A bad/good day

Every bad day has its good parts, and every good day has its bad ones, as I said a few weeks ago. This is just reality for most of us most of the time, but it’s especially true for those of us in the process of dealing with the loss of someone we loved very much. Over the past few days, I was reminded of how true that is.

Yesterday was a very hard day, because, unlike our marriage anniversary two days earlier, about which I had mixed feelings, November 2 was a clear and valued anniversary for us both. I desperately miss Nigel, obviously, and that made November 2 incredibly hard for me.

Even so, the day was also brightened by family. Nigel’s Mum stayed with me last week, and she was going to be picked up this weekend. As it turned out, five of the Hamilton Crew came up and, joined by a sister in law who had been travelling overseas when Nigel died, together we packed up the garage to get the stuff ready to put into storage.

That could have been a really bad time for me, since it was already an incredibly sad day, but by focusing on the task at hand, and with the support of family, we got it done. Well, to be honest, they got it done, actually—I just concentrated on a few things that had some particular emotional resonance for me, like packing up Nigel’s 3-D printers, for example. But even that could have been difficult, but wasn’t because of the family.

After lunch, we mainly just visited until dinner time, which is pretty much a perfect afternoon for me. We had the awesome fish and chips from the local takeaway shop for dinner, something I mention because it’s one of the few things I’ll actually miss when I move away.

As the evening began, the family members—who had planned on staying the night to finish up today—decided they may as well go home, since we’d finished what we set out to do. But Nigel’s brother read my emotional state, and he and his wife stayed with me that night. His sister and our brother-in-law took their Mum and my nephew back home (the other sister-in-law had already left by then).

That night, he and I talked about Nigel, his death, and what’s happened since, mainly just because we’re all trying to make sense of everything that’s happened and it’s very helpful to have someone to talk such things over with, someone different who we don’t talk with like that all the time.

They left this morning, and I realised a particular reason why it was good they’d stayed the night: Otherwise, everyone would have left all at once, either last night or this morning, and I’d have been suddenly all alone. It was nice to have a sort of transition.

This morning, Nigel's brother and I had a look around the house and realised that there’s really not much I need to clear out in order to get the house ready to sell—so little, in fact, that it’ll be relatively easy to do. That means I won’t need another Family Army to help me, which I think is good. I do think, though, that it’s been good to have had two workdays with two different groups of the family so that no one had to give up a lot of time in order to help me get this phase completed, and, thanks to them, I now pretty much have.

All of that work was necessary so that I can get the house on the market soon. That’s critical to my next step, and I’m still committed to all that, and to the move to Hamilton—even though at the moment I can’t be sure what, exactly, that will look like (it’s a work in progress).

The important thing in all this is that I’m getting through this by focusing on the tasks in front of me—the whole one day at a time thing (or, more specifically, “what I can, when I can”, as I put it awhile back). Second, all of that is possible because of the support and help I’ve had from the family. I couldn’t possibly have accomplished what I have without them.

So, yes, every bad day has its good parts, and every good day has its bad ones. Over the past few days, I was reminded of how true that is.