Cannot believe what I just did! I wrote a couple of paragraphs of this blog and then shut it down without saving it. After six hundred or so blogs you'd think I'd know better eh? Put it down to not sleeping last night. I think all the coming and going for the past week as I went to various church services as well as fitting in all the usual round of chores has tired me out and when I am too tired I don't sleep.

I find all the "family festivals" harder now my family is scattered. The last year of Ray's life they all made a real effort to be with us on special days and visited as often as they could. Shirley and Craig would do a church service and spend close to four hours getting here so we could all be together, Steven came if he could with the kids and Trevor of course lived locally so he and Edie did the same. They all visited less last year and this year Shirley and family have not been up at all although I have visited them.

I have an allergy to palm oil which is used in the making of commercial brands of hot cross buns so can't eat them now and would you believe it is now used in the manufacture of Easter eggs so those were out too for me this year. Hard to keep saying "no thank you dear, I can't eat them now" to the little ones handing out Easter eggs in the church service. I just ate my normal food at mealtimes and filled my days with gardening, reading on the verandah and going to church as I do on most weekends.

So that is Easter over, done and dusted. We do have Easter Monday as a public holiday here in Australia but it is a day when people just get over the fact that they've had three days off and that can't be all bad. For us churchies we are getting over a week of far too much church - much as we enjoy it and think we should do it. I did go out for lunch after church as usual on Sunday but only three of us this week, all "singles" as everyone else was busy with family stuff. Unfortunately we are burying one of our group today, she reached 99 and seven months and then her heart gave out and after a few weeks in hospital she died last week. We'll all miss Beryl, the sailor's bride.

As a person on my own I had a lot of apprehension about how I would cope this year with Easter. I really didn't have too bad a weekend, kept myself busy, tried hard not to think of Easters past, ignored the Saturday night parties my younger neighbours had. I know now through a site called Widowed Village that I belong to that a lot of people struggle with the special holidays and know I am just one of many. So I know to fill my days with things like gardening and crocheting, watch a movie if I want to and generally acting like the solitary lady I am becoming now. And I survived. What more can you ask? Shirley did ring me about 7pm Sunday night to see how I was going. There were no Easter cards this year but some Easter greetings on Facebook and I got a couple of greeting emails. But no-one actually said Happy Easter apart from the folk at church.

​​I have the convention coming up so had some phone calls on what we were going to do for a skit. After much discussion it came down to miming Abba songs, so we were set up with red wigs and had to buy white outfits and then, what a blow, no skits this year! A pity as our Club has been very successful over the years with our comedy acts. I will never forget the Pheasant Pluckers' song. never. I don't think I have ever been as nervous as I was that night.

I am looking forward to the convention and a four day tour afterwards of the Adelaide Hills (wine country) and just the company and the fact I don't have to prepare meals. It will all be such fun. Of course at the AGM there will be a roll call so we will be reminded of those we have lost and I guess as this is the first convention I have attended since Ray died there will be people who want to offer their condolences. That bit is always hard to get through even now. And the realisation that I am a single now, not a member of a couple and a lot of these people are Ray's buddies and just incidentally friends of mine too. Life is always bittersweet now.

And I also have the visit to Trevor and family out at Broken Hill to look forward to. So life is better than expected and I know I am coping now and growing stronger. That doesn't mean I don't have my bad, sad, mad days, we all do. But as long as we are doing our best we are okay and will go forward to whatever else life holds for us.