Things ain’t getting any easier. They are changing though. Largely through the support and actions of family and friends (and wider). This week there has been a collective effort to sort out the chaos we live in (serious hoarding tendencies) and transform/create space. Space for us to try and recover.

This has involved packing up LB’s stuff. A task I couldn’t go near.

The kids, under the watchful eye of Tracy P* (“…we packed absolutely everything, even what looked like the chewed off corners of cereal boxes”) set too, decanting LB’s life into a mountain of boxes and boxes now stacked up around me, downstairs.

Heartbreaking.

Sue and Tina (Charlie’s Angels) pitched up among the chaos. We laughed about some memories. Particularly LB’s delight in sending a message in a bottle to the mermaids. Off the bridge at Marston during a nifty detour on the school bus. And the answers he received from the mermaids on postcards sent from various holiday destinations. He had some magical experiences, that dude, which he embraced in his straightforward, ‘does what it says on the tin’ manner. A cheeky grin and a chuckle.

We again shared disbelief/rage about what had happened. And how it could happen. As Sue said, a constant loop going through her mind. Impossible to make any sense of.

They left to go to the cemetery and the clear up continued.

After my smell descent earlier this week and the physical removal of LB’s stuff from what was his and Owen’s room, for so many years, I’m struck by a silence, as well as the continuing raw pain.  An enormous silence. I don’t know if this is because LB never stopped talking, either to himself or through repeated (bus and lorry related) questioning. Or whether it’s a more symbolic silence. It’s as if someone has switched off a background channel somewhere. Odd and unsettling.

But we now have new (and clean) spaces in which to be. I have an armchair in the bay window in what was LB’s room with a view of the London Road and the buses. And a large empty chest ready to store the special things/memories when we are able to sort through the stuff. Around the ring road, at the cemetery, a sparkling Eddie Stobart baseball cap has appeared on LB’s grave. Under the trees, in the sunshine.