Life is a funny experience. Often good, often bad, often indifferent. I have given up trying to figure out why things happen the way they do. They just happen. There is no rhyme or reason to it, and I really don’t believe there is any greater power controlling things. I’m not trying to understand life. There is nothing to understand. I hate this cliche, but I think it’s correct, “It is what it is!”
A lot has happened in the six weeks since Linda left us. So much that she would have been all over and up to her ears in. New arrivals, great achievements, worrying developments, family emergencies. We are but a grain of sand on the beach and life leaves us behind when we go. It’s the ones who have to remain for a while who have to pick up the pieces and glue them back together with a big hole in the middle. When something new twitches my ears my first thought has often been to tell Linda-then of course I remember where I am and what we have recently lost. And the sorrow soaks me again.
But I am going ok. Some sort of new normal is developing, a very blurry, fluid shape it is but it is forming nonetheless. It’s a work in progress and a lot is to be done yet.
The house is like the historic sites I have often been to overseas. Nothing has changed since the last time Linda walked out the door. Her life, our life is still here. She is a phantom walking the halls and inhibiting the rooms. Her spirit remains and I often look at the doorway from the bedrooms into the loungeroom and still picture her in the furry pink dressing gown she got for Mother’s Day years ago, shuffling out for breakfast, sometimes making funny noises, sometimes introspective, most times happy that the sun was up and she had made it to another day. I’m ok but the memory grabs me occasionally and the dank cloak of grief strangles me again for a while.
But another cliche, “life goes on” is particularly pertinent at the moment. I’ve been to Wangaratta a couple of times in the last week or so which has taken my mind off things. Dad had a mishap at his investment property (he’s ok!) and has ended up having a stint in hospital which as those who know him well can imagine, he isn’t enjoying at all.
I don’t mind the trip although buzzing up and down the Hume Highway at the moment is an expensive exercise thanks to missteps and miscalculations by a certain world leader and I have things going on in regard to Linda’s estate that can’t be left otherwise I could stay down there but the family is getting by. We are hoping he will be out and home very soon.
And so, we continue. I look out upon this lovely Canberra day and look forward to getting on with it. I hope you are too.
Take care.
Strange Notations From a Laborious Life 