Bank Holiday Blues

Today was a Bank Holiday in Northern Ireland. Bank Holidays, like Sundays, can be very painful, because they are family days.

Sundays used to be my favourite day of the week, now they’re the most difficult, the day when the empty chair is at it’s most conspicuous.

I concentrated on keeping myself busy today, trying to do housework and sort through stuff, choking back the tears.

When Leah and I came back from Bristol, there was only enough of the new house ready for her and I to move in. Then on Christmas Eve, the rest of the family joined us, but there wasn’t any time to move all of our belongings from the old house to the new house.

Three days later, Leah was admitted to hospital and subsequently died, so nothing ever got sorted. We just fetched items from the other house when we needed them – if we even remembered what we had!

To be honest, I find it very painful to go into our old house now, too many memories. To make it easier for me, Horace goes up and fills a box of stuff from the old house and brings it down for me to sort.

Some stuff goes in the bin (or the fire), some goes to the Charity Shop and some gets kept. The trouble is, everything has a memory  attached to it.

Today while sorting, I found pages of Leah’s homework, along with a long list of who she was buying Christmas presents for in 2012 and the consent form that she signed when she was having her eggs harvested in 2013.

Nearly makes me think that the gypsies have the right idea – when one of them dies they usually burn their wagon.

After my Mum died I couldn’t face clearing out her house, so my husband went and did it in my place. I appreciated him doing that so much. I really think that sorting through somebody’s possessions after they’ve died is one of the most painful things ever.

I will be glad to get to my work tomorrow for a ‘break’. Work is the one area of my life that is more or less still the same as it was before Leah’s illness and death. There’s a comfort in that.

I loved my job before Leah took ill and thankfully I still love it.

The demands of my work and the busyness, provide a very welcome distraction for a few hours, three days per week.