A month of Sundays

Dear Diary.

Well here we are, 1st January again. Gosh I've overeaten again, I must try and eat more healthily....anyway, that's not the point.

The point is : I need to declutter. If I'm ever going to sell the house and downsize, and let's face it I know I need to, I need to get rid of thirty year's of... of... well crap, really.

So. It's time to get this stuff off to the charity shop/ Ebay/ whatever that other one's called. By the end of the month I'll have de cluttered.

Mum used to have a little saying " A chuck out a day/ keeps the loony bin at bay". Hardly politically correct these days, either from a mental health aspect or sustainability. I'll do my best to resell, or reuse, or repurpose or some other word beginning with" re"....

So tonight I'll have a little glass of wine to help me along the way to a New Me, where you can open a cupboard without reflexively thrusting an arm in front of the inevitable pile of stuff which falls out.

Go me.

3rd January.

I got a bit sidetracked, admittedly. I actually don't know what happened to yesterday- maybe I was coming down with something, but I awoke with a blinding headache and a very dry mouth. A Drooth, as we Scots would call it. So I didn't do much tidying up, I lay on the couch with a never ending supply of tea and watched Below Deck Mediterranean with the sound down low, on account of the banging sore head. Funny, quite a lot of that wine seems to have gone. Anyway. Today I thought well I need to start somewhere, so I'll have a look at the hall landing cupboard. That shouldn't be too bad.

I looked at the black bags, single shoes, broken head phones, and old jackets without much enthusiasm, I'll be honest. It's kind of hard to see what's in there because the light doesn't work. Chris was going to do that repair last summer. But of course he didn't.

I bent down stiffly and pulled out a couple of the single shoes. I mean, I don't know if they're single. Maybe the partner is further back in the cupboard. I don't think the charity shop will take them unless they're tied together. I imagine there's not much call for single shoes, although there must be some one legged people that would be bloody grateful... I digress. So I yanked some out which caused some of the black bags to fall out too, and when I looked in them, they seemed to be stuffed toys mostly.

Jack's Piggly Wiggly was in there. I stroked it's bald head. There's hardly any fur left on the thing. I knitted it a little jacket after Jack cried inconsolably that he would be cold, due to lack of fur, because Jack had sort of rubbed it off by constant snuggling. He used to lie in bed stroking Piggly and sucking his thumb as I laboriously and dutifully read Thomas the Tank Engine to him, and woe betide me if I tried to skip a page.

" Mummy, but what about Henry and the couplings coming off? Where's that bit? Have you missed it out, Mummy?"

Yes, I'd say silently, yes I bloody have because I want to go downstairs, make a cup of tea and sit down in blissful silence , son. But of course I'd dutifully go back and read the bit about Henry. Then I'd tuck Jack in, smoothing his bath- damp hair over his forehead, and breathing in clean skin and warm pyjamas smell. Then finally, I'd go downstairs to the kitchen, the floor flecked with evening sunshine through the trees. I'd make my cup of tea and wish Chris would have washed up the dinner dishes before he went out on his bike.

Well, obviously I couldn't throw ol' Piggly Wiggly out. I sat him carefully on the shelf in the bedroom. I'd kind of lost heart by then so I left the single shoes on the landing and went downstairs for a glass of wine.

5th January. The weather is awful. It's so dark. It feels as though it actually never gets light. This morning I felt a bit more like the thing so I had breakfast and strode purposefully up to the landing cupboard. I could hardly see a thing, so I hauled out four other black bags and some more shoes, and here was the mate of the first shoe. The sole mate, haha. Funny . I firmly tied the laces together and dropped it in a black bag I'd brought up from the kitchen. Several soft toys joined it. Not, obviously Piggly wiggly or Mary's cuggy as she called it, after reading the book we both loved so much " The Cuggy Thief" . She asked for that story for weeks- the thief arriving to steal all the children's loved soft toys and bits of blanket that they used for comforters. Hers was the edging from her Moses basket. She used to carry it everywhere as a toddler, slung over her shoulder.....Mum made it when I was pregnant with her, and it's blue with tiny polka dots and edged with lace. Mum was so excited that I was pregnant, and even more so when I had a girl. Obviously you didn't get to know the sex of your baby before it emerged in those days. No stupid Gender Reveal parties. Anyway, she must have bought twenty puffy out dresses and pairs of tights, all in hideous nylon material.... I would put them on when Mum came over to visit, but the rest of the time Mary wore babygros and little trousers. Much more practical.

So obviously Cuggy had to join Piggly Wiggly on the shelf. Then I threw some T shirts into the black bag. Boys ones, either belonging James or Jack but since they've moved out three years ago I hardly think they'll be looking for them now. Excellent progress, missus, I told myself. Then I realised I wasn't sure which black bag was which- stuff I hadn't looked at or charity shop? and I couldn't be bothered raking through them all again so I left it all on the floor and went downstairs for a cup of tea and more Below Deck. It's compulsive watching.

I can't sit at the dining table on my own, it's too sad. A lot of things seem too big now, oddly, and this is one. So I made some sandwiches and sat on the couch with a cat and drank tea. At some point I switched to wine.

8th January. Gosh this month is both incredibly long as regards eking out my pension ,and oddly quick as regards time slipping away. I don't seem to have achieved anything except making a bit of a mess. There's shoes and black bags everywhere, and now one of the cats has made a bed of some of the soft toys. Clearly I can't move him. He's old, and he looks so comfy. I'll do some more tomorrow.

10th January. Look this is ridiculous, I tell myself sternly in the mirror. God I look old. I need a haircut. My skin is grey and pallid. I stare gloomily at myself. Enough. Today's list : take two bags to the charity shop. ~Anything. Just two bags. Get on with it, woman.

11th Jan. took two bags of soft toys and three pairs of trainers, owner moved or deceased, to The Hospice Shop. Made hair appointment. Bought more wine, quicky hid it in back of cupboard and put sparkling water at front, to try and convince myself this is a better option.

12th January. It doesn't seem to have stopped raining for weeks. I stare out at the slick pavements, and windy trees on the street, wishing it would stop even for a bit so that I could go for a walk in the park. I long to see if there's any sign of Spring, any buds or green shoots of crocus. Winter is so long in Scotland. There's no sign of movement in any of the houses nearby. No lights on. They could almost be false frontages , with nothing behind them. The thought unsettles me a bit.

Find Chris's green jacket stuffed at the back of the cupboard. I suspect one of the children has put it there so I didn't see it straight after he died. Even now, a year later, it's a constant jolt to me. I keep banging into the fact that he's gone, he's not somewhere else, he's not living a life without me, he's... gone. Irrevocably. There are still so many places that he isn't, if you see what I mean.

I stood looking at the jacket for a long time, turning the material in my hands slowly. It grew darker on the landing. I put the jacket on a hanger, carefully smoothing the creases out. In the pocket was a crumpled receipt for petrol, a paper hanky and some Airwave chewing gum. I can still smell it faintly. Chris used to chew on that when we were in the car. He always had a blocked nose. I'd look out of the passenger window and slip into a little dream, which would be broken by Chris suddenly sneezing explosively- God it was so loud and unexpected. Chris, I'd say irritably, can you not give me some warning you're going to do that? Like, hit the dashboard or something so that I have time to prepare myself? I swear it's going to damage my hearing. He'd smirk a bit and I'd wonder if he was doing it on purpose just to annoy me.

The house is shockingly quiet now. No big feet thundering up and down the stairs , nobody breaking wind exuberantly, no kids playing music, no tuneless humming from Chris as he sorted out his clothes for the next day.... I went downstairs and move the sparkling water out of the way and poured wine. A large wine.

18th January. Been very productive- Go Me!! Three bags of old shirts that belonged to the boys to Hospice Shop, threw out two broken plastic boxes, also listed one perfectly good radio on Ebay. Chris loved a gadget. This one told you the temperature outside, and flashed some weird icons to indicate the weather. It lit up like a bloody Christmas tree. He wanted to put it in the holiday cottage and I said no it was too big and gaudy, and he looked a bit crestfallen and put it back in the box.

God, did I have to be so sour faced. Would it have killed me to let him put it in the cottage? Why was I so mean?

Pour more wine. Just a small one.

25th January. The landing cupboard is almost empty. It looks odd, diminished somehow, missing items on shelves like gaps in teeth. The jacket still sits at the front and I run my hand over it absently, every time I open the door. It both comforts and appalls me.

30th January. Pay day for my pension, do big shop, get hair done and cheerfully lie to hairdresser that I'm fine.

I'm not fine. Throwing things out is like a betrayal, like admitting he's never coming back, I've stood sobbing helplessly in front of the wheely bin, holding broken toys, or half repaired toasters , willing myself to just let it go, it's over. The days are gone for my kids to be kids . They're never coming back either. They phone or visit, or take me for lunch, surruptiously looking at their watch under the table, but they'll never run out of school desperate to tell me what the teacher said, asking what's for tea, Mummy, where is the cat, where's my Piggly? They don't need me in that all consuming way that children need a mum when they're tiny. you are their world. Nobody will ever need me to knit a jacket for a nearly bald soft toy again.

It's all gone, and the silence is thick in the house. I feel as if I'm poised waiting, holding my breath for... what? I stare out in the grey dusk at the rain pattering on the window like a million tears running down the pane, until one of the cats rubs round my legs looking for it's tea.

I turn away from the window.

I pour a glass of wine.