Not the easiest of times...

I started this blog as therapy to help me manage the overwhelming grief of losing David.    Bringing to mind the happy memories and sharing them has helped me - and some people have been kind enough to say they enjoy reading them.  If I'm not writing often, it's because I haven't felt the need, although I do plan to keep posting, in my erratic, rambling fashion.The past few weeks haven't been easy, though, and this time I'm not writing much about happy memories but more about what's been going on lately (normal service will be resumed next time).

I'm not a royalist by any means (although I do have an extensive knowledge of the history of the royal family, courtesy of Dr Lucy Worsley, historical documentaries and The Crown) but I felt for the Queen at Prince Phillip's funeral.  She looked so lonely and frail. It brought back the way I felt in the days immediately following David's death, when the grief was very, very raw and it did upset me.  That, plus I've just had a couple of "the firsts" - my first birthday without him, and our wedding anniversary - so I've been a bit introspective .

I found myself thinking about some of the more unusual things we enjoyed doing together.  One of the things that we enjoyed was going to see demonstrations of mediumship, and we saw some good ones.  I know, differing opinions exist etc, etc, and some people will tell you that they're all frauds (and of course, any audience will be crammed with people named Keren-definitely-not-Karen whose father was named Walter so mentioning those names together is pure guesswork ...and yes, that did happen at a demonstration by John Edward!).  If you've read any of these blogs, you'll probably know that I'm sure he hasn't gone far, and I still talk to him.    The other day, I told him that, if I ever went to see a medium, I expected him to come through to me.  I totally forgot that my good friend is psychic.  We got together (don't tell the Covid police) to celebrate my birthday.  There was wine, and pizza, and a lot of laughing, then suddenly, in mid sentence, she stopped and said, "don't freak out, but there's someone here with us".  David had obviously accepted the challenge!

He was tapping her shoulder and talking about things I'd been doing.  I could confirm some of the things she told me, but there was one piece of information that didn't seem to make sense.  He was, it seemed, very concerned about a crumpled piece of paper.   I couldn't place it - it didn't mean anything to me.  She told me he was insisting that this was an important message  "It's like a rosebud" she said, "and he's very insistent. It's a message."  I still had no idea what it could be.  

A couple of days later, I came across a florist's card - I think it was from our first Valentine's day together, when he gave me a red rose.  It was a bit crumpled, and it had a picture of a red rose and a rosebud.  And a very loving message, which I've blurred out of the picture as it's very soppy, but it's made me feel a lot better. 

It was our wedding anniversary on Sunday.  I will admit I was feeling a little bit sorry for myself, in part because we didn't make it to our silver wedding.  As I slipped on my old and very-well-loved Birkies, I realised that something was flapping about my left foot - I thought I'd trodden on a sticky piece of paper.  When I took the shoe off, I found that one of my necklaces had somehow looped itself around the strap.  Let me repeat - it wasn't just tangled around the strap, the pendant was looped through the chain.  I took a picture before I disentangled the chain. Don't judge me, the Birkies are very, very comfortable and I don't care how they look! 

 I should have known he wouldn't let me down.