkward silences occur around us. People tiptoe. Should we be invited to dinner, or will we cast a pall? We certainly try not to cast palls: palls are unpleasant. It used to be worse, in other places and in other eras. We’d get buried alive with the dead king, or we’d join him on his funeral pyre. If we escaped sharing his death, we’d have to wear black, or else white, forever. We had the evil eye. Black widow spiders, venomous enough to kill, were named after us. People crossed themselves and spat to avoid contamination by us. Or, if we were not decrepit – if we still had some blood left in us – we’d be merry widows, off the leash, looking for a little unbridled sexual action. An older man actually hinted at this to me at a party. (We do still go to parties. We paint our toenails red, though we put shoes on our feet so no one will see our flashy toes. We know this toe enhancement is absurd, but we do it anyway. A tiny dead-end pleasure.) I’d just met the man. No sooner were the introductions over than he gave the ghost of a leer and said, “So, are you dating?” Meant as a joke, though possibly not. Widows are thought to be wealthy, and also susceptible. I answered, a little sternly, “I’m a widow. Tig just died.” “So, you’re hunting?” It was a form of geriatric flirting on his part, I believe. People of our age can flirt like that without it being seriously inappropriate, because both parties know nothing will come of it. Or, more precisely, nothing can come of it. Flirtation Village, that’s where we live. If I’d had an old-fashioned fan, I would have tapped him with it, archly, as in some grotesque Restoration comedy. Oh, you are so naughty! I could not have said, “Don’t be silly. Tig is still here.” Instant gossip would have resulted: “She’s turned the corner into bonkersland.” “Well, she was always a little odd.” And the like. So we keep such notions to ourselves, we widows. Needless to say, dear Stevie, I will not be sending you this letter. You are on the other side of the river. Over where you are, your beloved is still in tangible form. On this side, the widows. Between us flows the uncrossable. But I can wave to you, and wish you well, and that is what I will do. Thus: Dear Stevie: Thank you for your letter. I hope your health remains good. It’s nice of you to ask how I’m doing. Quite well, I’m pleased to say. The winter dragged on, as it did for everyone, but now it’s spring and I’m busy in the garden. Already there are snowdrops, and the daffodils are sending up their first shoots. I have my eye on some oriental lilies that I intend to plant in the front border. I used to have them years ago but the lily beetles got to them before I noticed. I’ll be ready for those beetles this time: forewarned is forearmed. The children are fine. The grandchildren are full of beans. I’m thinking of adopting a kitten. Not much other news. Let me know when you’re coming this way and we’ll grab lunch. Stay safe. Fondly, Nell Taken from Old Babes in the Wood by Margaret Atwood published by Chatto & Windus (c) O.W. Toad 2023.