It’s been over three months since I’ve last updated here, and I’m aware that’s significant.

It’s not through tardiness or waning interest in this project – far from it – but I will concede my criticisms of those blogs that have a one year timeline might have been a bit hasty. If you decide to chart your progress – or lack of it – by a period of time then you have some end to it. I’m worried some people might come here and think ‘Oh, he’s still rambling on, is he? It’s been x years now. Get on with it man!’

But then again that is what scares me; that circular concern that some people looking for some sort of solace from grief will think it either wanes after a period or, conversely, it never ends and there is no hope from it. I believe the truth is somewhere in the middle. Some find other things in life to focus on. Others find a way of working around it, while some are unable to move one iota and it lives on in them forever.

Someone I met this year – someone I liked a lot and wouldn’t have met had I not been widowed – described every day as like ‘walking through treacle’. I quite liked the analogy but being the awkward so and so I am I couldn’t help but put the analogy through its paces to see if it could keep up. I was wondering if you ever get free of the treacle and you move as you used to? Or do you eventually build up some strength through the constant movement and it makes it easier to walk? Or does nothing change and you just get used to walking through treacle? (OK too far, I know!)

It’s interesting how we are prepared to face some things in life but find it hard to accept the inevitability in death. For example, if a 60-year-old could run as fast as he could when he was 16 then that would be a wondrous thing – but he can’t, of course and wouldn’t expect to. It would be wrong to say we like that fact but we at least understand it and accept it; to do otherwise would be pointless. But surely that’s the same with grief? We can’t be like we were when that special person was around but somehow we refuse to accept it.

Anyway, a lot has been going on – although in many ways nothing has been going on! – in 2020 and it has affected me enormously. Since January, I have been emptying my parents home. I’m an only child and I can’t and won’t ask for help as I feel it is my duty and, in any case, any help will still amount to the same thing i.e ‘What do you want to do with this?’ I may as well keep it simple.

I won’t lie, there have been days when I’ve got a boost from achieving something over there, but those trips to East London are also mentally wearing, knowing I’ve done them at least twice a week since I left home at 21 and now I’m doing exactly the same thing but without having anyone either with me as I travel, or having anyone to greet me when I arrive. I had considered renting out the property but I realise now I can’t do that. It will tie me to the house and the need to revisit. I need to let it go.

And now it’s December, and the house that used to be baking hot with a roaring fire in the living room, smelling of Christmas as my father burnt chestnuts with regular abandon, is cold and almost empty. People I don’t know are walking through it. Last week, I decided to bury my parents’ ashes in the garden and I invited the Vicar to say a few words in front of a small gathering; my daughter and son-in-law were there but my son couldn’t travel because of the pandemic, a couple of good neighbours attended but we couldn’t hug or even stay close together. It summed up the grim reality of the year so well.

The rest of the year has been concerned with those highs and lows that everyone suffers. I know if I threw a stone down the High Street and asked each person it hit to come and relate their year then I would gather a wealth of different stories by the end of the day. Probably few of those stories would mean that much to the listener -though many might – but each will be important to the person telling it. So it is with me, but this is not the place for it. All I’ll say is I’ve been elated and battered in equal measure by something I thought I was looking for but now realise I can’t deal with. The result of that is has left me hurt and confused and not sure where I go from here.

My third Christmas without Gail approaches and I feel like the Page following King Wenceslas; treading in some deep, well-dug steps, trying to stop a battering from the wind and huddling behind something to stop me freezing but unaware of where I am going. And yes, I know that will get me a place in Pseuds Corner but I’d love that anyway, that is something that makes sense.