Waking up after a good 8 hours to early morning sunshine always helps I suppose.
But my mind and mood does feel somewhat lighter than it has done.
Grief for an animal is a knotty subject for discussion.
Not here, of course, as those country and animal "lifestyle bloggers" that frequent this blog will of course understand fully, that dogs especially can worm themselves deep within a psychi and therefore will often leave a gaping hole within a person when they shuffle off this mortal coil.
No, it's others than may just think that a day's upset is quite sufficient thank you very much, now pull yourself up by your bra straps and " get on!".......
Perhaps the answer lies between the two camps.....
Having said this, even this morning, when I know I am feeling brighter, I still missed the ugly and somewhat blurry eyed bulldog face demanding her first snog of the day.
Bulldogs leave a big hole when they leave you, they surly do
I won't dwell on me today ( that's a bloody change eh?) my thoughts really lie with my brother's wife Jayne, who is only 22 weeks or so through the journey of her grief.
22 weeks.
It's nothing is it?
But after the initial "adrenaline rush" that always follows a death, I think, there evolves a time where everyone has a need to get back to normal, and this need for the mundane and the secure often leaves the partner, wife, husband or carer in a kind of limbo land where the obvious grief that is always there, and not magically healed by a few long weeks of distance and the delivery of a few sympathy cards.
Like I said my thoughts are with Jayne today.
I saw Auntie Glad on Saturday afternoon.
Chris spied her first and called out
"scone delivery! as the diminutive white haired figure, tottered around the front of the cottage where she tied a bundle of goodies to the front doorknob before marching back up the lane towards home.
I caught her as she passed the back door, and we chatted for a while.
The Trelawnyd Carnival Committee had asked her to be the Jubilee Queen this year, which tickled her pink, even though she felt she had to decline the offer...
"They wanted me to sit in a car and wave my handbag" she laughed.. "at my age!"
In the 1960's Gladys lost a daughter of 17, tragically and senselessly.
I remember her telling the story to a somewhat open mouthed newspaper reporter a year or so back, and the way that Gladys finally managed to get over her awful grief is something she has shared generously many times since.
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| Gladys ( 2nd from right) at the memorial Hall in the 1950s |
Gladys went into a deep depression. She showed no interest in normal things, she retired to bed, and as the weeks pasted, I am sure that her family was at a loss of how to help her.
Eventually the family GP took things into his own hands and informed Gladys that she needed to "get going " again, she needed to get out of the house.
She needed to live again.
Did he prescribe her sedatives?
no.
Make her up an tonic?
No
He simply found her a job,
and he told her plain and simply that she was to start work the following Monday.... no ifs, buts or maybes
and according to Gladys, that no small feat saved her life.
As a nurse, especially one that works on ITU, I see a great deal of raw, painful grief.
Over the last 22 weeks I have seen and experienced my own family's raw grief
and of course had the complication of the loss of a pug nosed bulldog......for me (and I can only speak for myself) it is a time to lighten
If I was a Jewish Mother ( and believe me there ARE similarities!) I would wring my hands and say
"enough already!"
Off to plant my onions
