Everyone talks about 'coming to terms with...' after bereavement: being single after being paired, finding new interests or taking up old ones, having appropriate reminders and tributes without being maudlin. For example, your loved one's ashes set in crystal jewellery is going a tad too far. Perhaps we could market the idea of 'ashes in a snow storm', as a memento to place on your desk and shake occasionally for inspiration?
The 'unthinking' is my word for the process of having to unlearn routines and tasks that have somehow become embedded in our brains. For example, just yesterday when out in the town, I automatically went to talk with a window cleaner, (increasingly hard to find), to clean the shop windows. Just remembering in time that I sold the shop earlier this year when Peter died. Similarly I have to keep unlearning not to buy strength 3 Arabica coffee, which was his coffee preference, whereas mine is 5 strength, or the New Scientist, his only magazine.
It is almost as we have to learn how to forget, rather than struggling to remember. The sensory memories are ever present, but his routines and our routines, have to be unlearned, and unthought. And it takes time
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