Utterly unexpected

I was pottering about quite happily waiting for my visitors to arrive when I got a text from R saying they were running late so, with some extra time on my hands, there was that big box in the bedroom still to sort from the move and I thought I’d make good use of the time by going through it.

No sooner had I dragged it downstairs I just plunged straight in (it’s a tall box that comes almost up to my waist) ... a bit like diving. I grabbed and pulled out the first thing that came to hand and it turned out to be his diaries. I looked down at them and felt that I had a life, all that there was of it, there in my hands. A life, a whole, real person’s life ... just there in my hands and, on top, 2008 ... the vintage year of the Diagnosis.
A bulldozer swept in from just behind my right shoulder and floored me and I doubled over and wept.
It was all just so unexpected. I think I had put them in as the pressure to clear the old place was mounting and I wasn’t sure what to do with them and so they just got put into a bag with assorted uncertainties and then they just sat there quietly waiting for their moment to throw their passive knockout right hook.
So, of course, just at that moment, my visitors arrived but that was fine. I’m sorry they never knew him.