annanotbob2's Diaryland Diary

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On the Beach

17/03/24
The funeral on Thursday was for the mother of my friend J, who left here to be a Bluebell Girl in Vegas in 1980 and stayed forever. She’s been coming back a lot but this may be her last visit, it suddenly occurred to me, now her mum’s gone. It was a wonderful funeral, lots of people, lots of stories and photos, fabulous food. She’d been a beauty queen in the 1950s, which is problematic in so many ways, but also, man she was beautiful. I’d only known her in recent years – I met her a few times in the 1980s, but can’t remember much – after she’d started her slow and steady decline into dementia, in her late eighties and none of us look great then so it was kind of cool to see her in her youth, beaming out of the photo, in a swimming costume and full glam make up and hair. I also was reminded of the similarities between that family and mine. J’s mum married and had her, then her husband fucked off and she met husband 2, a widower with a young baby. The difference being that she adopted the baby, he became her second child, no questions. He spoke very movingly about her, as my brother’s stepson did about him at his funeral. I kept my gob shut at Ma’s funeral. Least said soonest mended etc.
We still don’t have a date for Bill’s funeral. It seems that in his last few days he got out of bed to go to the toilet and fell over. I think his wife was there, he was helped up, back into bed and it didn’t get written up, but now he’s covered in bruises that aren’t explained in his notes so a death certificate can’t be issued until that’s cleared up. It’s been two weeks already – awful for his family.
Today I did a writing workshop as part of a wellbeing afternoon my new pal E put on for her 40th birthday. She’s one of the grief swimmers and her son’s second anniversary was just two weeks ago – the day Bill died in fact – and she couldn’t imagine wanting a party so organised this to spend some time doing good things with all the people she loves around her. She led us in a yoga session to start with, then someone else did a sound bath – lots of deep sounds made with bowls – we all had to lie down with our eyes closed and relax, let the sounds wash over us, very intense. Then a short break and I did a workshop on gratitude, writing and all that and we finished with a group reiki session, which again involved lying on a mat, this time with a lot of humming, surprisingly powerful. For the last few minutes she played ‘Celebration’ by Kool and the Gang really loud and got us all up and dancing to “shake it all up, wake it all up”. Which it did. We were in a new place right down the far end of Brighton beach, right on the beach with huge windows looking out onto the water, very peaceful and lovely. I loved doing my workshop – there were 22 of us altogether and they all just started writing when I asked them to and kept going – nothing like being in a room that’s totally silent apart from the scratching of pens on paper. We didn’t have time to share, but several came up afterwards, with big grins, thanking me and saying how much they enjoyed it. Me too, I said, me too.

12:31 a.m. - 17.03.24

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