Play Room

So here I am in my new workroom, or rather play room, sitting at the desk by the window, looking out on the pretty street through the trees. The sun has moved around and would be pouring in the window at my left shoulder if I had the blind open. I don't, and it is pleasantly warm and not glary.

I realise that, although I have been thinking the room is now complete — as of this morning — I have given no thought to the placement of an electric fan, which will be essential. Andrew used it have his in the very corner where I am sitting, near the power points. I have not left a corner or even a bit of wall free to put one, so it will have to be in the middle of the room somewhere. I'll work it out. It probably won't be really necessary until summer.

He never had the blinds open, for fear of the heat damaging his computers, and also I suppose for privacy, especially at night. But it's nice to sit here and look out. The 8-year-old girl from across the road has a boy visiting her; he looks a bit older. That family usually has visitors to stay during school holidays, and it's nice to see them playing in the street. We are at the head of a quiet cul-de-sac, at the top of a hill, so it is safe for them to do that. The cars come slowly, so there is time for the kids to get out of the way, and time for the drivers to see the kids. 

The street itself feels friendly. I have a notion that it tunes in to the people who come here and takes our imprint, reading who we are. I think it likes me well enough.

I wanted to integrate this room into the rest of the house — not have it be that room with the closed door, up the end of the passage, where Andrew used to be.

When it was his office, it became more and more crowded. I realise now that this was because walking got harder and harder for him. Easer to have his filing cabinet in here rather than outside the door, in the passage. Easier to place his desk and the big old wooden table he used as a bench at right angles to each other so he could sit in one chair to work at both, merely swivelling it around. And all his boxes of notes and papers were accessible to him here, as they were not when out in the garage. I wish I'd taken a photo of that cluttered space, for a 'before' and 'after' comparison. 

Of course it doubled as spare room. At first it had the pull-out couch / double bed we'd used as a spare for some years, but that took up too much space. We swapped it for a singe bed. Everything was still a very close fit. When I had family visiting recently, I acquired a second spare bed to accommodate them all.  His desk and table are long gone; in fact the desk fell apart as I removed it. It had evidently been wedged into place by the table and that's what kept it functional! 

I am nodding off in this pleasant space. A minute ago my head nearly crashed on to the desk. Well, what do you know? There are two beds in here. It was my intention they should function as day beds between visitors. That causes a slight pang, as in the past the one that was here sometimes served as a day bed for Andrew — though not for so very long, as he became more and more unwell and spent a lot of time in our real bed. 

Ah well, that is the past. I have been making my home into what suits me now. I even spoke out loud to Andrew, as I finished the job this morning, inviting him to admire what I had done. (After all he has no need for an office any more.) So I'll just allow myself to succumb to sleep, and have a little snooze on one of the beds, with the warm sun coming in.

Little Things

Little things that go wrong seem big. Why is that?

On Sunday my car was hot when I got in it. I must have burnt my elbow on the metal and not noticed. Later I discovered a blister already burst. After another day it was scabby, the next day bleeding. This felt like a huge thing to deal with, more than I could cope with (though I did cope, of course; I'm just saying how it felt).

Yet when Andrew was alive I coped with much bigger things all the time, and hardly turned a hair.

Is it that I have had my fill? The straws have so badly weakened the camel's back that the slightest little thing now feels massive enough to break it? I guess that's it.

Roller Coaster Riding: the Down After the Up ...

I had a good morning at the market. The sun shone, I saw friends, I made a profit, one friend helped me sort out my brake fluid problem.... When I got home, things went pear-shaped for a while.

The first thing I saw when I walked in was the black feathers all over the kitchen floor. The cats had killed a bird, brought it in and devoured it. I fetched the brush and pan. I mopped up a tiny patch of blood. I guess I should be thankful they take their kills to the kitchen to eat, rather than on the carpet. I did not give them their usual lunch! (Nor did they ask for it.)

I had taken a little vase to the market, in case my friend Patsy should come by with a gardenia for me, as she used to do in the old days. I was too lazy to stand on a step ladder and fish out the little metal vase I used to use. Instead I took Andrew's little vase from China, a pretty shape in dark green with a delicate drawing in gold of bamboo leaves. His trip to China was before I met him, but he treasured the souvenirs. I gave others to his grand-daughters after he died, as mementos, but kept that little vase, moving it from what had been his office to the kitchen windowsill. I had the thought that, bring breakable, it might not be safe, but I wrapped it in a tea towel. Patsy didn't turn up, so it stayed wrapped.

By the time I came home, I forgot there was anything in the tea towel. Emptying my bags, I shook it out. The vase smashed on the floor. Little shards went everywhere, one into my foot under a strap of my open sandals. In getting the sandal off, I pushed the sharp fragment further in, and ended up limping to the bathroom for disinfectant and band-aid, leaving a trail of blood. I cried like a child, calling, 'No, no!' Then I recovered myself and managed to shrug it off. I realised that vase still felt like Andrew's, not mine. I was upset at the breakage, not for myself but because he had treasured it. Yes, I liked it, but it didn't have the same sentimental associations for me. Still, it was an upset, what with the cut foot and all, and because it followed immediately on cleaning up the remains of the bird. My own lunch was very late in the end.

I'd just about got over all that when a fierce thunderstorm hit. Usually I love storms, but the cracks of lightning this time were loud and startling enough to make me fear for the electronics. I switched off the wireless modem and unplugged the landline phone. Damn! I'd been just about to connect with my online poetry groups, after being out or otherwise occupied most of the day. 

Oh well. I turned to some writing on my laptop, which didn't require the Internet. I was a bit down in the dumps though, having had such a troublesome afternoon after such a brilliant morning. I went from feeling confident and competent while I was at the market, to feeling inept and despondent after all. 

Then I felt the light pressure of a hand on my right shoulder for a few moments, as if someone had come up behind me and rested a hand there reassuringly. I didn't need to turn my head to know there was no-one physically there. But I knew it was Andrew. It was exactly what he used to do, coming up behind me just like that when I was at my computer, to lay a reassuring hand on my right shoulder. Imagination? You could think so, but I felt the touch physically, albeit briefly and gently. It is not the first time I have felt such a thing from someone dear who has gone, but it's rare. I think it must take a lot of energy for someone in spirit to create a physical sensation like that, and that it would take a lot of love to be willing to try. 

I had been feeling that he wasn't exactly hanging around any more, but busy with his work in spirit, whatever that is. Unfair and irrational as it may be, I was also in a bit of a sulk, angry with him for leaving me. I was vaguely aware this could be pushing him away, but unwilling to let go of it all the same. Then a very psychic friend said she'd had a vision of Andrew and me. She said, 'You were walking arm in arm in bright sunshine, and flowers were falling all around you both. You were obviously having a very joyful time in Spirit with him.' The fact that I had no consciousness of this didn't bother me — I seldom bring any astral travels back to consciousness. It comforted me; I thought, 'Oh, he's not coming to be with me, but I'm going to be with him!' and I was delighted. Maybe that opened the way for him then to come to me after all with that touch on the shoulder ... or maybe he was around me all the time and I finally softened enough to perceive this.

What I do know is that he would want me to be well and happy. He always wanted that. But those are things one must achieve for oneself.

An Underlying Happiness

I thought I'd be starting this post by remarking that the renewed appreciation of life was fragile. The very next day I found memories triggering tears again. Then I managed to spill a cup of hot tea all over the kitchen bench, and I cried like a little girl.

Despite all that, I find it is not so fragile after all. In quiet moments I notice that I am happy. It has nothing to do with the grief, which is still going on and working itself out. It is underneath that, a foundation. 

I think it may have to do with the fact that he is still here and I have stopped trying to get rid of him. 'He'll always be with you,' people say, but I don't mean it like that. I actually think that, just as a psychic friend advised me, he was around in spirit for a couple of weeks and then went on to whatever work awaited him in the after-life. I don't even mean that he is here in the memories, although that is so. I just mean that his imprint is all over this place, ineradicable. His energy, one might say — but I suppose his energy is now with his spirit, wherever that is. It might be a sort of left-over energy from his time in this home.

I've given up trying to be realistic, to remind myself, 'No no, he's gone, he's dead.' I'm like the character in New Tricks who takes a drink out to his back yard every evening and has a chat to his late wife, whose ashes are interred there. Except I think that character is supposed to believe his Mary really does hear him in spirit. I chat to Andrew quite a bit, but I don't believe it's a real conversation. It just feels natural at times to say things to him, as I would have done if he were here. It's a kind of pretending to myself, knowing that's what I'm doing. It comforts me. I still have to be a bit careful though, because it can easily lead to actual memories, and they can easily trigger tears. Tears could become sobs any second. And yet ...

As I say, it may be the imprinted presence, which I have stopped resisting, that enables me to be in this underlying happiness I've become aware of. Or maybe it's merely my nature. I'm wired for happiness, I think; and if so I'm very grateful for the fact. Even when my life is such that I hate the circumstances, I'm somehow happy just about being. Happy in myself. 

It's not rejoicing, neither is it contentment, nor even peace. (All of which I have experienced often enough to make the distinctions.) It's not antithetical to those states of being, obviously; but it's not them. The accurate word is happiness. My bedrock.