Good Grief 16

It amazes me how letters keep coming. Very few these days, but it can still seem strange especially ones such as this one that are actually about the the life that was, not just junk mail. In the early days, I had this wonderful magical thinking ...more accurately called, denial, where I would think 'ah, there's a letter for him, so he can't be dead, he'll be back to open it and read it ...and be with me again'. That's why I loathe some of that shit poetry that pretends it is not what it really is ...he has just 'slipped away to the next room...' ... for goodness sake, no he hasn't he has died, he is deceased. Give me Monty Python every time. I may well return to the subject of hideous poetry some other time, it's well worth a long rant.

Such letters can still engender irritability. I can feel annoyed that the loss hasn't been acknowledged, I can feel angry at this, 'in your face' reminder of how it is, which, of course I know well enough, BUT I DON'T NEED YOU TO TELL ME, I can feel desperately sad that he is not here to open it, and I can sink to the floor with the emptiness and echoing finality and loneliness that it brings into the house. I will throw them away or burn them, but today I found myself rather exasperated and slightly angrily wrote this and returned to sender. Then I wondered, is this another 'stage'? Did I chuck and burn the others because I couldn't face doing this, or because part of me quite liked to still see letters appearing sometimes as a sort of confirmation that it was all real or even something, however pathetic, to hold on to? I'm not sure, but I underlined it and was firm with the full stop. And presumably won't get any more.
Mind you, you never know. 'They' say we continue to exist in the memories of the living but I am beginning to suspect that we will probably continue to exist on a database somewhere for much longer.