TO(E)DAY

Well it was actually Friday that the TOE got dealt too!!! I had an appointment for the 28th but really it wasn’t possible to go to work with the TOE as it was. So a call to my wonderful GP on Thursday last, resulted in an appointment that day with a specialist who kindly fitted me into his operating schedule for the next day! No time to think and it was really a relief.

I have since been – doing nothing much!! Photographic evidence supports this. Ha ha. I am honoured to have an intelligent Ted E Bear who likes reading and listening to his Ipod while keeping an eye on me. End result is I will have had two weeks off work by the time I am certified fit, (not mentally you understand) to return on Saturday. I have to say this has been the silver lining of the cloud of toe pain. I have read three books, got stuck into my writing and have just enjoyed not having to do anything. I have especially enjoyed not having to get up at in the middle of the night to go to work.

The weather is on the turn with slight but consistent drizzle. The house is snug and warm and I don’t worry about leaks in the roof as I did in the older home. It is great and it really does feel like home. The bush out the back is just as glorious in the wet and provides an ever-changing kaleidoscope of colour and movement along with birds of all sorts and the odd visiting neighbourhood cat.

The cat is gentle. It is orange and brown/black and white. It looks like Shelley’s cat, Sparkey. Shelley’s cat got killed by a rouge dog, as she lay sunning herself in the back garden at our old home. It was a shocking violent death to a lovely gentle cat. I had to phone Shelley in London and tell her. It was one of the worst things I had to do, until Shelley died.

I think this visiting look-a-like cat knows we love cats, but are too raw to take on any more pets, anymore anything really. It comes up to us as we sit outside, meows, accepts a pat and then sprawls around for a while. It is a gentle cat and gives us love by remote. We don’t have to worry about its’ day to day welfare. This morning it was sitting curled up at the bottom of the expansive lawn, at the base of one of the native trees. It might have been the pose for in front of a fire on a winter’s day, but it was drizzling and the cat just sat, curled up and looking peaceful. It is nice having her/him around.

June is nearing an end and for me that means the 7th of July is looming. I never know what to do on the day. The day Shelley was murdered. I get very stressed before the day, wondering what I am supposed to do. I always feel like I should scream and shout and yell at everyone in the world, this is the day my darling daughter was murdered. This is her death day. Thought out carefully by a cold-blooded killer who dared to step onto a tube train in London and connect the wires to his homemade bomb. He killed 26 people on Shelley’s tube. His friends killed another 26. They had made a practice run to make sure they got it right.

I am receiving daily updates from the London trial of associates of the murderers. There may be some chance that they will be found guilty and spend the rest of their lives in jail. I really don’t care. Whatever happens to them won’t change my life’s role of doing my best to live as best I can in my grief. It is too late to change what happened.

The murderers at least killed themselves in some misguided belief that their actions were their passport to heaven. I doubt it even exists and maybe that is the last laugh on them. Their being dead in some ways makes it easier; I don’t have to see their faces or wade through a trail involving them. I am not sure I could contain my anger if they were alive. It frightens me to think how I might cope with that, so for me, it is best that they are wherever they are. Hell I think, if that exists.

I won’t run around yelling. I still don’t know what I will do. In some ways it is no different to any other day, without Shelley. It is just that it is the day. The day my life changed forever.

I will think of all her fellow travellers who died; of the survivors who are piecing their lives back into some sort of order while they learn to live with the images and memories of that fateful tube trip.

That is what we do. We all have to learn somehow, how to keep going. I will see my sons and give them a hug. That is all I need with my HB’s love to keep going.

Arohanui,

KG
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Pain and Inspiration

I find it incredible that a big toe can cause such pain!! Sad, but true. Having suffered the misfortune of an ingrown toenail, I now have to front up to have it operated on. Yikes!! I am a quivering wreck at the thought of someone, (even though he seems quite a nice Dr), taking both sides of my big toe nail out, (I don’t want to know how!!) and then cauterizing the base of the nail.

There is a date set for this ordeal and it will take all of my fortitude to actually turn up for that appointment, two weeks away. I guess I associate toenail pulling out, cutting up, whatever you want to call it, with all the torture scenes I have seen in movies. I have agreed to say anything they want to avoid the ordeal, but that is not an option. Oh well, I will just have to shut up and put up. That includes keeping my foot elevated for 24 hrs after the event. That might be the most difficult thing for me to do. Actually the most difficult job will by for my HB, who will have to cater to my whimpering and whining!!

I had a wonderful birthday, even though I had succumbed to the flu that is wrecking havoc all around me. FBS, SBS & his SH came over and together with my HB, we shared a wonderful meal and an evening of just being together. Having all my special people in one place at the same time is the best thing that I could ask for. My heart and soul were refreshed and gladdened. They are all so amazing. I am truly blessed and so proud of them all.

I have settled on two tattoo designs and head off today to get them.

Funny how I am looking forward to that pain, as opposed to the toe thing!! Not sure what that says about me.

I have updated my profile with the incredible quote from Joan Baez. It speaks volumes to me and inspires my continued writing. I write with the desire of being one small voice that might make a difference.

I watched a movie on John Lennon and Yoko Ono last week. “the us vs john lennon. What a truly inspirational man he was, and together with Yoko, they took a stand for what they believed in. Peace. Their words and actions put them offside with governments and authorities but they just kept going. Doing what they believed in. The film is very powerful and I highly recommend viewing. I had not really ever truly realized the magic and power of these two amazing people. The viewing has further inspired me and the bad news is, I am going to keep writing!!

Off to the tattoo studio.

Arohanui

KG
XX

Eddie Izzard's Encore on Computers

Sorry can't resist..have been sitting here watching you tube for ages.
WARNING lots of the F word.

Am logging off now. I promise.
KG
XX

Eddie Izzard- Death Star Canteen Sketch

This is so bloody funny, I have laughed for days and told everyone I know about it. I used to watch Eddie Izzard on the tele ages ago. He is sooooooooo funny.

Enjoy.

KG
XX

June Musings

June has arrived. It is my birthday month and I am giving myself some days off around the day. My best friend and I are the same age. We have been friends since we were 15 years old. That is a long time ago now. I was commiserating with her on our upcoming age, and was delighted when she abused me and told me we were actually a year younger than I thought!! Good news and I can’t believe I was so surprised. Dumbarse.

I am four years older than my dad when he died, thirty years older than dear Shelley. I would swap, in the blink of an eye, my time to give to her. I cannot do that and as I reflect on my life so far, I have much to be grateful for. Apart, is such a small word with a huge meaning for me. Apart for Shelley’s death, I am satisfied and grateful for my life as it is. I wish apart was not part of it at all.

(I think I will get myself another tattoo for my birthday. I have three already, one after my mother died, and two magnificent ones for Shelley. My next one will be something small that means strength to me, and honours my survival so far.)

I don’t wish I was any younger. I am at a place I enjoy, as much as I can, the people and things in my life. It is a good place to be, as good as it can be. The ever-gaping hole in my heart is no longer an enemy. It just is. There is something every day, which causes me to think of my darling daughter. It may be a young girl passing through the screening point at the airport, off on her OE or a mother with a young baby. One young woman had been crying and was still visibly upset when she came through to me. She said she was sad leaving her family but was excited and just had to do it. I encouraged her, all the time fighting off the desire to tell her not to go, to go back to her family. Instead I wished her well and hoped, more than anything that she would head off, enjoy her time and return safely to her family. That is what I want for everyone.

I have finished the house, deck and fence painting. Yay!! It looks bloody good, even if I do say so myself. I am now about to start doing a few things in the garden. A bit of spring cleaning and replanting. Then, this low maintenance home, (huh I sure was sucked in by that phrase!), should indeed be low maintenance. I will then have time to get stuck into my writing. I need time and peace to do that and it is almost here.

The writing process is a way of getting lost in my thoughts and feelings and of having some control over things. I control the words and the meaning for me, and hope that it all may mean something to others. In the end, it doesn’t matter if it doesn’t but I am encouraged by people that tell me they get something out of my humble efforts. That pleases me.

I have another dear friend, K, whose beloved son died a few months before Shelley. His death was long and slow, the result of an incredibly rare disease that wastes away your bones, (only 200 people in the world have had this). He was 18years old. Her family nursed him at home for the last seven months of his life. I admire her courageousness. She rang me a little while after Shelley’s death and has been one of my strongest bonds and inspirations since.

Together our grief is outrageous, if it was colours, it would be black and blue and deep purple. But it is magnificent to be able to be so bold and loud and unreasonable about the death of our children. She says that I help her and she sure as hell helps me, tremendously. We talk about the different deaths, one with time to talk and nurture, one without. One is no better than the other. I can’t imagine how she managed all those months, knowing what the outcome would be; she can’t imagine the brutality, shock and horror of the murderous death. We laugh too, which may surprise you, but we do. At outrageous things. The poor check out chick who says, “Have a nice day,” and you want to, or do explode, saying how the hell can I have a nice day my child is dead. It is so raw and wild and we understand each other.

It is wonderful to be able to talk to each other, no holds barred and say what we think and feel. We mutter about people muttering on about time is great healer. Bullshit, we say, it doesn’t change a thing. Perhaps the healing does increase and you can be again able, to take some joy from life, from your other children and your family. But the wound is as fresh today as if was the 7th July for me, and her son's death date for her. It will be so every day we draw breath.

This is for Ben and Shelley and their ever loving Mums and families.

We love you and hold you in our hearts every day.



Every Day


every day
I carry this

the loss of you

some days
it is not obvious

but today

it hits me again

I hold the weight of your ashes

more than you weighed at birth
I think

I clutch them to me
I want to place you back inside me

to give you life again

I carry you

every day
every day



(from my book “Dear Shelley”, published June 2006)

Arohanui,

KG

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