Good Grief 348

Ugh! It did my head in...again. Crying in no time.
It doesn’t get any easier and I think I’ve got somewhere and realise I’ve just nibbled.
Such a mix here of two dead men’s stuff.
Two dead men’s lives, full lives. Families, work, photos, learning, books, poetry, relationship, engagement with the world. Two men of books and papers, and so much.
Stuff under the stairs, clothes, papers, books.
Papers, so many papers with rusty paper clips.
Divorce papers from 15 years before we even met.
Respondent, co-respondent, financial settlements. It’s all so mucky. Why should I have to do this? So angry.
The smell of his rucksack as if he’s just come in from work. Stiffened with age the zipper wouldn’t open. I cut it with scissors and burnt the contents. Burn, burn, burn. Mouldy emotion, festering in a lack of life.
Such a mix of difficulty and emotion.
Problems such as whether or not I should get rid of things that I know link to others.
Ongoing anger at having to sort stuff that has nothing to do with me but which I feel needs disposing of confidentially.
And then the little card there came this morning from the grandson thanking me the book I sent him. He tells me he’s 10 now. He was 4 when his grandad died. What on earth have I been doing? Where’s my life? So little accumulation. What there is, there’s no-one to sort it. I want it all out. No memory. No grief. Quietly raging. Quietly screaming.
Barely started on mum and dad’s.

I did as much as I could and made a bolt for fresh air.

As I went to get rid of stuff I wanted to go somewhere that connected somehow; not just a stompy walk.
It was January Monday quiet and I set off to where I had an intention to visit. As I sat amongst the venerably aged I thought, ‘you have no papers, no stuff...you are truly a witness...nothing to show or prove other than your long and abiding presence in the world’.
I stood for some time on the bridge watching the water rush downstream. The roar of it after the rain and snow. After a while it seemed as though it flowed through me. My substance seemed to evaporate and I was part of it. The absurdity of thinking it stops with us, that it is there for us to see and hear; it just flows through us, we hold this moment and are gone.

Reminded of, ‘These chairs they have no words to utter...’