The Only Way Out

9th August 2012 Thursday

We arrive early at the Tribunal  - my husand and I and our dear moral support friend. It’s boiling hot.

The man behind the desk says they are running late.

I ask how late.

He says the clerk will come and talk to us.

When she comes and says they have cancelled our Tribunal I find myself in tears. She says she’s really sorry, they will send us another date and she’d like to give me hug but she isn’t allowed to.

All I can think is ‘I don’t want to go through this again.’

My friend and I sit on a shady bench outside the offices and I cry some more while my husband takes a calll on his phone. When I ask him who it was he says some company he doesn’t know and puts the phone down, although their name is familiar to him..... 

‘They are your accountants,’ I say. They have been for the last 20 years. So he calls them back.

I feel better after a Salad Nicoise lunch at Carluccios. And as my friend says we don’t know the reason the tribunal was cancelled but it probably means it will turn out better the next time.

And of course it isn’t really about this tribunal at all - all this grief. It’s just been a distraction from the realisation that my life as I’ve known it is over now. And I’ve been trying to cling on to my old life imagining I can just include my husband’s communication problems as a sort of minor detail. When actually a whole new strategy is called for. Starting with letting go of the how it was, how it could have been....

As as my big sister reminds me on the phone - ‘The only way out is through’.  Not backwards.