Wednesday, June 29, 2016

The Anniversary of My Darling's Death

Here it is, the 29th June and yesterday, I was very pleased to see our daughters Sharon and Jeni, Sharon's husband Neal, with their daughters Kira (9 years old) and Erika (7), together with Jeni's children, Ellie (nearly 4) and Teo (nearly 2) who had come from Adelaide (Sharon's family) and Melbourne (Jeni's family - her husband George could not come as he could not get away from work).

Today we went to visit Pammy and be there at 1:30pm, the anniversary to the minute.  Here are some pictures...

 
To the viewer's left side of the tree is Sharon with Erika and Kira (Kira closest to the tree).  To the right of the tree is me at the rear, my left arm around Jeni, with baby Teo and Ellie in front of Jeni.
 
Here are the four grandchildren - as referenced on Pammy's headstone...
 
 
 
The kids got busy with some stones and made some stone flowers in addition to the others we brought along...
 
 

 

Here's Jeni with her two...
 

..and Sharon and Neal with theirs...


It was a lovely time and Pammy would have loved it - if the circumstances were different.
 
I know this is silly talk, but I also know that Pam and I would tell each other that we loved each other, possibly 50 or more times per day - and if I didn't tell this to Pammy as she was dying, I'd be really surprised. There's a reasonable theory that 'hearing' is one of the last senses to go in a dying person, and certainly Pammy would have been pleased if she heard me tell her "I love you so much my darling Pammy", yet again, as she died. Although I got there as a consequence of the Palliative Nurse's advice, I'm hopeful that Pam heard me tell her so. But did I really tell her THAT?  I (we) say it so much, we hardly ever remember ever doing so - I remember muttering something, but I have no idea what it was. Oh, that if it could only have been "I love you Pammy". It may well have been, but I'll now never know, and that's a thought which is not doing me any good at all.
 
Well, here it is now, a few days after posting the previous paragraph - in fact it's now Wednesday 6th July, a full week after Pam's death anniversary day.  On SBS TV tonight, a program called '24 Hours in Emergency' started off with the announcer saying "...and many, if not most people worry about whether they said 'I love you' as their partner died."  So I'm not the only one apparently!  When I heard this, my first reaction was to delete the previous paragraph and pretend it didn't even happen - but this was a learning experience for me and you, dear reader, may even well benefit therefrom.  At least I'm like the majority, apparently...
 
And now it's the 9th of July and yesterday was the 1st anniversary of my wife's funeral and of her cremation.  I have just finished watching a movie recording that we both enjoyed to watch, (you wouldn't believe what movie that was*), then went to the bathroom and cried like a baby - only louder. I still go to her gravesite every day and I KNOW I'm probably mad for doing so, but I love her so much and that's where she now is - what am I really supposed to do? I was not just her loving husband, but also was her personal carer for 20 years and I simply cannot stop caring for her. I appreciate bird droppings on her headstone, because that gives me something to do in cleaning it off. After all, her grave is in Belar Ave and Pammy is under Belar tree No5 - and birds rest among the Belar branches and leaves. At least, when I cry, it only lasts a minute or less - I am happy for knowing Pammy.
 
Yesterday, I went to the airport as my friend Richard Sims was awaiting his continued flight home to Melbourne. He had lots of laptop videos to show me of where he worked in Kakadu, including some old ones taken in the backyard of his old Mildura residence where Pam and I plus our two girls Sharon & Jeni were visiting in celebration of their son Luke's birthday party on the13th March 1987, just a few months after Pam's MS diagnosis. There I was, with a valve trombone, playing 'Happy Birthday' to Luke and following up with Helen Johnson's composition called 'Anna Karenina' and I played it for the guests without any sheet music (I sincerely doubt if I still can). Pam didn't get much filming on these videos, but she certainly got some, and I treasure those videos as a consequence. I will try a copy them onto a couple of CDs for my darling daughters to view...
 
* 'twas 'The Fugitive' - a ripper movie about a mythical Doctor Richard Kimble and was a story that we both were thrilled by. (If it were not for our beautiful daughter Jeni, I would have taken a much longer time to realise this little fact - a fact that would have turned into a major one before not much longer - thank you so very much Jeni.)

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