Good Grief 10

Sound. It is interesting and amazing how sensory stimuli travel down the unconscious wires of our memory and unlock unexpected things in totally unpredictable ways. Today I was struck by a very simple sound that I heard coming from the room next door to where I was working. It was an instant unconscious association that I could never have expected or predicted. If I had seen the sound being made and the person making it I am sure the memory would not have been triggered - it would have been in the context of now. Hearing it unconsciously as I was doing something completely unconnected took me back in less than an instant to my husband and all the emotions, thoughts and subsequent chain of events that would usually occur on hearing that sound.

That was all fine, I was surprised but understood how it all unfolded. However, since then, after work, I went for a walk and it was as if a channel or portal has been opened and I could hear my husband's voice, the pitch, the tone ... him. Nothing specific said, no specific event or recall of memory but the feel of him through his voice. It is not something that has happened much. In fact if I try to evoke such memories I find it hard and have often felt sad that I cannot evoke clear pictures or the sense of him that I would like. As I said before, there is no comfort and memories, such as they are, or photos, are not the comfortable nostalgic trip that I think others may wish for when the say things like, 'at least you have memories of all the good times', etc.  And trying to evoke reality through memory just tends to be distressing and makes the loss feel even greater and the distance between us even more eternal and even the reality of the past can feel questionable sometimes, or at other times, meaningless in the face of the emptiness of now.