Ten years on

No, the pain is still there.  You learn to cope -- distract yourself -- become embroiled in other difficulties.  The worst has happened -- you hope.

We see the Partner at least once a year.  He faithfully travels to visit the site where we scattered the ashes.  I've only been once -- finding the walk more and more difficult.  Funny, we never thought about that at the time.  That we'd get too old to make the journey.  But you don't think about that.  You only know that this is where she'd want to be.

Her brother still feels the loss, although he doesn't mention it.  Our cat died last spring.  He was 18 years old and increasingly in poor health.  He died while I was holding him (must I always be the one present at deaths?)  We didn't want to put him to sleep unless he was really suffering.  And we didn't want the vet to "take care" of the body.  Devastated, D. built a wood box.  We lined it with some sheeting and laid Max in.  D. put in his favorite toys.  We dug a very deep hole in what was once my father's vegetable patch.  The box was sealed and lowered.  We filled it in and I put a sprig of lilac on the mound.  He was a good cat.  I hope E. is there waiting for him.

quotes Beverly likes

"They that love beyond the world cannot be separated by it.
Death cannot kill what never dies.
Nor can spirits ever be divided, that love and live in the same divine principle, the root and record of their friendship.
If absence be not death, neither is theirs.
Death is but crossing the world, as friends do the seas; they live in one another still.
For they must needs be present, that love and live in that which is omnipresent.
In this divine glass they see face to face; and their converse is free, as well as pure.
This is the comfort of friends, that though they may be said to die, yet their friendship and society are, in the best sense, ever present, because immortal."— William Penn

Goodreads Quotes

"What are ghosts if not the hope that love continues beyond our ordinary senses? If ghosts are a delusion, then let me be deluded." -- Amy Tan. The Opposite of Fate

Keeping the memory

Getting closer to the sad time of year, when the weather reminds me of the feeling of that day. Going through birthdays, holidays and all those special times is not easy. But the anniversary of someone's death is perhaps the worst, especially if one was right there at the time. "Family at the bedside" it says in the obituaries. But it was me there. I was there at her beginning and at her end. I save all the books she gave me, all the postcards, birthday cards, little gifts -- I can never part with them. There is a video of her online, when she was interviewed about part of the treatment available at her hospital. I can't bear to watch it -- but want to. She also spoke at a medical conference, giving the patient's point of view on treatment. So far as I know there is no visual record of that. But there must be people who heard her and were moved by her presentation. So a little piece of her goes on -- I hope so anyway. And her blog still exists, painful as it is to read that. But it worries me that someday there will be no one who remembers her. Already, I'm sure, the girls in her Guide troop have moved on, maybe not forgetting her completely but not missing her anymore. How many of her close friends think of her every day still? People who knew her casually won't think of her at all. Does the doctor remember her, the nurses who cared for her or do they learn to blot out those memories? Do her teachers remember her or even know that she has died? Soon there will be a conversation pit for the Guide camp, in her memory. My cousin's daughter and son have done the Avon Walk in her memory to raise money for breast cancer. One of her friends has dedicated a book to her. My son and I have dinner at a local fast food restaurant in her honor -- she would have had a hot dog and peppermint stick ice cream. Little things. I wish more people had known her.

Two years --

Everything reminds me of that time. The warm weather, the Fourth of July, any little thing.
Dozing the other evening, I thought I heard her call. It was probably some child outside calling to the mother. But it gave me a jolt.
Funny how the memory can just call something up completely out of the blue.

Nearly a year

How can you say it gets "better"? You still remember the bad stuff as well as the good stuff. Maybe you no longer wake up in the middle of the night and have it all churning in your brain but it's still there. In a way, you want to hang on to it -- you don't want to forget any of it because it's all you have of her, memories. She "lives" in our memories.
I wish I hadn't so blithely accepted the cremation and dispersal of ashes because now I have no place close by to commune with her. She is far away on a distant shore, perhaps been swept out into the North Sea. Perhaps she's a silkie now. But I am here and how will I feel if I leave this place where there is only a relatively small connection to her? How will I feel when we downsize both houses where she lived and grew up? I must some day part with all the toys from her childhood, all the gifts and cards she's ever given me, the garments I knit and sewed for her. I have the memories.
Summer will always be a sad time. I remember how warm it was when she died. Remember walking the streets of London, doing errands, looking for things to cheer her up, trying to distract myself. Offering her fresh berries and other fruits, ice cream to tempt her. Trying to keep her cool, all the windows and doors open. Hanging the sheets and towels out that day in the sun and later taking them in thinking "She was alive this morning"

Birth-days

March 5th will be hard. I've already requested the day off. What will I do -- pull the covers over my head? Try to divert myself somehow? I don't know. Maybe I should make her a cake and dress in green and knit all day long.
She would have been 33 -- the same age I was when she was born. Some kind of cruel symmetry at work. Today there is a baby shower at work. I wish the young woman well -- but why couldn't E. have had the chance to fulfill that dream?
No, there will never be answers to the question "why?"
This is the year of the Tiger. Her oncologist said she was like a tiger -- full of fight. She fought until there was no more fight left.