Missing

Dear Tall.

Last night I dreamt about us. The two of us getting on with normal life, nothing special, just the boring stuff. You were walking alongside me, but I'm not sure now where we were. It felt so real, so real that when I woke to find you missing my heart broke into a thousand pieces once more. I wish I could tell you how much I need you to hug me. How much I miss having you to talk to. How much I miss you simply loving me.

I try to visualise how it felt to have your arms wrapped around me, I try to trick my mind into believing I can feel it, but today the mind trick won't work. I know all the analogies about the box with the pain button and the one about glitter (to name but two), I recite them to myself in the hope of calming my head and heart, but ultimately what I am feeling is normal. I must be kind to myself and just let it all out. 

The enforced isolation caused by the virus does little to help, the news articles on intensive care only reminding me of the awful events of almost three years ago when I thought I had lost you. You never did truly recover, and I worry for all those who have left intensive care, with many months of recovery ahead of them. Will they struggle too? 

I watch the TV and see people's lives and stories unfold. People who have found love again, a new happiness, and I am pleased for them. For me there will only be you, the love we had can never be repeated, and I know that no one would be able to match up to you, I'm far too picky. 

You will always have my heart.

Good Cheer Pixie

Glitter

As I begin another week of lockdown, I find myself being sucked down the plughole of grief. The anniversary of Tall's death in May is already dragging me back. The lockdown has left me feeling very alone. I know there are other people cut off from family and friends, front-line workers who have made a conscious decision to move out of their homes so that they don't make their family ill should they become infected, I know there are people who like me will never see their loved ones again, people who cannot even give their loved ones a proper funeral, but although my head tells me to be sympathetic, my heart is breaking for Tall. Having never been in this situation before I don't know if what I am experiencing is "normal", whether next year will be the same. My world is full of reminders of "this time last year". The seeds germinating, my granddaughter's birthday tomorrow, the garden springing to life, they are all reminding me of "this time last year" and I know that May will probably be full of tears. 

I have tried to occupy myself. I take Toni for a walk every morning, but the days then seem to drag. There is so much housework I could be doing, and yet I simply cannot motivate myself to do it. The only thing I have done is make my granddaughter a card and a cake. Last year Tall bought her a cuddly unicorn, her wanted to give her one last present. She probably won't remember where it came from in the years to come, but I will know and I will always remember. 

 If my granddaughter had her way it would be covered in glitter, personally I hate the stuff. 

"Grief is like glitter. You can throw a handful of glitter into the air, but when you try to clean it up. you'll never get it all. Even long after the event, you will still find some, tucked into corners, it will always be there..... somewhere."

A surprising week.

A week has passed since my last post and things feel a little more normal. The sun has been shining allowing me to spend time in the garden. I haven't been able to get hold of my normal seeds and so I improvised with using seeds from a tomato I had bought, seeds from a capsicum I was using for cooking and some seeds that I saved last year from a butternut squash. The tomatoes and squash have both produced seedlings in less than a week and I am patiently hoping the capsicum won't disappoint. I hope all those panic buyers are as green fingered. 

 The time in the garden helps my mood and I think myself extremely lucky that I have a space in the fresh air, surrounded by nature, when there are people in lock down in flats, unable to get out. I still can't get my head around many of the jobs that need doing, jobs which should have been done last year that now feel like mountains, jobs that only this year have become obvious. I still miss the second opinion and second pair of eyes. The current situation means I can't even get my own family over to help. 
 

   

Tall seems to be back with me. How do I know? Well, I have a spooky tale to tell. Two days ago I changed the bedding. After Tall died I bought new bed sets, a fresh look that didn't mean I expected to see him every time I walked into the room. The following day I woke to find a blood stain on the pillowcase on Tall's side of the bed. I checked myself from head to toe, no signs of injury on me. I checked the dog, she was clear too. The blood had just appeared, it wasn't there when I put the pillowcase on and it wasn't there when I went to sleep. There's only one explanation........

Home is where the heart is.

As you would expect ruby slippers are very expensive, but despite that, I decided the UK was where I needed to be. Unfortunately my journey wasn't quite as quick as Dorothy's, but I made it back home eventually. The stress of the situation in the UK was clearly on the minds of the people who I saw at the regulation 2m distance after I had landed. They all seemed stressed and bad-tempered, not a smile amongst them. The weather in Manchester was grey, matching the mood around me and I looked forward to just being home. 

It wasn't how I expected it to be. A wave of disappointment washed over me as I sat and had a cuppa, things just didn't feel right. I put it down to jet lag, or simple tiredness. I hoped that the next day the world would seem brighter, even if I could only view it from my window for the next fourteen days. The following day the feeling was still there, a sense that something just wasn't right. Now at this point you might all think I have gone crazy, but it feels like I left Tall in Australia. I wish I could express what I mean better, I just sense that there is a hole in my world, a great big hole that wasn't there when I left. 

When I arrived in Australia it was night and so it wasn't until the next day that I saw the front garden. As I helped get the shopping out of the car I spotted a plant below L.'s office window. I commented on it and she told me she had planted it a few years ago, but it had not grown back before this year, when it had reappeared and flowered again. Tears started rolling down my face and I hurried inside. The plant? A simple snapdragon, Tall loved them, they were in his funeral flowers. Tall had been there before me and I fear I have left him behind.