Space

It feels a bit complicated but until the point of letting go of this particular space I hadn't really appreciated its complexity. So many layers. We had bought the car when realised the inevitability of the illness and the concomitant financial worries became increasingly apparent as we projected ahead into a very uncertain future. We’d never bought a new car before but the scrapage scheme was a gapped deal and essentially offered us 5 years of relatively anxiety free car ownership. It also importantly had aircon. We didn’t fully appreciate how useful that would be at the time but it was both literally and psychologically a life support. The three of us, the four, if you include the illness, learnt to live together.

After he died I was just aware of the disproportionate space and emptiness that remained...like the bed...
https://www.blipfoto.com/entry/2044005867484876043

Over the years I have become very used to it and she became my hovel. Poor thing ... such a workhorse and full of so much stuff particularly over the last years of gruelling unrelenting commuting regime. I could have grown potatoes in the dirt and watered them with all the tears.

I had thought it had become a profound emptiness. It didn’t really occur to me how much he still occupied the space and had continued to travel with me in our space together until it came to our parting. Yesterday, after work, I just kept driving and didn’t want to stop. Today I got up early and drove out to the place where we would often sit with a little picnic after swimming and we’d look out across the estuary. He was often too exhausted to eat but the three of us would sit together and look out across the vast space between countries watching the tide ebb and flow.