It’s the pillow cases wot done it, guv...
Yet more sorting.
It is a process that in itself speaks volumes. How it’s done, when it’s done, what it evokes, what it does to us, how those that have gone continue to live out in what emerges from the whole bloody palaver.

My brother avoids it entirely. He was last here with his family and friends for a jolly weekend early last August. That really doesn’t bother me in the least. I’m glad they come when they do and make the most of it. My sister gets pissed off because he takes no responsibility in the management of any of it...sorting, maintaining, paying bills, etc....nothing at all. It’s not remotely surprising...busy family life, etc.

My sister lived here for a couple/few months over the summer/autumn and it was commutable for work. That was all fine. I felt relief that the house was being lived in. Houses live as we do, I feel, in some particular way...you could probably write a thesis on that alone.

So that was all fine, but when she went back to her own home she began to agitate again about sorting here out. It hangs over her, which I also understand. She talks about getting skips and organising a time for us all to get together to ‘just get on with it’.

I’m not sure I could bear it.

There’s so much and dad continues to exercise a bizarre control by way of all the stuff, anyone would think he was stockpiling for Brexit before it was a dead star in anyone’s eye.

I find it a difficult emotional balance between sorting everything here, sorting out at home, my husband’s stuff, my partner’s stuff, me, living, working, managing depression.

When I come down here, I also have a deep relationship with the place from before I was born (my mum was expecting me when they first visited here on holiday). So, I will do a little bit of sorting, encounter whatever it throws up and then go for a wander. It works in a gentle...ish kind of way, as much as anything does these days.

Today it was the pillowcases that came as a surprise. Their bedroom is very pretty, light with a double aspect. Mum loved it and would potter up there. As dementia got a grip she would be curled up in bed like a little dormouse, her head lost, resting on the pillow but somewhere else unreachable. I’m never quite sure I knew her. Even as a child I’d come home from school as a ‘latchkey’ kid and there would be a note on the side saying, ‘In bed with my head’. Who knew the whole Cartesian split would manifest itself like that in my young life? At the time, even then, it would strike me as funny/curious...I mean where else would you or your head be, other than attached together. Now I’m not so sure, I’m not so sure where she was. I’m not so sure where I am.

Anyway, in the end, I think it might be lack of sleep that will eventually do for me. Bloody hell...
I come down here hoping it will get better with rest and time of work, walking, no tv, peace, it’s almost a silent retreat. I return home hoping it will get better with work routine and exhaustion. Damned every which way, it would seem.