Sometimes I really need "castle therapy." For me, they suspend time, just for a while.
Here I stand, in misty rain, in the courtyard of the 900-year-old Goodrich Castle, 15 minutes from Bryn Garth cottage. This huge, ruined structure towers over the beautiful Wye valley, which is bisected by the meandering River Wye. It's open all year.
Sheep and I are the only creatures wandering around out here on this cold January morning. But that's how I want it. I need to ponder endings.
In a hospital ward near here 78-year-old David (my late mother's husband) looks out at winter trees, thinking thoughts I shall never be privy to, as a stroke makes it difficult for him to speak much. He's kept clean, warm and nourished. That's it.
The National Health Service, bankrupt for decades, quietly offers only palliative care. Eighteen percent of Britain's population are non-earning elderly. Care is rationed.
Two months ago, when he became ill, David needed a thorough workup, treatment and regular physiotherapy, normal in the U.S. (It didn't happen.) Now he's terminally weak. Doctors are invisible. Understaffed nurses barely cope. Except for my visits, he has no mental stimulation.
I can't fix this.
Goodrich Castle offers a sense of timelessness, perspective, and a healthy dose of wonderful memories. Mom, David and I often explored it, marveling at the intricate stonework, the chapel, the murder holes.
We'd picnic here, munching sandwiches, swigging tea and daring each other to return at night to camp underneath those gigantic walls, or in its huge, dry moat, to try to catch a glimpse of Alice Birch and her lover, Charles Clifford. The doomed teens fled the castle's Royalist siege in 1646, only to drown in the flooded river. Locals sometimes report seeing them run along its banks, crying out for one another in the dead of night.
Today I enter the lovely chapel just off the central courtyard. A huge stained glass window, installed in the last century, bathes the stones surrounding it in faded rose and cream. I stand smack in the middle of that empty, spacious room in David's down-filled coat. The flower on my ridiculous hat wobbles as I sing Henry Purcell's marvelous "Music for a While." He composed it 25 years after the castle was abandoned in 1646. The chapel's acoustics are perfect. These ancient walls listen to me with stony absorption.
There are echoes of other lives.
Down in the dungeon I feel the terror of being shut away in damp darkness. I climb the highest turret to join revenant sentries monitoring the vast valley below. In the huge, ruined banquet hall I hear the crackle of burning logs in the giant fireplace, the diners' loud guffaws, and the bustle of busy servants bearing platters of roasted swan, or venison. I see ladies gathered in the central green, sewing, gossiping. Stabled horses whinny for hay.
People loved, fought, worried, disappeared, and others took their places.
The Bible comments that our days on the earth are as a shadow ... But Carl Sandburg's observation seems to fit my mood best. Life is like an onion. You peel it off one layer at a time, and sometimes you weep.
David is ending, and I am weighted by sorrow. I can do nothing. But this place's timeless serenity, and the happy memories it will always hold, are a balm for a while, like Purcell's music.
I am learning to accept what I cannot change, and to savor what I still have. Goodrich Castle gently reminds me that, for everything, there is a season and a time.
Dee Blair's Sunnybank Gardens are closed for the season. Visit her Web site, www.deeblair.com for more information. Find more of her columns online at record-eagle.com/deeblair.
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