About this blog

It has been so long since i last blogged.  It has always been something that Alison encouraged me to do, something she did as well and something she always took the time to read and comment on.

The blog she kept throughout her cancer journey is called "The leaves of the tree are for the healing" after her favourite biblical quotation "The leaves of the tree are for the healing of the nations" (Revelations 22:2).  She shared it with a very few people, kept it under the name "Marion's Twin" and challenged the readers with her honesty, tenacity, frustration and joys.

A fortnight ago i was driving home from being with Alison and took a quiet route which led me to the lovely town of Corbridge.  There i found an independent bookshop called Forum Books selling books and all things paper-related.  It was very soothing to me to wander round the space.  Alison would have loved it!  I bought a few things - a birthday present for Gemma, some bulldog clips to help me sort my paperwork (labelled SEND, PAY, DEAL, FILE...) and a beautiful wee book called "Lament: Scottish poems for funerals and consolation".  Helen Stanton, the owner of Forum Books, told me she used to work for the publisher, Polygon and had been entranced by the collection which includes "Handfast: Scottish Poems for Weddings and Affirmations".

In "Lament" on the title page i found inscribed "by leaves we live".  As i flicked through the leaves that follow i then found this:

Fall
after Rilke

The leaves are falling, falling from trees
in dying gardens far above us; as if their slow
free-fall was the sky declining.

And tonight, this heavy earth is falling away
from all the other stars, drawing into silence.

We are all falling now.  My hand, my heart,
stall and drift in darkness, see-sawing down.

And we still believe there is one who sifts and holds
the leaves, the lives, of all those softly falling.

Robin Robertson

So this blog is called "Alison - the leaves are falling".  I need somewhere that i can write exactly what i want but i don't want to just do that in a notebook kept under my pillow.  I want to share it with you in the hope that it might speak to you too, that you might want to have some dialogue, that we might heal together even if all the leaves do seem to have fallen...