Cloudy Days
I haven’t been here for a while now, when everything seemed to be going along ok things just came crashing down again, but this time much more than I imagined they would. I found myself hiding in work again, where I’m fully focused and able to pretend everything’s fine, when it’s not. But the time between work and bed had become a much lonelier and darker place with hours spend staring at a tv that wasn’t even on. Then the old dream began reoccurring, coming through the front door from work and shouting ‘ho honey I’m home” and proceeding to the kitchen where Julie would usually be at that time of day making dinner, then finding her missing, I start going from room to room trying to find her, then the garden, then finally to the garage to see if her car is there in case she’s gone out. Of course, then the penny drops again, she’s not home and she never will be and I wake up shaking and it takes me an hour to get back to sleep and hope it doesn’t happen again before morning.
So, here I am feeling like two steps forward, one step back and sometimes two steps back. I decided to face my demons last weekend and take my tent and go to one of our favourite spots in the Grampians National Park, where we had our last trip away together just a few weeks before Julie passed. I knew that this had the potential to be an enormous fail on my part, it’s a two and a half hour drive from home and the last time we did it, Julie was in a lot of pain but wanted to see her place for the last time, so with the help of a makeshift bed and some morphine we made our way there and with the support of the family we made it happen. Now to face the drive and the place on my own might just be too much to deal with, but I thought; is that worse than never being able to go there again and loose memories of the many trips we’ve had?
I’ll be honest, I tried twice and had everything ready but chickened out at the last moment and stayed in bed, so third time lucky it was and I set off for the weekend taking some work with me to see how it might be sitting out in nature with a mobile set up.
Well, I’m glad to report that I really enjoyed the drive and felt Julie’s presence the whole weekend. I found a quiet camp spot and put up the tent and enjoyed a bush walk and working while sat under a tree with my fold up table and chair. I was more than a little surprised to find that I felt like I belonged there even on my own, physically if not spiritually alone and now free to visit anytime safe in the knowledge that our memories are protected there forever.
One last thing; on my way there I asked Julie to give me a sign she is with me through birds as Julie loved birds and I thought this might give her a challenge. Once I’d got set up I walked to the shops for some supplies and then bought a pie and a slice to eat on a bench near the river. I had noticed people feeding the Cockatoo’s by throwing bits of bakery items at them at a safe distance, so it wasn’t long before a couple of them wandered over to see if I had anything, so I said the usual hello Cocky to them and one of them hoped up on to my knee and the other onto my shoulder and started rubbing his head on mine. I then proceeded to feed them by hand as they sat there and even let me take their photo’s which are included below. In the forty years we’ve been going there that has never happened to me so I’m taking that as my sign.
Next month it will be a year since Julie passed yet it seems like a few weeks at most, so expecting this to be a time of ups and downs, just got to try to stick with it.
