A beach morning

Occasional extra bit, #8

I had a rough night. Not horrible, exactly, Just eight hours of not-quite asleep and not-quite awake, drifting and thinking and achingly aware of how the bedroom is too quiet without BMB. And the bed too big.*

Truth be told, this third month of life without Alan is my least favourite yet. Crisis, and shock, and forty minutes on hold to an insurance company and people on helplines** saying ‘sorryforyourloss’ obviously for the seven hundredth time this week, have a kind of momentum. I’m now in the vast trudging plain of Getting On With It (Forever), and it’s every bit as hard as I thought it would be. It’s full of catching/being caught by all the things that there wasn’t space for in the immediate aftermath of BMB’s death: this week I’ve had a reminder of his next appointment from the dentist, I found a shopping list in his handwriting*** in a jacket I haven’t worn for a while, I waved some clothes off to a charity shop. And every now and then there’s a day - I had one on Sunday - when my sense of I DO NOT WANT THIS is so great**** that even doing the things that I know would help feel impossible. (So I didn’t go to Quakers on Sunday, but I did spend an hour weeding the garden, which - forgive me, Friends - gave me a similar grounding, a similar sense of being in the Light.)

I am doing my best to help myself. I talk to friends and family. I make sure I eat. I write, and I work, and I watch two categories of things on TV: absolute pure nonsense and wholesome People Trying Hard shows. (Thank you very much, Traitors US Season 4 and The Great British Sewing Bee.)

And when I’ve had a rough night, I take my trusty companion Harris and, like the river I am now, I head for the sea.

We were there just before 7am.

The results of yesterday’s industry were yet to be washed away. Excellent effort, Team Sandcastle, and Harris is very sorry***** that he trod on one of the outlying battlements in an effort to eat the piece of seaweed sticking out of the top.

The tide was coming in. Harris does not trust the sea. It moves around. It looks like water, but when you drink it it tastes weird. (There are days when Harris drinks some sea, pulls a face, and then tries another bit of sea five yards further along. And then another five yards. The phrase ‘thick as mince’ springs to mind.)

But he is prepared to tolerate the sea because sometimes he manages to gobble down some seaweed while I am taking photos, and because he knows he looks very handsome with the sea breeze ruffling his ears.

He’s also a fan of the tank traps (big concrete blocks that were placed along the Northumbrian coastline during the Second World War, a physical barrier against possible invasion). They are a veritable feast of good sniffs.

The sky and sea were beautiful together.

And, because I believe that though I cannot fix the big stuff, I can support myself in small ways, I had put on my trusty Peanuts shoes, which always make me smile.******.

As we headed back, I thought about something Alan and I disagreed about: he would say, ‘we should go to a different beach sometimes,’ and I would say, ‘but the beach is always different’.

When we got home, I felt steadier. I made a pot of tea, and some toast with a LOT of butter and marmalade on it. And I thought of an excellent joke: my toast was marmaladen. (Geddit?! Marmaladen. Marmalade+laden!!)*******

So, here I am, at my desk, and I’ve traversed a difficult morning after a tough night. and I suppose this is just how I keep doing it, isn’t it?

Thank you for being here, friends.

Stephanie x

*When one of us was away, the one at home would text: Night night darling. The bed’s too big without you.

**who I'm sure are good people, and doing a hard job

***weetabix, bananas, cheese for Harris

****just typing this has meant stopping for a sob

*****Harris is, obviously, not at all sorry

******Literally, every time I catch a glimpse of my feet still, and I must have had these shoes for three years

*******I have already made this joke on Substack once this morning, and I do not care, because BY HEAVEN it bears repeating