The empty chair – My Journey:

I’ve been very tearful these past few days. I think that this has been triggered by my birthday – family events are invariably a time when the ’empty chair’ is at its most conspicuous. Thankfully I now have a few days off work where I can just relax, read, eat and sleep – and catch up on some housework. I haven’t been sleeping well recently, so catching up on sleep is definitely high on my list.

A few months ago a website called HOPE SHACK (Finding Hope in the midst of Life’s Struggles) contacted me to say that they would like to feature excerpts from my blog on their website. I willingly agreed to this. I visited their website today and saw that they had featured excerpts from my blog on the 26th May – the very day of my birthday – that’s a lovely encouragement for me. It’s like a little whisper from God to my soul that says “I have not forgotten you.”

I especially love the fact that the song they chose to feature alongside these excerpts is “How He loves us“. This is one of the many songs that Leah and I used to enjoy listening to together. However Leah and I couldn’t agree on whether we liked it best sung by a female voice or by a male voice, so I remember us sitting in the Bone Marrow Transplant Unit in Bristol, first listening to a version by Kim Walker-Smith and then one by David Crowder and debating (in a good-natured way) over which one sounded better! I favoured the David Crowder version:

“How He Loves”
(originally by John Mark McMillan)

He is jealous for me,
Loves like a hurricane, I am a tree,
Bending beneath the weight of His wind and mercy.
When all of a sudden,
I am unaware of these afflictions eclipsed by glory,
And I realize just how beautiful You are,
And how great Your affections are for me.

And oh, how He loves us, oh,
Oh, how He loves us,
How He loves us all

He is jealous for me,
Loves like a hurricane, I am a tree,
Bending beneath the weight of His wind and mercy.
When all of a sudden,
I am unaware of these afflictions eclipsed by glory,
And I realise just how beautiful You are,
And how great Your affections are for me.

And oh, how He loves us, oh,
Oh, how He loves us,
How He loves us all

Yeah, He loves us,
Oh, how He loves us,
Oh, how He loves us,
Oh, how He loves.

And we are His portion and He is our prize,
Drawn to redemption by the grace in His eyes,
If his grace is an ocean, we’re all sinking.
And Heaven meets earth like an unforeseen kiss,
And my heart turns violently inside of my chest,
I don’t have time to maintain these regrets,
When I think about the way…

That He loves us,
Oh, how He loves us,
Oh, how He loves us,
Oh, how He loves.
Yeah, He loves us,
Oh, how He loves us,
Oh, how He loves us,
Oh, how He loves.

Yeah, He loves us,
Oh, how He loves us…
Oh, how He loves us…
Oh, how He loves us.

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.