The Weeks After

This entry was a draft I never got round to finishing. It was started on August 11 2005, and then sat in the folder on my server, forgotten. I found it just now, while transferring files to WordPress.

~o~

So here I am again. The week after Dad died, I had compassionate leave from work, which I spent sitting around at home, and popping up to Bedford to help sort stuff out, including the funeral. I had a weeks holiday booked in Dorset, with Mairi, her parents and her nephews Leo and Max. We drove down to Dorset, then drove back for the funeral the night before, then back to Dorset straight after the funeral.

The service itself was fine. General welling-up throughout. My brother read a tribute, which we’d all contributed to. Then we all went back to my Dad’s house where the ladies had made gallons of tea, and there was sandwiches and cakes and it was all very nice.

Things are weird. It’s manifesting itself in a kind of numbness, and general fragility, rather than complete sadness. Maybe this is a stage. I’m told it is.

I’m having a frenzy of ‘getting stuff done’ – little DIY jobs, filing that paperwork, sending that letter, (sending that CD! It’s burnt, scribbled on in marker, in an addressed padded envelope – all that remains is to mail it. Lunchtime!). I guess it’s a precursor to doing the same for my Dad – going through his stuff, picking out photos, papers, consolidating the family tree that he started (goes back to Thomas Petty b.1607 so far!).

It’s these little victories over procrastination that are making me feel better.

~o~

Not much to say about that really. It’s as I remember it. It was a stage.