Well I guess this is as good a place as any to get started. I have been meaning to write this all down for some time now but as always life got in the way.
Seems there has been a lot of life lately, far too much in my opinion, even including some death, not only of the school hamster that Emily, my 10 year old daughter insisted on having over the half term break, but of my mum as well. Perhaps I shouldn't put them in the same sentence, it doesn't seem respectful somehow. But then I don?t think I have been all that respectful recently.
The hamster went back to school having not moved for two days, I felt it was better for the creatures demise to be noticed their rather than here and anyway I had no desire to go rushing around looking for a scruffy multi-coloured hamster the same week as I had to plan the funeral of my mum. Who incidentally is now residing in the large Egyptian sarcophagus in our hallway. It was holding old videos and cds but it seems a fitting place to keep mums ashes until we can decide where to put her. I can honestly say that our sarcophagus now has a mummy in it!
She had been sitting on our sideboard amongst the flowers I brought home from the Crematorium. I felt like a grave robber but I am sure she would not have wanted them to go to waste. So our small lounge wafts of that funny smell you get in florists. Can't recognise a pleasant pong from any of them. That last sentence obviously doesn't include mum! They are starting to wilt and slide down the sides of the vases and I am finding petals and berries on the carpet now. So I guess they will need composting shortly.
I did notice that there are five shelves in mums resting place and just for a moment I was thinking it would be a good Idea to label the shelves and we could all have one. Then I thought that was just in bad taste and shut the door on them.
We went out today and bought dad a budgie; he was getting lonely sitting in the house all day by himself. I can't imagine what it's like to be married for 60 years and then lose the person you love. I remember mum saying to me to make sure he had a budgie if she went first. So there it sits on the coffee table in their lounge, with its yellow head and blue body feathers all puffed up, having realised that the cage wouldnt fit anywhere else. Not the best forward planning but then I was never very good at that anyway. Now you have to watch the telly through the little white bars, so we are listing to more radio.
Of course when we went to choose the little bird, we did all the things you are supposed to, look for the liveliest and the most chatty, but the minute it arrived home it just sat on its perch as if it were stuffed, haven't heard a cheep out of it so far and at one point its head was hanging lower than its feet. It's more riveting than watching the telly, we are just waiting patiently for it to fall off its perch or swing upside down. We had a plastic one once that did that. I have been thinking it would have been cheaper to buy one of those as at the moment you really wouldn't notice the difference.
Mums only been gone two weeks and I have found grief a funny process, not so much funny ha ha as funny peculiar, certainly for me. I had a couple of days of feeling really sad but then that passed and now I feel ok. Happy even. This doesn?t help as I feel guilty instead. I decided being sad hurt too much and when I cried I was just puffy and bunged up. It's odd that even at a time like this I still worry how I look. A bit like the fact that I wake up in the night sometimes wondering if my face is getting all creased and will it inflate before I go to work the next day. I didn't think I was vain, but my life is full of stupid stuff.
I was determined not to feel miserable any more as mum wouldn't have wanted that and I don?t like how it feels. So I get to choose between, bunged up and puffy or guilty. They say there are many processes you are supposed to go through, be interesting to see what's next. Don't get me wrong I love my mum with every bit of me. But I would rather celebrate the life she had than the death.
It seems to me we are only sad for ourselves anyway, we cry for all the things we will miss not really for the person. After all they have left this world behind with all its problems and pains. Being a Psychic Medium helps me as I do believe we all go home when we die, so she?'s not gone far just back home and one day I will to. So really there isn't any need to be sad at all. But they had better throw me a good party when it's my turn.
