Today, I have lived 19,615 days
April 26, 2024 2 CommentsMain image by Jonathan Chng on Unsplash 8th December 2020 Today I have lived 19,615 daysToday, 8th December 2020, I am the exact age, to the day, that Mike was when he diedMike was born on 27th July 1963I was born on 27th March 1967Mike died on 8th April 2017I… am alive on 8th December […]
Read MoreSaturated Night Terrors
April 26, 2024 No Comments6th December 2020 Saturated Night Terrors – sounds a little like Saturday Night Fever, doesn’t it? I woke up earlier than I hoped to this morning from a terrifying dream. As with most dreams and nightmares, it felt so very real. I don’t know what it all means. I mulled it over immediately afterwards, but […]
Read MoreViolon d’Ingres
April 26, 2024 No Comments30 November 2020 Main image by Philippe Lucchese When I was a teenager, I remember pretty much the precise moment I learned the real definition of the word “amateur”. It was while watching some or other rugby tournament on the telly. I actually enjoyed watching rugby. It interested me, and I later played for Nottingham […]
Read MoreCategories
April 26, 2024 3 CommentsMain picture by Henry Be on Unsplash 23 November 2020 The notion of categories has come up for me a few times these past days and weeks. Categories and rating scales. I am far from being an expert in measurement but I have designed myriad surveys in my professional decades, and even contributed to psychometric […]
Read MoreI nearly said “Micky”
April 26, 2024 1 CommentMain photo a “selfie” with a traditional camera, Easter 1988, our first weekend away, in Cornwall, some 6 months after the start of our relationship. 14 November 2020 To want to have sex, love-making, and intimacy (deep intimacy) in my life again was not a difficult decision for me to make when Mike was no […]
Read MoreWhat I Wouldn’t Give…
April 26, 2024 1 Comment10 November 2020 Painting by Julia – one of her last pieces, December 2018 Today is one of those days where Julia’s death, the reality of it, gets through to me… just a little bit more. Despite it always being present, always heavy in my heart, wearisome in my lungs, ponderous on my shoulders, tense […]
Read MoreOn Love and Risk
April 26, 2024 No Comments7 November 2020 Remember when, back in the 1980s, just as we were getting sexually active (if you’re my age), and AIDS hit….? There were all those adverts, in the UK at least, on billboards, in the press, perhaps even on TV – (no social media back then), of a gorgeous young woman or man…. […]
Read MoreResilience Is…
April 26, 2024 3 Comments1 November 2020 I could have gone a few different directions for this week’s writing. One was going to be about some death admin that was, in the end, straightforward and easy, if also hard. I might yet write about that, just because I do so love challenging my embedded belief that all admin (death […]
Read MoreFacing Death, Embracing Life
April 26, 2024 1 CommentAll photos my own, taken yesterday in the Drôme, France 25 October 2020 My beautiful friend Joan, one of the very very very few people who has (a) consistently been present, (b) more or less accessible, and (c) capable of sitting with and exploring whatever colour and shade of emotional energy has come up for […]
Read MoreMy Life is Not Your Excavation Site
April 26, 2024 4 CommentsMain picture by Sabina Music Rich on Unsplash 18 October 2020 I had an experience yesterday which was wholly disagreeable in the moment, and of which similar versions have happened various times these past months and years. The difference was that I finally felt able to handle the situation calmly, directly, and with more resourcefulness […]
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