A couple of months ago, I started getting pins and needles in my forearm, ring finger and the left half of my hand. When in full emotional flow, I was getting a tight chest and even slight pains. Obviously these symptoms are not good and my family and friends told me straight, “Call the GP… Now.’ So I dutifully called the GP. I explained the symptoms and she wanted me at the surgery ASAP. Normally it takes 2-3 weeks to get an appointment there! This was before lockdown but the surgery had a covid scare the week after My Lady passed away… No really. So I was asked to park up, call the reception and the doctor would meet me outside, fully gowned up to give me a mask, gown and to sanitise my hands. To cut a long story short, she did several tests and came to the conclusion that this was brought on by my distress and was potentially putting a strain on my heart. ‘Well that seems appropriate, given that I feel like half of it has been ripped out. So it fucking should be broken.’ I thought to myself.

After no major problems were found apart from a “blip” on the ECG test, she referred me for a chest X-ray and CT Cardio Angiogram. When she looked up from making these notes on the system, she turned round to me and with a majorly worried face, said “I think I need to give you some Valium to calm you down and help you sleep and some GTN spray (Angina medicine.) so we can do a basic test when you are in full flow.” ‘Jesus I thought, am I really that bad?’ The weird thing was that despite all these bad symptoms, I was not and am still not scared in the slightest for myself. The thought of carrying on without My Lady was just too much at the time and the only thing that motivated me to look after myself was the people that loved me and of course, My Lady’s children. I can’t imagine what this must be like for them. The only blood family they have are estranged. My blood family are mostly muppets or at worst downright rude and insensitive. All but my Father and Step-Mum (passed away) showed no real interest in the 13 years My Lady and I were together. So, it’s the 3 of us against the world. Poor Precious is living with Uni pals over a 2 hour drive away though. It’s shit.

My Lady and I were both brought up in single parent families and My Lady had to bring up Precious on her own for the best part of ten years and she had to do and be everything for her children. Now it’s my turn. I won’t lie, the thought of it terrifies me. I’m well known for being forgetful and bad with money. Four months in and I haven’t dropped any major balls. Just silly stuff that doesn’t matter. I am surprised as anyone!

May 14th 2020. 00:20

The trouble with trains is you never know when they are coming, the same rings true with grief. Just yesterday the emotional freight train hit me again just when I need to be strong and positive for my Princeling. I hate the way it just comes out of the blue after a period of calm… Bam! You don’t see it coming and it’s all you can do to not totally freak out in the middle of a shopping centre for instance. Once the train has hit me, it’s hard to snap out of it and there’s not a damn thing you can do about it initially.

So, my Princeling turned 16 twenty minutes ago. It’s such a strange feeling, being so proud and so happy, yet my soul hurts so much that his Mother was not here to see it. She missed the receiving of his National Insurance number recently too. Life is so cruelly unfair at times. We both were unsure how/if we should celebrate and of course given lockdown, our options were somewhat limited. We made the best of a sad moment and tomorrow we will get together online with his sister and friends. It’s at times like these that the finality of it all hits home…Again.

Thursday, April 30th 2020.

It’s true you know. When people say “Keep yourself busy.”, the ONLY thing that keeps you from going utterly insane is distraction. My Lady and I always loved our garden. One of her favourite summer pastimes was watching me hoover the lawn with my top off while she sat in the shade sipping at a Long Island Ice Tea. As my Lady passed away in February, it wasn’t long before spring showed its ugly (in this instance) face. We love this time of year and it also happens to be the season in which we met. All I can think of when I see all the beauty spring brings, is ‘She’s not here to see it.’

As the lockdown from the corona virus outbreak was started only ten days after the funeral, it became clear that I, along with everyone else would have a lot of time on our hands so I threw myself into the garden. Before my world fell apart, we would maintain the garden for the most part but we were both working hard and had little energy for it.

While my Lady was in hospital, my daughter and I were sat watching the garden, worried about how ill she was during a big storm. Now our fence was shoddy from the start and it was the in joke about how I would always be repairing it when yet another breeze broke it again. This storm was doing it’s thing when one panel started wobbling, then another, then another. One ends up the other side of the garden. “Ooohh Mama’s pissed!” we said to ourselves. Another storm two days later, left just one panel remaining which was flapping around threatening to give one last slap in the face at any moment. ‘You’ll have to get it done properly now!’ I heard my Lady say to me in the back of my head with a chuckle in her voice.

So fate gave me my first project. I could hardly just ignore it however grief stricken I was. I spent several days clearing, weeding and planning. As for the fence… Well… We hadn’t had a bonfire for a long time and had always planned to have a fire pit where the ‘penis pond’ used to be. So, after spending all day cutting new beds, potting on the plants I purchased when grief spending and smashing the fence to pieces, I have the bruises to prove it, I carefully built the fire at dusk. I was determined to see every last piece of that bastard burn in hell! Obsessively so. I stayed there, hypnotised by the fire and deep in thought until nearly 2am. 15 hours in the garden in just that day.

So I’m two and a half months in. Somehow I’m still alive. These have been the worst times of my life. I could never have even conceived of so much pain. Having spent nearly a month on Valium and now on antidepressants, some of the fog is clearing. One notable thing about these meds is that they can make you feel worse before you feel better. This has turned out to be a roller coaster ride this last week. Even now I flip between shock and denial. ‘How can this be real? It makes no sense’.

Everyone’s grief is different. Even before My Lady fell ill, I had been semi obsessing about our getting together. I had found our old emails from when we were courting and had put them together in a document called “The meeting of soulmates”. All I needed was to sneak a copy of her MySpace blogs to add to it before I gave it to her as a present for her birthday. Ever since my Lady passed away, all I can think about was the way we swept each other off our feet. I wondered why I obsessed so much over this rather than how much we had achieved and how far we had come from our humble roots. This was equally important to me but still… To get to the point, part of me seems to be reverting to how I was when we met. Fortunately not the bad bits. I’m struggling to find meaning in it all just like I was back then. The sad thing is… There is no meaning in any of it. Not really, other than that which we create for ourselves. For all the factual reasons for the loss, it doesn’t matter. There must be something to all this “Cosmos” business… Mustn’t there? As mentioned elsewhere, I considered myself Pagan back then. My thoughts have slipped there sometimes which I found intriguing. I keep going round in circles, each time resurrecting a new memory and adding it to the tapestry my mind is weaving and the Paganism was part of that. I guess this will never stop and to be honest, I don’t want it too. Perverse as it sounds and as painful as it is, I “enjoy” remembering these times. My perception of us back then is we were almost children. I felt like we had grown up together and in many ways we had.