Sunbeams

Well, that last post of mine was a little ray of sunshine wasn't it?

When Georgina died, I think I lost some of the emotional elasticity so necessary for maintaining cheerfulness in the face of the routine challenges of life. The ability to shrug things off. To imagine that everything will be ok.

Perhaps because everything can no longer be ok. Not wholly. Not now.
And that doesn't mean defeat. Or the end.
It means that something cannot be fixed. Cannot be returned.

Life punches me into a miserable shape and I sometimes stick . . . moulded there. Spine bent and head bowed. Staring in despair at my own too spongy stomach. Because my springiness has gone. I'm just soft, soft dough. Waiting for the next hit.

Greedily reaching for whatever it is that I feel might yield a small, cold comfort. Like a heavy, thick coin clutched in my hands. Food, the icy sting of the freezing cold fizzy Diet Coke, the harsh tang of wine, the rush of instant gratification in the shops, buying things for children that already have more than they can ever realistically wear or find time to play with. Sickeningly indulgent. "But it's ok." my inner justification whines, "she died. You can have that. They can have that. Take it all."

It takes me longer to recover from even a small challenge. A cross word. A car horn beeping at me. A mistake discovered in a spreadsheet. An imagined misunderstanding. Being late. Forgetting the milk. A child screaming over something unknowable and unfixable. Burst nappies. Bank account hovering into the red. A house filled with dust bunnies. Hour long commutes.

One tiny thing. And the bowed- head-bent- spine-doughy thing that is me? Bends lower. Disheartened.

All this, it mutters. All this and she is dead? Too much.

I know it isn't. The 'all this' is vanishingly important. It is the death. That makes everything else seem like the final straw.

And it takes longer. For the all the cheerful flag waving, pom pom shaking, cheering up to take hold.
But it does.

My mother used to sing to me . . .

You've got to pick yourself up, dust yourself off, start all over again.


And I thought it was rather too cheery, too Polly-Anna-ish for my liking.
But I didn't taste the iron, that metallic twinge like blood in your mouth.

Sometimes life knocks a few teeth out. And you are left slightly dizzy and confused and trying to maintain an upright position. With blood in your mouth and singing an annoying song. Possibly you are waving a pom-pom.

Wave one for me please. It seems I need a wee bit of cheering on. Perhaps it's August. Looming at me from behind July.