I saw this a while ago as it zipped past in my social media feed. I forget the actual wording, but my paraphrasing gives the idea.
Grief is not so much for the life lost
as for the living that now won’t happen.
This coming weekend, my family will be holding a gathering. We will be enjoying company, food, drink, and remembering my Dad and Paul. I expect there will be tears as well as laughter.
Sorting and tidying following Paul’s death is an ongoing activity. I have barely scratched the surface, if I’m being honest. The easiest things to dump — ancient magazine back issues, bank statements from long-defunct accounts, that kind of thing — are quickly dealt with. Paul’s amateur radio gear was taken away by members of the local club. I am now getting down to deeper layers, where I am finding things harder to just pitch into a bin bag.
Continue reading Rabbit HolesI always quite liked Thursdays. At my secondary school, Thursday was an Art double period day. As a child it was a Blue Peter day. As I got older, it was a Tomorrow’s World and Top Of The Pops and, later still, Top Gear day.
Paul died on a Thursday. The day has since taken on a different meaning. It has became a kind of marker. I kept count of the weeks as they ticked by, After Paul, Thursday after Thursday.
Until now. I’ve lost count. We are somewhere beyond twelve weeks, coming up for four months. I could tot them up on a calendar to remind myself, or perhaps continue to remember on the sixth day of each new month. Perhaps now is the proper time to stop counting the weeks or months, and leave my memories to an anniversary.
Grief still catches me, but it is becoming less raw as time passes. The process of clearing and sorting Paul’s things is very much still ongoing, as I wrote last time. The process of getting the property into my name has begun, but the gears of English law turn slowly.
Medical issues still burden me, preventing me making definite plans. A model railway meeting in October and a big model show in November, have been marked in my calendar. I hope I will be fit by then. A sort of bucket list of places, mostly round the UK, I’d really like to visit is brewing, too. Perhaps researching for such adventures will help me reset my life.
After all, life must go on.
It has been just over three months since my husband died. Day-to-day life is beginning to settle down into some kind of routine, but I still find I am occasionally flailing about trying to find any meaning to my existence.
I still miss him terribly.
Continue reading I am still hereYou can plan for such events. You can mentally rehearse outcomes. You can make arrangements to try to ease things.
It still hits you like a ton of bricks when it actually happens.
When I last posted Life Things, while not exactly rosy, were beginning to look a little brighter. Only a few days after the post, it all came crashing down.
My husband, Best Beloved, Paul to his friends and loved ones, died in the early hours of 6 February 2025.
Paul was 85 years old. We had been a couple for most of the last 35 years, though we only married in 2021. He had been frail for some time, and as you know if you’re a regular reader I was his carer as well as his wife and companion.
I will find the strength to write more fully about Paul and his life at a later date. For now, I need to grieve, and to think about where my life must lead now I am again on my own.