Three years

Three years
1096 days.

I thought I would be better this year.  I really did.

But I’m still falling down the rabbit hole.

 

An now today, I wake from little sleep.

I vomit.

I try to sleep more, but can’t.

I am flustered because I want to be at the cemetery at the exact time you died, and know I won’t make it.

It is still raining (has it stopped at all in 3 years?  is this the same rain that killed you?)

The kids are sad.

I am sad.

and tired.

The flooded garage during the week didn’t help.

We meet Mum for lunch.

I don’t know what to eat.

I choose poorly and gag on my food.

The kids whinge.

I come home.

I eat far too much chocolate.

I visit Mum and Dad.

Our son decides its time to have a tantrum that we haven’t seen in years.

I come home.

I distract myself on the internet.

I manage to bait a troll who wants to debate me on half-facts and semantics ( trolls are sad when they can’t understand the information they’ve cut and pasted from elsewhere and then try to defend their misunderstanding.)

I opt out of the debate (there isn’t one in my head, nor in the science and I don’t need the agro today of all days).

I try to sleep.

I can’t.

I ask you to talk to me.

You don’t.

I read a book that my lovely friend sent me…..

…..and it makes me think….

….and then I remember that flowers arrived right at the time you died.

more flowers arrived right when I was feeling really low.

…and then my friend arrived just because and we chatted.

….and I sleep.

Fitfully, but I sleep.

 

 

 

Dear Darl, it’s 18 January, 2013

1054 days

I’ve been quiet on here for a while.  I think that’s because I seem to just converse with you now instead of writing missives…..

Christmas was OK this year.  Not great.  But OK.
In fact, most of the school holidays have been upbeat and we’ve focussed on fun and relaxation.

…. helped along by a bit of job security that came my way in the last fortnight of the school year….. a new school with an old friend who appreciates good teaching over flattery and who can cope with a discussion in ways other than sin-binning me if I disagree on something or don’t suck up to him enough.
I have taught with this new HOC before and she has seen me teach (and seen my effect on the data for literacy)…. and the new principal seems nice too.

I am nervous and excited in equal measure, to be starting somewhere new.

….having to prove myself over again to new staff.
…. meeting a new bunch of kids (although they seem lovely on first meeting).
…. having the kids at the old school and me at the new.

But I start this new year with hope … and a bit of joy.

Stay tuned!

I miss you.

I love you.

XA

 

Dear Darl, its October 27, 2012

Day 971

Halloween Street party: another family event that felt wrong.

I didn’t really want to go, but H was dancing on the stage and he begged me to be able to go.

The weather was terrible.  Horrible.  We had to park miles away.

I turned around as we were walking to the festival from the car.  twice.

I just didn’t want to go without you.

That and frankly, Halloween is really, really creepy….. so many people with masks covering their faces getting in MY face.
I can’t understand how this is “fun”.
Mannequins hanging from trees in nooses?
People dressed as thought they had just emerged from a car wreck??
So. Not. Cool.

AND there were bagpipes.  Fucking BAGPIPES.

Hell.

But … I persevered and stayed for the dance performances.  H was happy.  That’s what mattered.

But you weren’t there and it felt wrong.

You should be here.

It’s wrong that you aren’t.

I miss you,

I love you,

XA

Dear Darl, it’s September 30, 2012

Day 914

 I have a cold.

 

Normally, I can soldier on through them, but today I feel like the proverbial baby-grand has landed on my back, my nose seems to be continually leaking, my eyes are itchy, my throat is red-raw, my temperature shoots upwards as soon as the advil wears off,  and my energy is low.

So low, that I had to have a little sit-down on the floor of the supermarket just now because I got a little bit light-headed in the frozen foods aisle (a few lollies and a drink of water later and I was OK).

 

I probably shouldn’t have left the house, but my need for advil and and a few groceries was great and I was functioning thanks to Mr Codral’s cold and flu medication when I decided to go on my food foraging expedition. …and at least tonight the children can make themselves toast for dinner and leave me in peace in my tissue-filled bed.

 

….and it is days like this when I seem to miss you more than ever.

 

I want you here to make the dinner and supervise the children.   To bring me a hot lemon tea and to rub my back.  To run to the store to get milk and bread and the all-important advil that is currently keeping my temperature down to a balmy 37°C. I want you here so that I can be a bit of a sooky-lala and have someone take care of ME for a change (the kids do try, but its not quite the same).

 

But you are not here, and I am having a little sad.  A bit of a pity-party for one.  A bit of a ‘woe-is me’, and ‘why is my life so hard’ day.  (It may also be a delayed reaction to our 15th wedding anniversary being last week when I deliberately didn’t let myself crack the sads  – just goes to show that grief will out itself if you try to ignore it.) I don’t throw these little soirees for myself very often these days, but when I do, I throw a good one.

 

But even while I cry and mope and generally feel sorry for myself,  I know that I will be OK.

 

Maybe not today, but tomorrow is another day.

 

Tomorrow I will be awesome again.

 

I miss you,

I love you

XA

Dear Darl, it’s 30 August, 2012

lost count of the days….. too many.

Well, birthday month is nearly over.

Once again, I hated that you weren’t there.

It seems a lifetime since you were here.

 

….and this weekend is father’s day.  I’m really not interested in it at all.  I am not letting the kids buy crap from the school’s father’s day stall.

….and of course, my teaching partner has left me with organising the father’s day presents from the children in our class.  Not quite sure why she can’t  do this in her 3-days per week, but there you go.

I hate these days of celebration that aren’t…. the days you should be here and you are not.

But I can tick them off again and now wait for Christmas to rear its ugly head….

XA

 

Dear Darl, it’s Monday 30 July, 2012

882 days

I almost drove past the accident site yesterday.

I haven’t even been to that side of town since The Accident.

But yesterday, the freeway was closed and so I went the old way we used to go to work.

I had thought there would be more distance between The Bad Place and the turn-off.

I didn’t realise I could see The Bad Place from the traffic lights.

I didn’t realised I could see the black mark on the wall.  Still.

….and I am right back in the hell of feeling your loss in everything, every minute, every day.

…..

I don’t want to live for much longer.

I am not suicidal, I just don’t want a long life.

I can only stand this one for as long as it takes the kids to grow up.

After that, all bets are off.

Work gives me some relief – I am so much better for working every day, doing something I am good at.
But work for next year is so uncertain due to the new Queensland Government’s job cuts. (On a side note – I wonder how many suicides those job cuts are responsible for??)

People don’t get the difference between feeling suicidal and just not wanting to live a long life – it is different.

I remember feeling angry at your mother for not getting a lump on her breast checked until after it had metastasised and abscessed.

But now I get it – your father  had died and this was her “out”.

She wasn’t suicidal, but she was done with life.

It makes so much sense now….

I miss you,

I love you.

XA

 

Dear Darl, it’s 21 June, 2012

841 days

The shortest day.

Winter Solstice.

Darkness.

Last weekend, I got a bit of a condescending lecture about “everyone eventually dies” from my pseudo-cousin who I haven’t seen in a long time.

I don’t think you ever met him.

He is older than me.

He is an ambo (so I guess he’s seen death).

…and true to his everlasting form, tries to tell me the way of the world as he’s done since I was a child.

He means well.  But I could live without the condescension.

While I know he has seen some horrors during his working life, he hasn’t had to live with them. Day after day.  Loss of past, present and a future denied with that person who is dead.

He still wakes every morning with his wife of 25 years next to him.

He still sees his three children every day.

He still calls his parents every week.

His own world is untouched by death even though his working world is mired in it.

He knows death but is untouched by personal grief.

Because seeing a neighbour die or losing a friend is NOT the same as losing the person who has shared all of your adult life.

All of my memories of my adult life have you in them.  I’ve lost the one person who was there making all those memories with me and the one person who I can share that smile with when a shared memory pops up.

…and not only have I lost being able to share memories with you, I’ve lost you from all my new memories.  The memories we should be sharing now are complete.  There is no more when there should be.

It is very easy to dismiss death as something that happens to everyone when you haven’t had the love of your life die about 40 years too soon.

There – I feel better now that I’ve spewed this out to you …. at least you are still my sounding board, albeit a much quieter one now….

Dear Darl, it’s May 29, 2012

820 days.

Life plods on without you. I don’t want it too.
Bit of a shock today when I realised that if Mum and the kids had also been killed that day, then I would not be here.
I guess that makes me suicidal….
….except they ARE here so I have a reason to keep living.
God help me if any of them die any time soon (and by soon, Dear Universe, I mean at least 30 years for my mother and at least 90 years for my children – understandies??)
I am not enough on my own.
……and that’s the sad reality.

Dear Darl, it’s April 14, 2012

775 days

Or 2 years, 1 month, 13 days

 

I am slipping down the rabbit hole again.

I keep coming back to the fact that you are gone and it is so unfair and it all just sucks the big one.

Every single thing I do is touched with the thought “Greg would have liked this” or “Greg would have done that” or “Last time I was here, Greg was with me”.

Every

Single

Thing.

I  refuse to move on.

I refuse to learn any great meaning from life from this.

I refuse to be happy.

… and I reject the idea that I need to do anything else than develop a greater level of patience as I wait until it is my turn to die*.

It is all fucked.

…and I am sick of it.

 

* Not suicidal ….. I am just tired of existing.

Dear Darl, I’m 21 again.

761 days.

My birthday again today.

I did not want to celebrate.

I did not want to do anything but have a non-day.

A doona-day.

A day of not talking to anyone or even getting out of bed.

I think I am depressed.

If you can get intense depression that seems to last a single day every so often when life just sucks beyond the telling of it.

But in other ways, I started falling when you died and I’ve not stopped since.

There are just some days when it hits hard, and today is one of those days.

 

I used to look forward to my birthday.

When I was little I would get so mad because Dad’s birthday was 2 days before mine and that middle day just dragged on and on while the anticipation built and built.

…and then you came along and you were my birthday present.  Seriously  how lucky was I to have you   I used to pinch myself that I had the best present of all “forever”. I used to think how lucky I was to have found you so I’d never be sad or lonely ever again.

Boy was I counting some unhatched chickens there huh?

But now, I just see an endless stream of birthdays stretching out in front of me.  Another 21 years … and then another …and probably half that again (if you use a prediction based on the average ages of the women in my family when they died).

…and that’s too much for anyone.

I know I have to stop looking at the distance and just concentrate on putting one foot in front of the other.  staying upright.  shuffling along.

But it’s hard not to count those lonely birthdays ahead of me.

I miss you

I love you.

XA