A Moment of Quiet

I'm sat here on Saturday afternoon with a long list of things that I intend to do and no intention of doing any of them. I got some advice from my brother-in-law a while ago in which he said "be good to yourself". So I'm heeding his advice and sitting here reading, listening to music (The Script twice already). Marion keeps saying things to me like "weren't you going to do this...? Or didn't you plan to do that?", to which my answers are "Yes" and "Yes". But I'm still sitting here, now on my laptop simply because I feel weary to the core of my bones.

"Weary" is a better word than "Tired", because I'm not really sleepy. But the last week has been so extremely busy and that my operating battery is pretty much completely discharged and I just feel like sitting here and reading. I also feel guilty about it because there's so much to do, so many important things to do. Normally I don't sit still, can't sit still, because feelings of guilt and obligation usually win over. But when they don't it's an indication that I do indeed need to just sit, that my body and mind need a moment of quiet to recuperate. So that's what I'm doing (and still feeling guilty about it).

The last week was an important week for the business. This is not the place to go into it, but my team has worked extremely hard to accomplished an important goal and they have done it with style. We have had a good week, but it demanded (relatively to recent times) a lot of hours from me and a lot of mental output. I was fairly apprehensive at the start of the week whether I could indeed do everything that was required. I succeeded (I think), but the cost has been quite high. Every evening I've felt more or less like I'd cycled 150km that day. And so I'm sitting here, hopefully recharging.

Mentally, I've felt stronger this week. The grief remains the same but my ability to manage it has improved marginally. I can think of a couple of things that might explain this change. It might just be the natural progression of the Sickness of Grief. Alternatively it could well be that I have been working so much that my mental health has been less exposed to grief and its corrosive effects. I could imagine that this has allowed my mind to heal a bit, resulting in me feeling stronger. Also, the business is entering into an exciting phase. The future of the business looks bright(er) and I feel this excitement through the grief of Kay's passing. Maybe work is a therapy for grief, or at least my kind of work.

But there's another explanation. I went to Marion's Homeopath on Tuesday. I spent an hour describing to her my symptoms, both physical and mental. The list takes an hour to detail (ha). In order of seriousness she felt that my grief and depression were the most important symptoms to treat and she gave me four tiny tablets, two of which were to be taken when I got home. She warned me that she was giving me a high dose of whatever and that if I had any side effects I should let her know. Also, should I continue to feel as bad I should give her a call and would instruct me to take the remaining two tablets. The way that she handled this stuff and the instructions I was given led me to conclude that it was pretty powerful. I drove home carefully, avoided braking sharply or taking corners too fast and took the tablets while sitting down with my centre of gravity well to the back of the sofa.

Now, those of you who have been reading my bleatings for a while will know that I'm a person of skeptical mind. Although I've had some positive experience with alternative therapies in the past, I have a very dim view of homeopathy. But I have to say that since taking those tablets my grief has not been pressing in on me quite so hard. I've been able to deal with some difficult, emotional moments. I've it made through a series of long days. I've been able to comfort Marion during her difficult moments without feeling quite so close to overload myself.

You are of course free to choose your own point of view. But I remain open minded about this homepathy business. I have to admit that it's a forced kind of open mindedness, my instinct is still to dismiss the whole thing as voodoo, placebo and coincidence. But equally the homeopath was the first person to advise a high dose of vitamins and I'm 100% certain that that resulted in an immediate improvement in my condition. So she gets the intellectual benefit of the doubt and I'll go back to see her shortly. 

To carry on with the qualitative, I've said before that in one of the few moments that I've had since her death when I felt Kay talking to me, she told me that she was going to look after Marion and I. Yesterday I was in an important business meeting and all of a sudden I had a sense of her presence. Then her picture came up on the screen background of my laptop and I looked into her eyes and I felt reassurance that everything would work out. Strange. It made me feel more confident, which is always a good message to transmit during these kinds of meetings. A message that of itself biases the outcome positively. Maybe my missing daughter will yet become a force in business. Maybe her father will embrace the idea that not everything that counts is countable.

And yet the grief, disbelief and denial continue unabated. I only need to look at Kay's picture to feel the electric current of shock pass through my chest. I only need to think back for my heart to start racing with the fear of losing her. I only need to think sideways to miss her presence in my life, her cuddles, her laughter. I only need to look forward for the pain of a future without Kay to burn in my mind and flood the back of my eyes with a wall of tears.

But just maybe I'm heading towards being a bit stronger, a bit more able to manage the mountain of pain and grief that beset me.