:hug:I had to move house after he died and i hung his dressing gown on the bedroom door in the new house, we all take comfort from keeping them around us but that doesnt mean that we dont also feel overwhelmingly sad sometimes too. - I think every time we take a step - go somewhere or do something, it is tinged with sadness because they are not by our side, but the extent of that sadness lessens when we think of how much they would have appreciated it - or not - perhaps they would be grumpy in a given situation - or come out with some cutting remarks about something, its all about the whole of them and the whole of the relationship we had not just the romance or the good times on their own.
When i put a purple crochet band and some butterflys round his hat - for a wedding (because his hat should always live in the campervan where he kept it but it was in need of some tlc and it was being used for a wedding car so i went with the wedding colours ) I was able to chuckle to myself knowing what he would have had to say about it.
I cried when the van was no longer repairable, then got another with the front seats from the old one transferred into it because he sat in them, - and of course the hat came too - but at the same time perhaps this one i can make more mine - because even though i have brought those elements of him into it, i feel freer to make it mine -add decals, girly it up - and even as i am writing this i,m smiling, knowing how that would have gone down if i had done it to his more "sensible" one. (he took the fluffy dice straight to a charity shop - although to be honest i had bought them purely as a wind up anyway) but becoming more myself now, isnt leaving him behind -and knowing he would be complaining a bucketful if this one had been "ours" isnt making a statement about moving on - because despite his complaining i know he would have been laughing too.
The brocken heater matrix he left in the kitchen and i told him off for, ended up in the new kitchen because after his telling off he didnt move it but left a rose in the end tube and then there was a period of us both leaving daft stuff there for each other to find -usually little notes - There will not never be any new roses or notes but it reminds me that i did have them and i was so lucky to have some-one like him in my life. Dometimes it can be suprising what we hang on too ( although i did throw away the stash of used brake pads in the end)
I wont pretend i havent been lonely, and sometimes still am, being alone takes some adjustments, for some that will be filling lives with other people for others learning to be alone and not be lonely which is the group i fall into but learning to live alone doesnt mean you have to be stationary it means challenging the status quo to do the things we want to do.
Sometimes i do still cry -but thats not wrong - of course i miss him still. We can never pretend they were not here and and we dont want too, its the sadness of living without them and breaking out from that dark cloud that we want to change.
The idea that to feel better we have to cut the ties we have too them and "move on" is completely wrong , they will always be in our hearts and whether we laugh knowing what they would have had to say about what we do now, get mad because they never showed us how the sat nav works or the short cut across town we now realise they must have known about, - or cry because they are not physically here, they will still be part of our lives.