Good Grief 83

Time
I'm not exactly sure what the weather was like on this day 17 years ago.
I know I was walking and looking up at what I seem to remember was a grey sky watching geese fly over at the time (roughly speaking) when my partner died. I hadn't wanted to be apart from him but he was having treatment and my father had just had a stroke and we agreed it was best if I went to see my parents before Christmas as I would not be able to get to see them again once my partner was out of hospital.
I hate the fact I wasn't there. I hate the fact that my last living image of him is of a forlorn face at a window on a grey day in December. I hate the fact that he was alone in hospital accommodation provided for those who had to travel long distances for treatment but with no-one around. I hate the fact that it's the first time we had to get to grips with a microwave to heat a small pot of rice pudding that he thought he might try eating. I still hate it all.
As I was driving back late today after work I thought about some of this and how time doesn't make much of a difference to any of this. Yes, of course, it is much less raw. I can think of it as part of my narrative. But it has that feeling of a 'branding narrative', more of a red hot cattle branding than a gentle story telling.
It also changes things so permanently. The day has now melded with my birthday and made that something which I have no interest in. I wouldn't have done anyway but it isn't time that alters that but a feeling of living. Birthdays are about a celebration of life and living in the world. And I say 'hah' to that, in a Monty Python- Frenchman-leaning-over-the-castle-wall in the Holy Grail kind of way ....
Many things have filled the intervening years including a marriage, a change of career, etc. But time doesn't really 'heal' much and this damned irritating idea of 'all the happy memories' really pisses me off. Of course they are there. Of course they are. But it is something people say to make it all better, mostly for them.  It can serve to increase the feeling of separation that grief can be so good at. That 'branding narrative' can feel very defining and help to create the feeling of being part of a breed that can feel very separate and cut off from the rest of the living world.