Life Lessons - Learned and Still to Learn

O ver October through December, the changes I wanted to make to the apartment were accomplished. I only have a swag for the window in the bedroom and having the bedroom wardrobe stained left in order to have everything complete. I'm so pleased with the outcome. There were even some changes that I hadn't anticipated, but moments of inspiration moved me to create some amazing features. One of them is captured in the image to the right here. Once I had decided the colour for the living room, I realised the white closet doors were going to detract from the ambience of the room. There was no possibility of painting them, as they are composed of some sort of plastic material. I have long adored a piece of Chris' digital photo art - one he called "Emotive Triptych." I realised the colours in this piece would work well with the room, so worked with the original image to create two panels from the left and centre of the image. I sourced a company that could create custom-s...

A s you can see from my profile photo, I have ditched the glasses. No, I didn't get contact lenses. My vision had deteriorated over the last year or so and when I visited the optician in the early Autumn, I was informed that my vision was being impacted by my cataracts. I had been made aware of the cataracts about three years ago, but at the time, they were deemed too small to remove. By this past Autumn, that was no longer the case. I was given a referral to the ophthalmologist who works with the NHS and I waited for an appointment. In the meantime, I also researched having the procedures done privately, as I was afraid the waiting list was going to be too long. I was at a point where I could no longer see the telly or my laptop. I was only able to use my phone because I could bring up to my eyes, but even then, everything I saw was "ghosted." My research showed that a private hospital in Glasgow offered the services. I had been to this hospital before, back in 2008, for...

O ne thousand ninety five days. That is how long it has been since you left me. But, then, you didn't really leave me. I feel you here beside me so often. I feel your influence in the decisions I make, the way I live my solitary life. I know you are here. As a friend said right after you died, you are right here, just out of sight, waiting for the day we can be together again. I have to believe that. There are days when that promise of an eternal reunion is the only thing that keeps me going. God, I miss you so much. I speak to you everyday. I play the music we love, look at the lovely things we acquired over the years we spent together. I speak to your children regularly, keeping up with their lives as they keep up with mine. What a blessing they are. To still have that connection with you through your beloved children. They miss you so much, too. The other day, Alice was asking about the rowan leaf necklace I wear next to the beautiful heart pendant that contains some of your ash...

It is coming up really quickly - the big redo of my apartment. A week this Monday, that is when the work begins. My incredible hydrotherapy spa tub arrives on the Tuesday. Hopefully, everything will be completed by the end of the week. And this coming week, I've arranged for a life coach/organiser to come and help me do what needs to be done still to give me more peace of mind. My living room closet needs to be sorted, a cabinet in the kitchen I can't reach needs to be cleared and then reorganised. The bathroom needs to be sorted, too, as that room will be basically taken back to studs with the installation of the tub. I still need to arrange to get to The Floor Shop to look at the various heavy duty vinyls from which I can choose my new bathroom floor. (The current one is a wet room floor that would not look out of place in public toilet. Not very attractive at all.) It's all systems go. I will post about it when it is done, complete with before and after shots! The electr...

When I was a kid, I loved September. I loved that change in the air - the cooling temperatures and the aroma of changing leaves. It meant new school clothes and shoes and saving the brown paper bags from the A&P so we could have the fun of wrapping our books and decorating the outside with crayons and markers. As Tom Hanks' character says in "You've Got Mail" - "Don't you love New York in the fall? It makes me wanna buy school supplies. I would send you a bouquet of newly sharpened pencils if I knew your name and address." Of course, with school-age grandchildren, I still feel that flutter of excitement with them as the new school year begins. But September has a sad association with it, too. And my heart knows it even before my conscious mind registers it. It was three years ago today that we started on the final part of Chris' journey towards the end of life. Callie and Catherine had been visiting for the long weekend and their visit cheered Ch...

  I was just reading a post from one of the pages I follow. It is a page about grief and I find so many of their posts to be really helpful. They remind me that what I feel is normal and okay. Today, one of the posts talked about triggers, about those sights or smells or sounds that take one back in time to a moment that is either incredibly happy or painfully sad. I commented that, for me, it more often a song or classical piece that triggers the tears.  I can listen to most of Chris' favourite songs or classical pieces without becoming inconsolable. I often listen to Satie's "Gymnopedié 1" - the piece his daughter Lucy played at the memorial service - and remember the evenings Chris and I would sit in the living room listening to music and just enjoying being in each other's company. I can listen to music from the Afro Celt Sound System or Moby, both whom were introduced to me by Chris, and can sometimes get through it with dry eyes. The only piece I can't l...

I'm not going to sugar-coat how I am feeling today. I am not going to "Pollyanna" this post. I'm hurting. It is the fifteenth anniversary of the day Chris and I first met. It was the day that changed my life forever; the day I began to live rather than just exist. Chris and I met on My Space, quite by accident. I had joined in order to connect with friends back in the States. This was, after all, very much a forerunner of Facebook. But every morning I would log in and find countless emails from men who claimed to be American or British professionals, but whose poorly written missives would expose them for who they really were - scammers from Nigeria. They were "cat fishing" before the term was coined. So, one day, I wrote a little rant about it. I hadn't joined My Space to find love. After all, my track record for good judgement in mates was exceedingly poor. No, I was there to reconnect with friends. But, my rant was answered by a man in Sussex called C...