Is It Normal.......?

 

It is now six long weeks since Himself departed this life.   I wish I could say I was becoming accustomed to his absence but I can’t.   I’m still of the opinion that snatching him away before I had actually properly absorbed the fact that he was terminally ill was unreasonable, unwarranted.   I was always hopeful that something, somehow would save him but of course that wasn’t going to happen.  Is it normal to be so naïve?  

 

Sometimes when I walk down the stairs, for a moment or two thinking of something else, just for a milli-second I fancy that I see him sitting in his usual place, hunched over a book and I am stopped in my tracks.   There follows a searing flash of pain because it is just a momentary illusion and I remind myself that the self same whim followed the death of a long ago cat, Heidi, who always sat beneath the Feijoa tree in Kohimarama – and continued to do so in the months that followed her demise.   Is it normal to imagine things?

 

At times I am eclipsed on all sides by well-meaning people, good friends who want to help me and are undeterred by my rudeness and lack of response.   I still resist answering the phone because largely I just wish to be left alone.   I don’t know how to decline kind offers and company.  It seems preferable to simply fail to engage than have to explain.  If and when I recover from the worst of this onslaught of misery some of them might still be there and willing to re-engage.   I know that many will not and am surprised at how little I care.   Is this lack of concern normal?

 

I admit to cherry picking the occasional company of a select few and surprise myself with the choice that seems to defy rhyme or reason.   Though communing with those who demand little is easy and comfortable, whereas others can unexpectedly provoke endless memories of times shared – little pools of tears.  And my reservoir of sorrow grows and extends into a future that seems bleak and black.   Is this lack of hope normal?

 

It is as ever, comforting that in the final months of his life Himself was supported and loved by the presence of two of our three children.  I could not have managed without them.  I now have to wonder if my present level of despair is because that time was not as perfect as it should have been – because he was not loved unreservedly as a good father should be and as he deserved to be.   Are these feelings of bitterness normal?