Bit of a tough 24 hours really. Starting with an unannounced, unexpected lengthy weep fest yesterday evening, sitting in the armchair upstairs. I’m not sure I was even crying really. Well not in any way I’ve ever experienced before. And boy, we are talking some serious crying in the last two months. This was a serious case of tumbling tears. So plentiful I had to move LB’s smelly t-shirt out of the way to avoid slushing the smells out of it. That action, in itself, increased the tear flow. My low level, constant concern about the dilution or disappearance of the smells. The lynx deodorant smells have almost gone (but can be topped up I suppose, although this seems a bit like faking it, so I’ll keep the two separate for now). But LB’s body eau-der is clinging on. Valiantly. Love him.  He had so many employment options open to him, if life wasn’t so fucking stacked against any recognition of these dudes’ talents, abilities and strengths. I’ve always thought this.

I wonder if the extreme crying was sparked by the first iteration of chest sorting. A slow recognition that there would be little new stuff to add. No new notebooks to enjoy and marvel at. No new ‘Pupil of the Week’ sheets. Yawning spaces ahead. For all of us. Life without LB. What does that mean? How can we possibly make any sense of it? Especially when we all miss him so fucking much.

Today was slightly better. In the sense that the tear downpour had dried to an intermittent drizzle. Not brilliant though. I did the weekly countdown type thing to his death this morning.  Again completely unhelpful and crushingly painful, as it has been for each of the past eight weeks. I continue to gasp for air regularly as the reality of what has happened stamps on my throat. Bastard grief.

Bastard unit. Bastard health ‘care’. Bastard social ‘care’.

I messed around kind of aimlessly later this afternoon trying to organise LB’s bus collection into something I could capture on camera. The third attempt in the past two months. This one as unsuccessful as the others. This is bugging me as his bus collection was so important to him.  I piled the models back into the box and thought about the crap pictures I’d taken.

I browsed back through the thousands of photos I have. Relentless snapper I am. It suddenly became important, in much the same way that I’m laying down markers for various ‘last things’, ‘when did that happen’, ‘in what order was x, y or z’ – (as I persistently bug Rich with), to find the very last photo I took of LB. What a terrible marker. Such complete sadness. All over again.

Here it is. After a buffet lunch at our favourite Indian restaurant, the Aziz, on the Cowley Road. June 16th. And it was more fun than this photo portrays.

I have to go now as the downpour is threatening again.

He shouldn’t have died.