The Hottest Day of the Year...

Bees...butterflies...birds... gracing my garden.

Although I feel the weight of the glass ceiling of expressing grief....somehow acceptably... 'out there' in the ether ...I never feel any pressure from my dear family and friends...who hold me, the whole   mess of me .....continuously with patience and kindness - as much as I will let them.

 Which is more and more now.... in the same way as I had to learn to let down my glass wall to receive their love and support when Robin was ill. It's learning it all over again ....without imposing on them ...to ask for what I need ...even when I'm not sure what that is...I do know I need to be alone a lot....but also not too much ...and how lucky I am that I have such a choice.

Today, the hottest day of the year,  I know I want to walk by the sea.

 So after a stop off at B&Q to buy light bulbs for the dining room, a universal plug for the bath and 2 pots of French lavender for the garden, I drive to Lyme Regis and join the crowds of holiday makers for the day....eating ice creams...or fish and chips with their fingers....strolling along the beach, along the harbour wall, along the Cobb....soaking up the weight of this rare and welcome sunshine.

 Without dog or companion  I compensate for my aloneness with my camera... and love how it takes me deep into every marvellous thing I see around me...so I forget to be weary and sad.

I'm not dressed for the heat ...still in my winter boots instead of flip flops so I'm  glad 

to walk back to the car along the river bank ......

adoring the 

perfect emerald green

waterproof shimmeriness of

  this mallard duck.

This house for sale, right on the river bank,with its sky blue shutters reminds me of all our French holidays...

and I can't resist picking a bunch of wild garlic to take home in memory of all those walks with Robin  who aways wanted to stop and eat the leaves of any wild plant....edible or not....it was one name he never forgot.

This is yesterday's picnic lunch with dear friends...including a big dollop of homemade wild garlic pesto -  magicked up from leaves picked in her garden that morning.

I add my leaves to a big avocado salad and eat it in the sunshine, attempting to read my book - Helen Dunmore's last novel "Birdcage Walk" - to the sound of the neighbours cutting their lawns and children shouting and playing in their gardens. 

As if it was a hot Saturday afternoon in August...when I lived here with Robin ....imagining there would always be another summer for us...

Glass Ceiling ...Glass Wall

A woman with her dog stops to talk to me when I'm taking photos of this snowy display of hundreds of magnolia stellatar in the park the other day.

She says they were planted for a particular reason....a special occasion.

But I can't remember what she said. 

Maybe it was for the millenium... whatever it was they are spectacular.

There is a glass ceiling for women in business.

There is one for us who grieve as well.

It's vague, general, unacknowledged.

But all the same a consensus

'out there'

an agreement when enough is enough....

when it's now possibly

 too long.

When the activity of mourning 

at first respected, expected,

normal,

tips into what is called 

self indulgence

a dangerous dislocation

from reality

requiring 

an antidote.

To breach that glass ceiling

of well meaning, 

for -your-own-good, 

concern,

needs a courage I may not have.

It is also an inherited family "get over it now" pattern,

my own internal glass wall 

to dismantle

one brick at a  time.

So I need

a hand to hold.

An angel's wing

to guide me.

Which is what I had today.

To say out loud 

to write it...

'It's not enough for me.

Not yet.

I need more time.

I don't know how long.

It could be forever.

It hurts even more than it did at the beginning

when  I thought I was feeling

the pain

but really I was just

numb.

And now I know 

to enter the heart and stomach of it

to rage

to rail

to want to die

to be so 

foreign to myself

without my love

is 

my reality now"

To hold the faith of that

morass of feeling

not knowing when it 

will change

is my fist in the glass ceiling...

my fingernails in the mortar.

In Two Minds....

Easing my way into blogging again.......some random photos from the last few weeks.

31st March. Robin's birthday. He would have been 65.

Flooded garden from all the relentless rain we had.

My wonderful garden entertainment....

Feeding the birds

gives me a daily purpose.

Even though

they delve into my winter

patio pots full of geraniums killed by the frost

and scatter soil everywhere.

I see him - or her - every day....sometimes only a tiny glimpse of redbreast.

An occasional lovely sky in the evening....the days longer now.

 My contribution to Easter  Monday lunch with the family....Camembert Tomato and Asparagus Tart...

and a chocolate mousse and raspberry roulade.

A smart birthday lunch for a dear friend at the Seaside Boarding House at Burton Bradstock in Dorset.

My twice baked cheese souffle and 

her wild mushroom mousse and crisp  Italian flatbreads.

In spite of this warning 

we walked with dog and lots of other people

a short way along the beach, which is where the TV series 'Broadchurch' was filmed...and also where a young woman was tragically killed in a landslide a few years ago.

These are the beautiful rose cards I chose at random for a reading  - a bit like a Tarot reading  -  during the session I had with the House Whisperers.

They were sensitive and intuitive and skilled...they sensed a part of  Robin was still stuck here...they talked to him...he talked to them. They helped me to let go of Robin in the house. They helped Robin to let go of me in the house.

After they had gone, taking one each of Robin's ceramics, leaving a rich deep perfume of frankincense smoke in all the rooms, the house felt clear and peaceful and so did I.

And the house still feels much better but I'm no longer clear.

 I'm jittery, unsettled, weepy.

 I'm conflicted and in two minds...about everything...about the  eco place I want to buy....may not be able to afford it after all....should I stay here after all.....look for a different house....just wait? I have only had a few viewings...feel under pressure to reduce the price...which I have....and also under pressure from the place I want to move to ....time running out there....and I'm not in control of any of it....lost all my initial enthusiasm and certainty.

My friends say, when in doubt do nothing.

So that's what I'm doing. ...and walking in the park and feeding the birds....and noticing how little stamina I have....what little appetite I have for each new day.

 On my walk this afternoon I was surprised and thrilled 

to see that 'my' mallards 

have become parents

to these adorable fluff balls.

One thing I can be sure of, however unclear mine is,

life goes on in the park ....no doubt about that.

This rose is for the dear special people in my life who celebrated something yesterday.

Robin's aunty was 90.

My big sister and her husband were married for 46 years.

Their son-in-law was 41 - I think I have got that right.

With my love to you all.