It was six months since Linda’s passing last Tuesday and I must say it affected me more than I thought it would. I could feel my emotions change, I was shorter on patience, more annoyed at life and the smothering sadness that accompanies grief spread itself over me again.
I know quite a few people who have been through the wringer of life, and they look out for me and seem to understand that you can be okay and still be buffeted by the headwinds of grief at the same time.
That being said the feelings did perturb me somewhat. I mistakenly thought I should be flying through and starting to get on top of things, but the half year milestone certainly put paid to that. I need to remember that grief has no timeline, in fact is going to be a lifelong experience to different degrees and six months is still a very short time and it is all still very raw.
I also had a heavy dose of asthma; there have been some legal hiccups in regard to the settlement of Linda’s estate and a couple of other minor health issues all conspired to make me feel a bit miserable.
But I have bounced back okay.
Of course, the motivation to move along hasn’t quite gripped me. A few things in life have changed but not much. I watch more television than I ever did. Mainly Youtube. Commercial television gets me down and the ABC and SBS can’t keep my attention.
I have been lying in bed longer in the mornings. Our bedroom (It’s still our bedroom!) was built as an extension to the house before we bought it and it really is a large family/rumpus room type thing that Linda wanted as the master bedroom rather than the room with the ensuite which is much smaller. Now, I couldn’t imagine moving from it and I have taken up the habit of sleeping with the blinds open which doesn’t bother me this time of year. When Linda was here, we never opened the blinds on the eastern side of the bedroom because the sun obviously rose that way and it opened out onto our deck but this time of year it doesn’t hit me directly in the morning and no one is out there anyway. Along with the window facing the south it gives a marvellous panorama when I wake up, and I usually snuggle down in my relatively new Soren sheets which are the most comfortable sheets I have ever slept under. I actually went to the shop yesterday to get some more but they had every size except the one I wanted!
It’s amazing to see the sun rise over the Fadden Hills; the colours are amazing and I really don’t want to get up on these cold mornings.
Sometimes, late at night, I lament that the world has to move on. Linda appears in my thoughts and the memories of her gracing the hallways and rooms of the house, Queen of her Domain, come flooding back. As much as these moments fill me with melancholy it is also nice to remember the life we had.
Six months has gone by in a flash. It’s hard to believe the sun rises in the east and appears in our bedroom window every morning and Linda isn’t here to see it. And it’s sad.
Life goes on and we do our best, as she wanted us to do.
Until next time.
Strange Notations From a Laborious Life 