Trepidation Increases

We have arrived in France for the second part of our holiday after an excellent week's sailing in Greece. The photos below should give you an idea of how the girls spent the week and equally (and oppositely) how I spent it...

These (and other) photos go to show that it is possible for the Howe Family to have a good holiday, especially when they are surrounded by good people. My thanks go out to our holiday friends, old and new, who have kept us busy and smiling even when our hearts have failed us. Indeed, Marion had a number of tearful moments and I struggled to keep myself on an even keel for a day or so.

Yesterday we got up at 6am, left Greece, flew back to Amsterdam and then drove to our house in Provence. We decided to push on through the night and arrived at our house at 2.30am this morning. The only thing that made that possible was that, unusually, Marion split the driving with me, allowing me to get some sleep in the car. However the consequence is that I'm sat here, completely fatigued, head buzzing again with tiredness. And the joke is that for July, the weather is cold - there's a strong wind blowing and sitting outside in 24C with a cold wind is not pleasant after a week cooking in +30C.

The sailing was great because we were kept busy with one thing or another. Now that we have arrived in France there's nothing between us and Kay's birthday and both Marion and I are feeling it. Marion was in floods of tears on her Mum's shoulder yesterday when we passed home on our way from Schiphol to Le Beausset. She has again been sobbing on my shoulder this morning, asking what we should do for Kay's birthday. I'm struggling too. The benefits of EMDR are being pushed to the max, I'm sat here writing this through a screen of tears and I just don't know what to do to answer Marion's question: how should we celebrate Kay's birthday?

Marion keeps repeating that she has lost her partner, her clone. And I understand that this is the unique aspect of her loss: Kay and Marion are two of a kind, whilst Nattie and I have more in common with the way that we deal with things. This is the way that Marion and I experience our loss differently. Kay is my opposite, my counterweight. She represents things that I love, things to which I would aspire (sport, popularity, strength, empathy). For Marion, Kay is her clone, her better self, someone who understands her, who she understands, who is on the same wavelength, someone to whom she doesn't have to explain herself. 

I'm explaining this poorly, but then I'm also extrapolating from what I observe from Marion, rather than having heard it from Marion. (And so you should realize that this is my view, not necessarily Marion's). Still, I believe the general point is true. 

So, yes we have reached France and we still have two weeks holiday in front of us. But I am filled with trepidation about the coming days. I'm already being pushed to the limits of my newly won strength and it seems to me that Marion is already beyond hers. We're now on our own, no distractions except those that we invent for ourselves. No help or support beyond what we're able to do for ourselves. And the countdown has begun...