When is the time right?

Jay was never really a one for Christmas. I used to jokingly call him `Mr Bah Humbug` and he should join the `Grinch Club` but once our son was born all those years ago and our little granddaughter came along almost 3 years ago he mellowed out a bit. Last year I never realised too that that would be our last Christmas together. He could hardly eat his Christmas dinner because the chemo he was getting just made him so ill and most of the day he had to spend in bed. Then over the New Year holiday he was in hospital with severe dehydration and low kidney function and this is when they found out the chemo had did some damage to his kidneys and so therefore was stopped altogether. At the time I said Oh well we'll have other New Years to celebrate as that was our first apart for 39 years but again little did I know that would have been our last one too. I can't even think of Christmas just now you get all these ones who start buying in for it round about now or even in the January sales but I'm just trying to make it through each day at the minute and it's hard especially when you wake in the morning and realise he's actually gone and try to give yourself a reason to get out of bed which I end up forcibly doing.

xx

Yeah, me too, re getting up in the morning.  I try to have the window open and I listen to the birdsong, or the wind or the rain for a while.  I then find nature calling rather urgently and I have to get up!  But whatever you do on any given day is right for YOU.  I have days where I don't want to face the world so I don't.   I even keep my mobile turned off (no landline).  It just gives me time to think, be calm, re-set.  I suppose it's what they call "in the moment" nowadays.  Everything going on can overwhelm me so I do have to do it when I feel the need.  

I’m with you about Christmas, just getting through the days is enough at the moment. I have started making a cup of tea and taking it back to bed on a morning and reading a bit as the days seem so long sometimes and I’m not sleeping too good. Dreading the long winter nights

Oh I'm sleeping ok thanks to the Diazepam one of them at bedtime and  I'm out like a light it's just having to wake up the next morning and have to actually think about getting up and doing things. Before all this happened with Jay's illness I would have my routines on what gets done on what days but just now I don't even know what day it is. On Wednesday this week I thought it was Thursday so that knocked me all out a bit. I look at things that need to be done and promise myself I'll do them later but later never happens. The house is so quiet too. The TV was on constantly in our house Jay was your proverbial couch potato where he would watch just about anything and everything just to watch telly and continually channel hop. He'd start watching something then get half way through it and change the channel to something else. Even things he had maybe seen a hundred times over he would watch again and again and i'd get annoyed and say something like `oh that again!! and he'd go in a wee sulk and say `better switch it off then`. I'll watch morning TV up until mid day and sometimes even then it's only on for a noise in the background and then I'll switch it off until teatime. Jay would just sit and channel hop for the sake of it though. Woods I just feel there are days I don't want to face the world either must be a common thing. Somedays I don't even go out but then when I am in the house I feel I should be going out it's so weird. By this time next week his funeral will be over and done with and hopefully I can start to think about moving on although in no way will he be forgotten. I just hope I can find it easy to move on though and just hope that anything I get rid of belonging to him be it clothes books etc I don't feel I'm betraying his memory doing so. 

xx

I just feel tired just now. Not sleepy tired just mentally tired. Try to nap through the day but it never happens.

xx

Same here house is very quiet - Kevin had tv on from morning til night for background noise he said. I quite like the quiet. Have turned radio off sometimes as a song comes on and I’m hopeless. I haven’t got rid of anything yet but have piled all the clothes into spare room. Gave his snooker cue to our grandson but that’s about it. Plenty time. Just keep going and get next week over as you are in limbo waiting for funeral.

helen x

Yes get that too. I was out in the car today and had the radio on (getting a bit more confident to do that now) and listened to Greatest Hits Radio Glasgow and they have a golden year where they play songs from a certain year and how ironic the year today was 1983 the year we met. By this time I had parked up though so I just sat for a little while and listened to some of the tunes being played and I was right back there with him just remembering how we met when we we young and stupid. Well I was it was at my 21st birthday party he had no intention of coming to in the first place because he was going fishing early the next day but got dragged along by some lads I knew. He fibbed to me about his age as well told me he was 25 and once we started going out one of his pals let slip he was actually 30 and when I asked him that he said yes but was scared I wouldn't go out with him incase I thought he was too old. But there you go we lasted 40 years and in these days they say age is just a number. 

xx

With you on that one Helen. I, as ive said already like the winter months when you can cozy up with the TV and sit with your pjs on etc and not see a soul and watch all the winter TV `Strictly come dancing` -hat is the one signa autunm/ winter is here used to X Factor as well but its finished now you usually recorded one and watched the other. Jay went off Stricly the last couple of years so I watched it on my own but he would usually shout through when the results show was on `who got put off this week` wee things like that it will be weird watching it on my own. 

I started listening to Greatest Hits Radio, I've made it my own, as we didn't really listen to it together.   I enjoy the Friday teatime request show, it's great to hear from people and where they are.  I absolutely have to sing along to the Muppet song (Animal) that's played every week.  It take me back a long, long way before I even knew Paul,  and so it provides something just for me, with no memories of "us". I watched Fatal Attraction tonight, again just for me.  I suppose I'm making my own memories and history now.  I do watch one or two of the programmes we both used to enjoy but others I just don't watch anymore as the memories are too upsetting, watching on my own.  Speaking of snooker cues I gave Paul's to charity but I still have his trophies and medals he won.  I'll keep one or two of those.  I know I sound "together" and "with it" but I'm still feeling his loss and I miss his presence, cooking for him, doing his washing, making a cuppa as he came home from work.  I don't see a soul for days on end, I hope a day will come where I will want to go out and seek the company of others.  X 

Aww Woods! I do get you! For years it was just `him n I` just like the `old married couple` always there for one another. Oh I love `Fatal Attraction` Jay actually bought me the video (remember those??) for Christmas one year that's been long chucked out but these days you can watch it on demand and so forth. He loved all the James Herriot programmes as well and constantly watched the orgininal series of `All Creatures Great and Small` with Peter Davidson and Christopher Timothy. Programmes like `Last of The Summer Wine` and stuff he used to watch and old episodes of `The Sweeney` etc and our scottish comedy `Still Game` about the Glasgow pensioners Jack n Victor and the rest.  Saw that listed on BBC Scotland last night but don't think I could watch that again now. That was his `go to` if nothing else was on and I always had to get it on Netflix for him he could never work anything out like that himself and thought he was doing well when he could actually turn the TV on. I even got Sky Q in for him coming out of hospital our Sky HD boxes kept breaking down so they said they weren't replacing those ones so we got Sky Q instead so thought it would be good to get one in our bedroom incase he needed to spend a lot of time in bed. But there it wasn't to be so now I can just go to bed and watch it if I want. Yes going to be so strange without him now. 

xx