The small things

The little things

….  that annoy me (and drive me to drink).

Hello Mr Baileys…

Warning – disorganised tiredness and general whining follows…..

Somedays I think being a widow has taught me patience, but there are other days when I realise my fuse is very short and I have no time for pedants and things that make my life harder.

I question why, instead of helping to simplify my life, so many different things are trying to take another piece of me that I just don’t have to give.

Why can’t my son’s school accept my e-mailed “OK, please bill me” as an acceptance of a fee?  Why does it require a signature for $3.50?  Why does it send me five invoices totallying about $20 instead of one single invoice?

Or why the Department of Transport is only open during office hours making it hard for me to get my driver’s license renewal photo.

Or why my boss is insisting I set personal goals as a way of modelling to my students that we all have goals:  if I have been taught anything from being suddenly widowed, it is that living day to day and rolling with the punches is the only way to cope with life. (I have made up a goal that I will fluff my way  through and they will know I am faking it.   It will suck but my boss will be appeased.)

I wonder if these petty little things would still get to me if I had Greg here….. letting me talk things over or letting me deal with the bills and the school issues and doing one of the other eleventy million jobs that I have on my plate right now
… hmmmm ……. plate … that reminds me that I must go and cook my children dinner.  But maybe I can have a little wine with my whine while I make it…..

Am I just turning into a cranky person, or does anyone else have days like this?

Lesser Losses

When the children were small, I convinced Greg that we should get some pets so that the children could learn about life cycles early in life.  They would experience the love and  loss of a pet and understand that everything that lives must die.

So Greg captured some pullets from themany of chooks at the farm back in 2006.
These were hardy farm birds whose toughness was only matched by their wiliness in egg-laying.

Then we rescued a couple of extra chicks from a school hatching program who proved to be eggselent layers.  They formed our egg-laying flock who have been Queens of the yard for the past seven years.

Today, the second of those less-hardy younger hens was found dead in her pen.

The children found her and  cried, and to my surprise … prayed.
Their grief was so much more real than I could have expected given the losses they have already endured.

and I cried . …… and swore.

Maybe its irrational, but I cried and swore that instead of being the soft-entry to the knowledge of life and death for our children that I had planned, so many beloved family members died in stark, brutal, heart-breaking ways before any of our pets.

My previously fit, healthy Father-in-law died from cancer in 2007.

My Mother-in-law died in 2009, also of cancer.  ….. and a broken heart.

Exactly one year to the day after his mother left us, Greg died.

Then my very elderly Nan died (not unexpectedly) in 2011.

So while today  I mourn the loss of a much-loved family pet*, it has brought back those memories of a time when the idea that any of our family could possibly die before a short-lived pet was unthinkable.

The irony.  Oh, the irony of it all.

* – I am not saying the loss of a pet is equal to that of a human. I love animals, but I love people more.

Four Years

Four years since you left me.
Suddenly.
Violently.
Bereft.

Nobody could possibly begin to understand the soul connection we had.
Anam Cara.
We two were so closely linked.

…and yes, I know we are still connected.

I have learnt to recognise the signs you send me.
I know you are near.
I know you miss nothing.

I am lucky that intuition comes naturally to me.
You always said that I could “feel” whether people were good or bad.
I can’t explain it.
I just “know” things.
Like what you were about to say, or what you were thinking.
Or how my soul knew yours as soon as it saw you, standing there in the backyard of a friend’s house.
Or how I knew that we would marry from that first kiss.

Or how I had a premonition of your death, right before your death.

I have  realised that you have never left me, that you hear me, that you are actively leading me forward.
… to a new life.
…to the people I needed to meet.
…towards the light.
… Towards hope.

…and my love for you is stronger than ever.
XA