Annoying...

Apologies for the silence. Last week, during a largely sleepless night, I sat down and wrote what I felt was a good blog entry. Unfortunately when I attempted to save it something crashed and I lost the lot. I was so disappointed that I couldn't bring myself to try to reproduce it. Also when I'd finished it was 3:30am so I decided to make another attempt to sleep, which worked - kind of.

Last week we recommenced our tennis lessons after a break of two years. I'd forgotten how much I enjoyed making a hash of basic shots on an outside court at 9pm on a cold winter's evening. But my enjoyment was severely coloured by the flood of memories that being on a tennis court again brought back. The last time I played tennis I had a complete family...  Kay loved tennis and won her club spring youngsters championship just before her bone marrow transplant... The bloody minded determination with which she struck every ball...

The past weeks the grief has been easier to bear - the change from acute to chronic, I suppose. It's just there all the time, rather like Kay's bedroom. And like Kay's bedroom, one is left wondering what to do about it or whether indeed anything can be done about it at all. I don't know.

That said in the last days the ache has resumed. I have been missing her so much again, longing to feel her lightweight frame snuggled up against me, longing to hear her laugh or her shouts of outrage when something wasn't going her way. 

I've been extremely busy at the office recently, and we're all under a hell of a lot of pressure for one reason or another. The stress has built up to the point where I'm walking around with a more or less constant pain of tension in my chest. This has been worrying me - which only makes the symptom worse, I have to say - I have not idea what a budding heart attack feels like and I really don't want to know. But last week when this pain was at a peak I started wondering if I should get check out by the GP. But then I thought sprung into my head, along the lines of, "What the hell, if I'm going to have a heart attack, bring it on. I'd rather be with Kay than continue to struggle on like this anyway". 

Of course, my "normalization circuits" cut in and I dismissed the thought. But it did indicate to me that I'm still very far from living a life of reasonable quality.