Sometimes I find myself able to predict the days that are going to be hard.
And then there is this week.
Which is seemingly an emotional roller coaster of emotions that is so insanely difficult to navigate but without any control mechanism, we are left here to just hang on and hope for the best.
Last weekend I had the penultimate 40th birthday party of my friendship group in this year’s ‘Season of 40ths’.
It was held at Vue de Monde - a restaurant that Pete had coveted a meal at for so long. It was where he planned to have a meal for his 50th Birthday.
And so I got to eat there.
Without him. But with a group of girlfriends from school who I love dearly... and the last time we were all together was Pete’s funeral.
The irony of it all wasn’t lost on me.
The next day I watched Molly row in her first regatta and farewelled my parents (and thanked them again for the billionth time for what they do for us). They had come to Melbourne and Ballarat to have the kids so I could go to the party and they could take the children to Harry Potter and The Cursed Child - something they had promised the kids they would do now my parents are living by the theory that you just never know what will happen, so just do the things; see Molly row; and get me and Molly safely to Ballarat in time for the regatta after a reasonable session on wine and gin.
All of this seemed to go off without a hitch. The weekend was suitably celebratory and pride inducing.
Granted I was tired from the weekend but the week started well. We cruised through Monday incident free.
And then, like I should be getting better at anticipating, the emotional hangover hit on Tuesday.
With a vengeance.
With tired kids, and yelling kids, and ‘Mum I’ve forgotten my bathers’ kids...
And so Tuesday itself was a fair bit of hard work to navigate.
Then I changed a gas bottle on my own! And things were good.
Then there was just some unknown reason there was Wednesday morning ... and that included some extraordinary yelling from the kids, some pretty ordinary parenting from me, the some pretty ordinary behaviour from some adults, no phone service just stuffing up all and sundry attempts at communications, reminders of how forgetful I’ve been to people who are relying on me to be organised...
There were tears from moving songs, tears from people’s poor behaviour, tears from people’s amazing actions.
It also included the primary school the kids go to conducting a dedication service to the people our school community has lost. It was a pretty sobering reminder on a day that had been woeful, that we don’t have Pete in our lives any more but how good the people we do, are.
It also served as a reminder of how grateful we are to have had him in our lives.
There were a lot of tears pre-event because Sam couldn’t find his wristband with Pete‘s ashes in it, so he grabbed Pete’s hat to wear.
He looked the spitting image of his father.
And oh my goodness I cried ... again.
In between this crappy day and the dedication event, I had attempted a nap. Because I was utterly mentally exhausted and I needed to steel myself for the evening activities...
But the neighbours were doing renovations - so there was lots of hammering and sawing so sleep didn’t happen.
I don’t know how, but I found this quote while trawling around down rabbit holes on social
media and it jarred me so much.
And visions of the day Pete died came flooding back to me with such extraordinary clarity it set off a whole new round of tears.
I closed my eyes after reading this and I could see so clearly Pete’s eyes as he lay on the ground collapsed and how scared I’d been seeing his glazed expression.
I remember it was exactly at that time I looked into them and felt panic. And when the guy who rang the ambulance asked me if we needed an ambulance and I remember looking in Pete’s eyes and saying ‘yes...’
Then there was when we got to the hospital and I put my hand on Pete’s chest and implored him to stay on the bed and he looked me square in the eye with such panic in his eyes, desperately begging me to not let them out anything on his face because of his claustrophobia.
I read that quote and remember so distinctly the look in his eyes the last time I looked into them.
So when I read this yesterday I cried and cried and cried some more because after the gut-punched feeling of realising I so vividly and clearly do remember the last time I looked into his eyes, it prompted me to look at other photos of him, and I saw the eyes I also remember.
So I looked at the photos we have of him so many times. And those smiling eyes. Those eyes that lit up when he laughed, or talked about something he was passionate about or when he spoke of the kids and what they were doing, when he looked into mine and said ‘love you, Sweet’.
And I felt much hurt that I will only ever be able to look into them again in photos.
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