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• JOURNAL 47

  20 October, 2015

   

  Hi Sweetheart,

  I have been thinking a lot about grief lately. Obviously the subject is of enormous interest to me, mainly because I’m caught up in its dynamic in my own life. I’m sure it is correct to say that our grieving process began almost as soon as we received the news of your diagnosis – some 2 years before you physically died.

  Of course, that experience of grief intensified powerfully when you were taken from me. If it’s true that “to be absent from the body is to be present with the Lord”, then I’m assuming that your grief is a thing of the past. It has been healed by the immediate presence of Jesus.

  There’s so much I don’t understand about this process and each day it feels like other questions are joining the ones already lining up for answers. Sometimes I sense things that puzzled me and concern me.

  1. I’m often conscious of another presence in the unit. No, I’m not thinking of the presence of God. That’s a given. It’s a young person I think. It’s like he/she (I can’t tell which for sure) is in the lounge room. We don’t talk or acknowledge each other. They seem pre-occupied with reading or playing with an electronic gadget of some sign. It doesn’t feel discourteous to ignore them but the unit doesn’t feel empty.

  2. Do you remember the second bedroom with the 2 single beds? We bought those knowing that the day (night?) would come when we would be separated and no longer be able to share the marriage bed. Well, the memories of that arrangement are still very acute because when I go to bed now I instinctively do so quietly lest I wake or disturb you.

  3. But weirdest of all is to hear the sound of you breathing!! Then I feel your movement in the bed. I never sense your touch, just a shuffling to be more comfortable.

  Of course, as I analyse this scenario more carefully, I realise that it is my breathing and my own movement that I sense. I’m discovering that Mr. Parkinson has his own cute way of delaying my awareness of such things by nano-seconds, creating the impression that these activities (breathing & shuffling) belong to someone else!

  Anyway, there’s nothing you can do nor is there any need for you to respond to these observations. I’m pretty sure that I’m not going mad. But I wanted to mention them. Who knows, but that these letters may one day fall into the hands of a grieving person who desperately needs the re-assurance that they, too, are not going crazy?

  It’s lunch time!! I’ll be writing again soon. There are a few other questions and observations that I need to mention to you.

  But Until Then…..

  You remain the love of my life

  Mike