annanotbob2's Diaryland Diary
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Bears
Today I am grateful to Beverley for letting me join her grief writing workshop on zoom, as there's no way I can get up to Sheffield to do it in person. It means a lot to me, to be chosen, shakes me up a bit, challenges that underlying lack of self worth - reminds me that it's still there, despite all the evidence. Ah well.
There were eight of us today, plus Beverley, all people living with loss and love and grief and wanting to write about it. I know it may seem as if I never fucking shut up about it, but I feel I had to squash it for a long time as the pandemic threatened my equilibrium so much that it was my only way to survive. Now I feel safer, out it's all coming.
There's going to be an event in Sheffield in May - I'm not sure what it's called, hardly a festival, but an event with art and literature and some readings. Our bit will be called 'The Spaces in Between: Reflections on Love and Loss'. I'm going to go and read, not sure what yet.
Today we were invited to write about 'The spaces between' first and I wrote about the time between knowing Sam would die, watching her fade away over years, and her actual dying. It was quite easy to write, it just poured out of me, but reading it aloud was hard. I cried a bit and one of the others did too. The next bit was writing about an object. I chose one of Sam's bears and wrote this, lighter - They were all chuckling when I finished:
This is a bear, a blue-nosed bear to be precise. I know, ghastly, irritating all round. Everything about it reeks of sentimentality and the commercialization of such sentimentality.
Sammie had loads of them. She collected them – it started long before her diagnosis. We all used to take the piss. Why do you like them? They’re horrible! She was always the real rebel in our family and stuck to her guns no matter what.
When she went into the first care home her partner must have snuck them in, in ones and twos but when he disappeared and I moved her down to live near me, she came with a great, big, black bin liner, full of these poxy bears. The new home was all about making a good life, respecting the residents’ wishes – all good, obviously - but no chucking the bears out with the rubbish, no, she had a whole Billy bookcase rammed full of soft toys, mainly these horrid blue-nosed bears.
Then she died. What to do with them? I couldn’t throw them out. I gave loads to charity shops and forced them on people daft enough to let me but I’ve still got far too many of them here. There are four in this room, another three in my bedroom and Sam’s ashes are on a shelf surrounded by her favourite small ones.
I do quite like having them now. It keeps her real in my mind, stops me idealizing her, romanticizing her too much. She was quite annoying – maybe I miss that the most.
10:53 p.m. - 26.02.23
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