Dear Darl, it’s January 30, 2011

335 days….

My last day of holidays ….

and I spent it taking care of a sick little H.

I was really angry with him this morning – he’d emptied all of his clothes out of his wardrobe so he could “play” in the drawers and shelves.

He did his sad, contrite face which he always does when he’s in trouble.

A few minutes later I heard him spitting in the bathroom.

I thought he was trying to garner sympathy for his room-cleaning plight and pretending to be sick  (another trick he has picked up).

So I sent K in to tell him I didn’t care if he was sick – he still had a room to clean.

Then K came and told me about all the brown stuff in the sink that was “disgusting and smelled”.

Oh.

I raced in there to find the poor kid heaving up his breakfast into the basin.

I cleaned him up and sat him outside on the verandah to cool off and calm down.

After a while of him sitting there, holding his bucket and leaning on me, he said he was thirsty and had a sore throat.

Given that i wasn’t convinced that he hadn’t gagged on a cough (his reflux is back with a vengeance lately). I gave him a zooper dooper ice block, figuring he’d get a bit of energy and liquid and not too quickly as it was ice.

After a few sucks, that came up too along with the rest of his breakfast.

Poor bugger.

…. poor me!

I don’t *do* the vomits – that’s your department baby.  I did every other health related thing from dentist visits to immunisations.  From wiping snotty noses, to doling out medicine.

I just don’t have the stomach for the vomits.  When I see it or smell it, I start heaving.

This is why it was YOUR job to deal with vomitty kids.

and you aren’t here.

So thankfully he seems to have come good by tonight.  He’s kept a dry cracker or two down and has been sipping water all day.

Now he’s feeling better and wants to do stuff.  I want to go to bed.

I miss you so much.

I love you even more.

XA

Dear Darl, it’s January 29, 2011

334 days….

A day of meh.

I just seem to lack motivation to get anything done.

Your niece and her hubby did come over for a while.  They may or may not have left a little tummy bug with H as they left.

That’s probably the highlight.

I miss you.

I love you.

XA

Dear Darl, it’s January 28, 2011. Choosing a grave marker

333 days….

Mum came with me out to the cemetery today.  She provided the moral support and helped me choose a grave marker which will soon contain your details and has space for mine.

With photos.

and I am going to stipulate in my Will that the photo of me will be one from when i was young and beautiful.  There’s no way that there will be a young and handsome picture of you next to a 90-year-old drooling prune.

It will replace this:

(not your best angle)…

The slab of concrete with our family name after the four blocked out names where it’s been used before.

The only good part about this exercise was that the complete and utter fruitloop of a woman who normally runs the cemetery was not there.  When I originally tried to organise a grave marker last April, this nutcase went on and on about “designing” your plaque because she’d done one for some semi-famous boat racer who is also buried there.

….and she wanted to put a picture of a car on your plaque because “he liked cars didn’t he”.  (Yeah – except I’d just told her that you died in a car accident).

So I was relieved not to see her demented face greet Mum and I as we went into the cemetery office.

Instead, a young, beautiful woman did a perfect job of providing us with information without being in our faces at all.

….and as a result, I’ve organised the grave marker.

Well as soon as I e-mail a photo and pay the fee I have.

Again, not a task that I thought I’d have to do at the age of 40.

I miss you, my man, my rock, my world.

I love you.

XA

Dear Darl, it’s January 27, 2011. Gravity Swirls.

332 days….

I knew the peaceful feeling from the past few days couldn’t last.

I missed you like crazy again today.

I just couldn’t get a grip on the world.

It’s shifted on its axis and I couldn’t  find my balance.

Gravity swirls.

Highly unstable differential calculus.

Knocking me off centre.

tripping me up.

pulling me down.

My sun rose and set in you and now I can’t reset my compass.

I’ve lost my point of reference.

Adrift and unanchored.

But I’ll suck it up and try again tomorrow.

I miss you.

I love you.

XA

Dear Darl, it’s January 26 2011. Australia Day.

331 days…

We didn’t have our traditional Australia Day brekky today, but we did visit J and her girls for a swim and some morning tea lamingtons

Not quite the same as past years, but not so bad.

J has been a rock for me.

She’s kept the world stable for me when I was spinning out of control.

I owe her my sanity.

~~~

Mum made dinner tonight.  Another sanity saver.

…and Terry fixed another bit on my car.  A little more faith in the world restored again.

I don’t know how people deal with the fallout without a solid support network to keep them from falling.

I am so lucky – friends, family and internet buddies who’ve kept me going in one way or another are worth their weight in diamonds.

and knowing that they miss you too reminds me that you were such a light in this world.  Other people still feel your absence.

I miss you.

I love you.

XA

 

Dear Darl, it’s January 25, 2011. Shades of Meh.

330 days…

Can you believe our boy is in Grade 1??  I am finding this quite daunting … possibly because I want so badly to go back in time to when we were a whole family.

~~

Tom turned up early this morning to do some work on  finishing the drain.  I didn’t know he was coming.  Luckily I was clothed when I looked out our usually-private bedroom window.  He didn’t finish the drain though, so obviously I’ll need to be wary of opening the curtains for a while.

Oh – and I will have to wait for the quote but I’m pretty sure that I know who I want to build the deck.  I think you would even like this bloke (and his wife is my aide so double plus).

~~~

Your sister J and her husband T dropped by this afternoon.  It was good to see them and I just told the that their money for the farm would be late.   I explained that the payment has coincided with me getting no pay and an expensive drain needing to be dug. I don’t think they are happy but they didn’t bat an eyelid.

~~~~

So today, has just been …. meh.

It hasn’t sucked as much as the days before Christmas. I haven’t cried much.
But it hasn’t been great either.
I wonder if I’ll ever experience happiness again….

I don’t have high hopes.

Perhaps this is the best I can hope for … days filled with  meh.   Calm.  Boring.  Dull. Nothing.

The world is now shades of grey. ….Shades of Meh.

Which I suppose, is better than pitch black.

I miss you.

I love you.

XA

Dear Darl, it’s January 24

329 days….

The kids started school again today.  K is growing up before my eyes and H … well he’s now a real boy in every sense of the word.

It was quite emotional for me (leave alone them).  Not because “my babies are all at school” but because you weren’t walking them in with me.

Thankfully, the 10 minute drive to school gave me time to have a quiet cry before I got there so I managed OK.

They were pleased to discover that they are in adjoining classrooms and each of them has their best friend in their class … and they also have really good teachers this year.  One teacher all day, every day ….. and each teacher is pure gold.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

I’m feeling very sad tonight.  I have just been following the blog of another, very new, very raw widow who lost her husband under very tragic circumstances earlier this month.

and now I read of another young Aussie Mummy blogger who died just days after her sister.

This shit makes no sense.

This time last year, I knew one or two young widows …

This year, I am surrounded by agony with so many women I know or know of who have been widowed in the past 12 months … and also men who’ve lost their young wives.

What the fuck is going on?

 

I need a hug so badly right now.

I need to feel your wiry arms around me.

I need you.

I miss you.

I love you.

XA

 

Dear Darl, it’s 23 January 2011

328 days….

We had to go to a Christening this morning.

For the first time since you died, I didn’t cry in church.

That may be because I don’t feel the love of God.  I don’t feel that he is my “light and salvation”.

I feel that he has fucked my life over quite royally and there’s no way I’m bowing my head and saying “thank you sir, please may I have another”.

So I didn’t pray.  I didn’t sing.

…and I copped a few stares.

But I did show up for my friends and their baby.  I smiled and nodded and was sociable after the service.

It did manage to put me in a foul mood for the rest of the morning though.

Broken by making ice-cream and then going for a swim.

Swimming calms me.  It’s very womb-like when your head is under water and your ears hear sounds in the water but not sounds out of the water.

and now I will go to bed and hope for sleep.

For the kids start school tomorrow and THAT will make me cry… in the past, you’ve taken the morning off work to take the kids back to school on Day 1.  We’ve walked into the school grounds as a family and settled the kids into their classes.

and tomorrow, that won’t happen.

I miss you.

I love you.

XA

Dear Darl, it’s 22 January 2011

327 days…

I am so tired I can barely type.

I haven’t been sleeping well this past week.

I don’t want to go back on the Temazepam and the Valerian was working really well… but I really need to sleep.

The mower man came today – he does wonders with the hell lawn we have developed here – a full-blown pond WITH algae now exists on the footpath sludge. the from yard has a channel carved by storm water and the back yard is still a mess from the drain.

But Ron fixed it and it looks so much better.

…and I took the kids down to see the high tide today – it was slightly bigger yesterday, but today’s was impressive.

Mind you, they were more interested in watching a man repeatedly throw a ball into the water for his Labrador to fetch.

H was so worried that the dog would get sucked out to sea, he couldn’t watch.  Then peeked and was relieved when the dog paddled back in…. but he went through the same performance each of the 30 times the ball was thrown.

 

But I am now so so tired.  Drunk without drinking tired.  Tired to the bone.

I hope I sleep.

In our lonely bed.

I miss you.

I love you.

XA

Dear Darl, it’s 21 January 2011

326 days…

and today, out of the blue, I’m feeling OK.

It’s even a frigging Friday night which are usually the worst …. and I have had a millisecond of acceptance.

Never been there before.

… and I don’t suppose it will last as I can barely recall that moment where I knew that I wished you’d come home, but I knew you weren’t going to.

and I didn’t cry at the thought (but may later).

~~

I had to sit through a WH&S in-service today.

Opening slide:

Did you know that every year,
a huge number of people are killed doing their job
and then each of those people have families that have to deal with the fallout?

No Shit Sherlock.

That’s when I burst into tears at school today.  Thank God it was a pupil-free day.

 

I actually dont’ start work until week 2 …. which can mean both the fact that I’m unpaid for an extra week, or I have a kid-free week during which time I can get a whole heap of stuff done.

Like organise your headstone.

 

I miss you like crazy.

I love you forever.

XA