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Saturday 31 December 2011

Happy New Year!

It's the eve of the new year. Next year, 2012, is certainly something to wonder about. I'm not thinking too much at the moment. I just woke. I spent most of my night thinking...as I always do. Insomnia has been pretty much my life long companion. Anyway, my point is, I'm all thunked out.

I'm sitting in my living room with my iPad and coffee. I've got my feet up on the ottoman and feel relaxed. Its a dreary day outside. The dusting of snow we had melted yesterday. Bill is lounging on the sofa with his iPad and playing some flying game. It makes my laugh as I watch him tilt it this way and that. Leyla is curled up in the bathroom sink, sleeping. She loves it there. And in the time it took me to type this bloody paragraph I have completely forgotten what I was going to type next. Insomnia? Perhaps. Menopause? Maybe. The fact that I'm 50? No f'n way. (please note I'm not spelling the word out...the one that starts with f. But also please note, if I was speaking with you directly I'd just be saying it.) If someone reads this I'd like their opinion on swearing in a blog please...Ta much!



In a little while I'm going to get onto my yoga mat and enjoy an asana and meditation yoga practice. Then we are off to get seafood for our New Years Eve dinner; sea scallops, prawns and crab legs. We were going to get lobster but we forgot to order them and the only place we know to get them at a good price is way on the other side of Toronto.

This past week, having time off from work has been good. I had many things planned and did none of of them. I wanted to update my resume, invite a co-worker over for a visit, buy a baby gift for friends of mine in Harpenden, UK who just had a wee boy whom they named Robin David. (congrats again to dear Jen, Kev and darling Willow (Robin's sister). I miss you all very much! But I did relax. I had naps sometimes. I read loads. I worked out and did yoga. And I received, in the mail, my passing mark and my diploma for the WSET Fundamentals In Wine course. And this past week I started to blog. Oh! And wonder of wonders, I did the dishes after almost every meal! (new house with no dishwasher...renovating...waiting for renovations to be completed before installing new dishwasher) I despise washing dishes by hand for a few reasons which are a worthy of a blog on their own.

Well, Happy New Year everyone. And please don't make resolutions you won't keep. I never make them. What's the point of starting a new year by putting pressure on yourself and then...disappointing when you don't follow through..."fuck it" I say! Well, there you go...I spelled out the entire word. Good for me. So take each day as it comes and if you are one to set goals for yourself throughout the year, good on you. That is not the same as making a resolution. It really isn't.

Bright Blessings!

Tuesday 27 December 2011

First Blog ever...27 December 2011

I've wanted to do this since blogging started but I wondered if I should. I wondered would my blog be read or of interest to any one person on this planet. I wondered would blogging be a cathartic exercise. I wondered and still do, why people feel the need to blog. I mean, we all must have different reasons for doing it. I suppose there would be an element of common ground.... I started, today and wondered what I would say. And I wonder, now, why I have chosen the template I have. I suppose I like the word ethereal. It's a nice word in my opinion. Soft and whimsical. Ha! There should be a Whimsical Template.

Christmas has come and gone. It was lovely but hard to get through. Harder than last year. And this leads me to wonder will next year be worse. Last year, on Thanksgiving eve, my son died from a drug overdose. He was 26. He was alone. He was not found for 3 days. My beautiful, intelligent, witty child was gone forever. Everything changed. He is my only child.
https://www.facebook.com/groups/JeffJamesBerry/


As the holiday season approached I was filled with apprehension and even dread. The love of my life made it a magical time for me. It was our first Christmas together and we spent it in seclusion, just we two. It was good. I was also ill with pneumonia at the time. I wonder, if in some small way, this helped to dull my pain. Regardless, here was me naively believing I was a miracle woman getting through it all so soon after my son's death.

And so the New Year came. Month after month I could feel the increasing sadness in my heart. I was bewildered by this. Isn't it suppose to get easier? Then I recalled a friend of mine, who had lost her daughter a few years before in a car crash, saying, it never gets easier. Oddly, this remembering was of some comfort. Another Facebook friend, who also lost her daughter and was with my son, Jeff, in rehab, confirmed this in a post on his memorial page recently. I have wondered should I get some counseling. I am still wondering that if anyone is wondering.

Certain people have been in my thoughts over this holiday; those people would be the ones I know who have lost a child, a parent, a spouse fairly recently. Shelby lost her father and when that happened I lost my brother. Azmina and Normi lost their daughters.Susan lost her beloved son, her first born. Robin so misses her parents and although this wasn't so recent, the missing of them is still strong. My mom lost her son and the following year lost her grandson. Marilyn lost her daughter. Wendy lost her husband. And I know the pain and the emptiness they feel.

If you are wondering, I want to list them all but I can't. I am thinking of them. They are in my heart and I have tears for them all.


So, it doesn't get easier. It's one less thing to wonder about...