Seasons of the Heart

Autumn

Autumn

The autumn of one's life is the time we expect to have got everything together and now is the time to reap its rewards. The time where we have purchased a home, have a job that satisfies, and live with someone you love dearly. The kids have come and gone and together you expect to live a loving, healthy life, looking forward to retirement when you and your partner can sail off to a happy sunset. But for most of us - life is not like that.

Here we have five couples, all as different as they could be, facing dilemma's they have to overcome. Will these relationships make it to the golden retirement? Or will they be ripped apart by problems that families have had to deal with for generations?

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Our first couple is Ralph and Ivy Evans they are in their mid - forties and have just celebrated their twenty fifth wedding anniversary. They face a situation no parent ever thinks will befall them. They are sat in the conservatory of their four-bed, detached, bought and paid for home, with a double garage, in the suburbs of greater Manchester.

"That was some party the kids threw for us, Ivy, I am still aching from all that dancing."

"Well you're no spring chicken anymore as your chicken dance showed us all."

"I am mortally offended; there is nothing wrong with my dancing." Ralph replied with a huff.

"Don't be, we all found it very entertaining." Ivy said laughing. Ralph kissed her on the cheek and went to work as normal

In truth she didn't know how she made it through the evening. Their two children had excelled themselves in celebrating their parents' marriage but Ivy was having trouble accepting that this was it - from now on, it would be Ralph and her, knocking around in this big house.

The thought of having to continue being at his beck and call irritated her, she no longer felt the powerful love she had for him when they had married. Back then everything lay ahead of them, exciting and new, and in fact it had been a good and trouble free life. But in the here and now, Ivy had trouble picturing their future and the part she would play in it.

Ralph had a very good job which he faithfully commuted too every week day, 9-5, never taking a day off unless it was an emergency, but he never received promotion past managerial level and now at his age, he would be passed over by all the younger professional's he constantly complained about. Ivy could see the future being no different. Ralph earned enough to give their family a comfortable living; therefore there had never been any need for her to go out to work. She was a stay at home mum and loved him for that - but what now? She was bored with housework, and lonely without the kids to talk too. She needed something to change - but what?

Ivy had debated her problem at length, in the long days of hibernation, as that is what it felt like; she was waiting, conserving her energy for the long winter ahead. Round and round, the same questions, over and over again, spinning out of control, as if she had lost her anchor and was drifting away. What should I do? What can I do? Who would employ me? Am I too old? Should she look for part-time work, perhaps at the local school? She did miss the kids being little; her favourite age was six to nine when they are so full of wonder at the world, so energetic and full of potential.

Ivy was proud her children, they had the best education and the best choices as their parents could offer them, or help them to make these choices themselves. Their son, Malcom had joined the navy at nineteen and was now a Staff Sergeant on the ship 'Sir Galahad', which was a support ship for the infantry. Ralph was proud of him but Ivy worried every day he was away from port, in some hostile foreign stretch of water.

Their daughter, Wendy, had left school at sixteen and went to the local college to do a business management course. She got her diploma and then employment working nine to five in the office of a local solicitor's. She had met her husband there, and they were living the life of a professional couple in their chosen home, which was thirty minutes away by bus. When her daughter announced she was pregnant it was one of the most perfect days of her life, the second was when Maisie was born. Ivy would pop over every day for the first six weeks, joyful to be of help and privileged to have this chance to be of some use, but kids grow up quickly - now no-one needed her but Ralph, and as long as he had clean shirts and dinner at seven o'clock he was happy as larry. Her days were long and empty; Ivy couldn't face the thought of the next twenty-five being like this.