~~
Saturday 7th 51F. Up at 6am. overcast with misty rain on the front windows. First rain in ages but unlikely to affect the drought. The rain soon eased off with occasional brighter periods to follow. Sunshine promised for this afternoon.
No doubt my trivial posts about kitchens and tidying hold little interest for most of my readers. This is not really the point. Which is, to retain my sanity by any means possible. Obsessing over the details of rebuilding the kitchen gives me a chance. To think about something else than losing my wife. So unexpectedly and so tragically. It is still impossible to comprehend that she has gone. Just writing about it produces a flood of tears.
Every item, of hers, which I take to the charity shops. Distances the girl and woman I remember over a lifetime. Yet finding her indoor sandals under "her" TV chair brings it all back. The burning guilt for my every failure as her partner. The total disbelief and bewilderment that she is still absent. Gone for good. It is five weeks tomorrow that I literally watched her die.
I have coped by writing about it. Though completely isolated by distance, I have the support of family and virtual friends. Mostly I have learned to cope by filling every day with tidying and adapting. Often undoing the negative effects she had on the house and surroundings. She hated change. Hated the idea of anyone entering the house. No doubt because of her vast hoard of collected items. Not all of which had monetary value.
Whether her collections and the space they took up, shamed her. I cannot possibly tell now. It was not something we discussed without causing friction. Our indoor spaces were reduced to narrow aisles. Some areas were completely impossible to access.
Do not get the completely wrong impression that there was household rubbish anywhere. Though that is what her packaging amounted to in the end. Cardboard and newspapers were protecting her treasures. Waiting for the house move which never came. Many beautiful items she could never see again. Simply because they were literally unreachable. Housed in stacked boxes in layers and tiers. Hidden away in a ridiculous excess of old and sometimes wormy furniture.
A hundred yards of old and leaky, single glazed windows on either side. Daylight showing around every antique door. A single layer of hand-made bricks. Between the harsh Danish winters and indoor reality. A football field of badly wormed boards in the vast attic. Supporting little in the way of recognisable insulation. The roof covering, asbestos cement. Made horribly ugly by time. It was miles from the usual shops too.
The mason has finally turned up this morning as promised. There is a crack on the end wall which has never responded to my repeated repairs with mortar. The house sits on clay with a high water table. He is going to make some horizontal slots and fix stainless steel, spiral rods across the gap. While settlement cracks are not necessarily dangerous they are very unsightly. Buyers of such a property would want a big discount or lose interest.
Those who replaced an end door with a window, decades ago, forgot to install a lintel. The crack runs up the side of this window. Then on up to the sill of the upstairs window. Except that there is no proper sill. Just the top row of bricks at eaves level. The entire upper gable end being built and clad in wood. I have a new, upper window on order. So I didn't want to place it on top of a badly cracked wall.
His work was done in slightly over an hour. All thanks to the skill and experience of the mason. He used tile cement. Just as did the master sweep when he rebuilt the chimney. Apparently it is both strong and frost proof.
Another trailer full of old timber has been delivered to the recycling yard. Filled to the brim from under the Horse Chestnut tree. I have no idea why it was there. Perhaps my wife thought we would be too poor to afford firewood in our old age?
Now I am going to load the trailer with scrap metal from under the same tree. Old TV aerials, iron plumbing pipe, greenhouse profiles, radiators, old bikes. There is a bit of everything under there. Each item a project with memories.
12.40 63F, paused for lunch after filling the trailer to overflowing with scrap metal. I shall have to drive it to the more distant recycling yard. They have the scrap metal container below a wall. So it is easy to unload the trailer. The local recycling yard makes the donor climb a flight of stairs! With every single item being heavy that would take hours to unload.
Afternoon. 62F in warm sunshine. Two trips each to both recycling yards. The local one doesn't accept some things. The lower garden and under the Horse chestnut are close to being clear now. One more trip would clear it but I've had enough for one day. It's been heavy lifting and throwing all day long.
The countryside is more gorgeous on every trip. The myriad, fresh greens of spring. With bright, oil seed rape highlights in the fields. The atmosphere is very clear. Adding a sharpness to every view. More and more of my wife's tulips are coming out. Only to be blasted by the sun in most cases. They are soon over.
While those in shade do well for a long time. I may be personally responsible for the lack of shade on the east end of the house! All that hedge clearing was not without effect. Though only first thing in the morning. The full sun soon finds a clear shot along the drive as it gains strength and altitude.
5.30 59F. Still bright sunshine. The wind is blowing from the NW. I have just woken from an hour's sleep. It wasn't meant to be that long.
Dinner, this evening, was two fried eggs on two rounds of wholemeal bread toast. Half a tin of baked beans and half a tin of organic tomatoes. Plus a buttered wholemeal bread roll to mop up the plate.
~~
No comments:
Post a Comment