Just when I'm a bit tired of it all ...the endless rain...the back pain...the house decisions ...the daunting size of the garden...thinking about Robin all the time...remembering our wedding day...everything that went right...everything that went wrong.. ....being so young...
imagining what might have been .... being so old now....doing it all on my own....the world in a wounded mess....and just when I want to give up...
this sweet robin flies in where I'm sitting on the damp ground under the oak tree and perches on a low branch to my right. And sings for ages.....hopping to another branch...as if he knows I'm here .... in need of something...
at a loss in this moment....trapped between the past and the future....uprooted in my present.
So I cry a bit and thank him silently...then I cut two small sunflowers from the bird feeder plant...and fully opened, pale pink roses from the front garden.
My wedding bouquet was pink...Robin's tie was pink...and his shirt...
my bridesmaid's dress was pink.
Later I take the flowers to the grave which looks tiny and overgrown in amongst all the new marble headstones surrounding his small, lopsided, weathered cross.
The piece of green slate for his memorial stone is still buried deep in a quarry somewhere in the Lake District.
I cut the long grass around him with a pair of scissors....lay the sunflowers on the pile of Budleigh pebbles...scatter the rose petals.
It starts to rain heavily so I don't linger... this time I can't find him there....can't feel his smile on me.
Luckily it's time to meet my sister and brother-in-law in a seaside town for salty popcorn and dark chocolate buttons in the darkness of the cinema...and escape into the upstairs/downstairs, safe/predictable/unreal world of Downton Abbey.....
and afterwards sink into the hot comfort of a bowl of macaroni cheese in a busy noisy pub.
Maybe it'll always be like this...my divided world....all the loss and the hurting and the memories swirling around down below stairs...all the carrying on with normal life/ creating a new me.... busily and brightly.... upstairs in the present.
And the interface between them a sweet robin visitor...flying in at any time...
reminding me with his heavenly voice
that love never dies.
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