Goodbyes & Bons Dias

dia 4 de outubro 2024

The tears came unexpectedly, rolling down my cheeks as I held Stephen in an embrace and asked “Are you alright?”

“Not really, but I suppose that's because we're emotional people.”

That scene occurred 3 hours ago as we prepared to leave our home in Soure and complete the sale of our former home in the small village of Miranda do Corvo, here in Central Portugal. The unexpectedness of those tears, and a few that fell in the car a short time afterwards, was because we have been dealing with an entanglement of bureaucracy for almost three years. Having not lived in the house for most of those three years, I thought that we had said our emotional goodbyes a long time ago, but hearts pay no heed to logic, so the stresses and strains of the legal system and an extensive paper trail were overshadowed by the countless happy memories we had made within the walls of that old stone house…

The following is a passage from ‘Goodbyes & Bons Dias’, an account I published about mine and Stephen's first year in Portugal. We had been in our home less than a month when 2010 ended:

At half past eleven we wrapped up warmly and took a couple of glasses of port outside; the blankets we had around us were the ones that Mum and Dad had given to us as moving-come-Christmas presents when we had left England, and a hot water bottle was under these. The chimes of the church bell marked the passing of another fifteen minutes, and the sound of voices bounced around the mountains, coming from towns and villages nestled high and low within them. When twelve chimes signalled midnight there were fireworks, and we raised our glasses to people who were living and people who had passed on, but foremost we congratulated ourselves for what we had achieved and thanked the gods, destiny or luck for the life we were living and the promise it brought.

That promise has been fulfilled and surpassed by the life Stephen and I have found in Portugal. We made friends in our village and the surroundings, people with whom we shared food, wine, games, laughter and tears. With an elderly population we learnt how to plant potatoes and other vegetables, and in return we helped the little that we could, being around when other neighbours were out of the village working, helping with the wine harvest; practising our limited Portuguese with kind folk who encouraged us without judging us. Within that first year our immediate family was joined by a little puppy that we found by the side of a busy road, she too changed us and the direction in which our lives may otherwise have headed.

That was thirteen years ago, and we are fortunate that our Merlina is still with us and has adapted to life in a town apartment as opposed to on a village quintal. Stephen and I have also grown, older of course, but as with the promise of that bright future that we toasted on our first New Year's Eve, our love has grown and given us more than we could have imagined. So, the tears that are coming once again as I write this are illogical, but with hindsight not as unexpected as they first seemed. We know that our relationship is not bound to a specific place, but within those walls of our first home we made mistakes which we learnt from, had small victories which we celebrated and overcame some fears:

Stephen had not understood that the half empty mouldering cups of tea that we had discovered when we moved here [to our old home] had fuelled my imagination. I had feared the dark places that appeared in the garden at night and conjured up restless spirits which tormented me about the secrets they hid. However, buildings without the living are opportune places for ghosts to dwell, and if the dead had been the caretakers of this building before our arrival, I hoped that they would be pleased that life had returned. Besides, Stephen and I did not ask them to leave, only that they allow us our happy times.

And those happy times were too numerous to count by the time 31st December came around once more:

We welcomed in the New Year in the place we had greeted the one we were leaving behind. We were a year older, a year wiser, a year more settled, our finances were stable and the relationship we were building more so...

The dying days of 2010 and the year of 2011 consisted of many ‘bons dias’, so as we say a final ‘goodbye’, it leaves space for the next beginning.

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