F i r s t W a k i n g

 

It’s undeniably the hardest time, no question of that, those first befuddled minutes after waking.   Initially always a feeling of normality punctuated only by irritating little question marks queuing up anxiously to unmask the slight unease that begins as just a murmur and rapidly becomes a scream.  That’s how memory works for some of us.  Long ago conversations come to mind - one with the friend from when the children were still young, memories of sitting in Phoebe’s kitchen in her smart new house in Epsom, chosen specifically because it was in the Right School Zone.   She had never spoken of the cot death before but on that day tears coursed down her cheeks unchecked as she described waking up each morning crying and initially wondering what those tears were for, then the unbearable pain of memory.   Back then I could only make what I hoped were the right noises because I had never suffered such a loss and had little understanding of the anguish she described.   Now of course I have a better handle where sorrow is concerned.

 

That time that directly follows waking can become darker than I ever could have imagined and so I make concentrated attempts to navigate a path forward and tell myself that empty aimless hours are entirely of my own making.   I should answer the phone and that is something I am still most unlikely to do unless of course it is someone I really want to speak with and now with ever present Caller ID the favoured few can be whisked to the top shelf of togetherness effortlessly.    Those who deliberately hide their identity are largely ignored even though that is something I do myself from time to time when I can remember the required code.  To be completely honest the landline rings less and less as days go by.  I should abandon it completely and thus save money. 

 

By midday I usually begin to feel a little less despairing and note that it is generally during the mornings when I pace about the place talking to him, berating him for leaving me at a time when I so clearly still needed him.   How could he do that?   And by afternoon I am once more consumed with self-reproach for the wrongs I did him.  Why did I make so much fuss when he piled up cushions around him and never ever returned them to their original positions?    When he ate handfuls of sultanas at midnight and invariably trod half a dozen across the kitchen tiles?   When he held firmly onto the TV remote month after month so that I barely understood its most basic functions?  No need to ask the questions because I know why – that self-absorbed streak of mine has always been there, no doubt about that.   I am at this very moment compiling a list of those things I most regret.