Only one more month of winter. I can feel Spring is on the way when the sun shines like it did today and I am able to get out more. Love those days. In winter we are not locked in like you are in the colder parts of the northern hemisphere but the short grey sky days inhibit the actions I would like to take. The garden is dormant, the possums just ate off half the remaining baby spinach, the wind dries the tenderer garden plants out and until the temps rise the plants will just look as if they have stopped caring about growth. A week of warmer weather, say at the end of August will make all the difference.

At the moment things are at a standstill as far as plans for the future go. I know one day I will be able to tick another item off my bucket list. It only really exists in my mind and it is like one of those lists that self-adjusts so item number one today may be item number three tomorrow. I am aware of the passing of time (getting older) and that I should do something about some of the items. I have several older friends who want me to visit and I would love to do so but I don't have the time, or so I tell myself. I have built a routine for myself and somehow I feel that diverting from that might cause an upset. ( I do remember that a rut is the same as a grave, only the depth varies.)

On another site I offered some advice and it has led to a discussion about what we want out of life. Particularly life as a widow. I thought I knew what I wanted and you might have gleaned that answer from reading many of my blogs. I basically wanted that the life I should have led after my retirement was still a possibility. Well I realise now that it is not. What Ray and I would have done in OUR retirement is just not possible for me alone now.

Ambivalence has always been my middle name and so I vacillate between liking my new freedom and hating being alone. I have been seeking a companion. I loved my Ray, with my whole heart, I still do, but he is gone and now I am alone and I admit lonely as well. I think because for those last few years I had to be with him twenty four hours a day he filled my life, not in the way a working husband or a husband that had his own pursuits would but totally filled my life. We were “joined at the hip”. He was 24 hour care so I was his 24 hour caregiver.

For this reason his passing made a huge hole in my life even after twelve months in a nursing home. After all I visited him most days and on his bad days toward the end of his life multiple times a day as the nursing home staff could not manage to get him out of the seizures so I would go back and help them. Looking back this seems like an exercise in lunacy but it made sense at the time. Too many seizures can cause further brain damage and a much slowed metabolism can do some harm. Doctors say fits and seizures do not necessarily cause brain damage but Ray had long periods of being only semi-responsive and that would indicate to me maybe low oxygen levels as often using oxygen on him brought back. But that is all in the past.

I now have a man friend I go out with on Wednesdays after doing Caregiver Chat with Host Sally. We usually we go out for lunch and then a drive somewhere or go for a walk. Today we went out to one of my favourite places, the one I have been to several times with my Caregiver friends from my old Stroke Recovery group. I used to go out with that group every couple of months but haven't been lately as they now go out on Sundays and I am busy with church then.

It is a rambling hotel single storey and there is an indoor/outdoor area where we sat and had barramundi (fish) with mash and green veg, cooked just the way I like it. It was a lovely Spring-like day today and all the doors were open and in trooped the ducks! Lynn suggested that I capture one or two and pop them in my handbag and I could cook Duck a l'Orange when I got home. He does have a good sense of humour and that is one of the things I like about him. We are keeping things on a friendship basis which suits me as I have no wish to complicate my life at this stage.

We went from the restaurant in the pub to our local Art Gallery, about fifteen minutes drive away. Lynn is interested in art and so am I as my Mum painted and so do several of my friends. There is always something of interest to see there and today there was a "Retrospective" with a lady who is 79 exhibiting works she has painted from the age of 17 till now. The Gallery adjoins the Japanese Gardens and we spent some time there enjoying sitting in the sun and watching the koi carp in the pond and seeing the first early buddings of Spring there.

I talked to two of my grandchildren tonight and just got off the phone when my son in Broken Hill rang me. Like most people I do not hear from them for a while and then seem to hear from them all at once. I am glad it happens this way. At the moment I can be free and independent and mostly able to look after myself but one day as I age I know that will not be so and so it is good they keep in contact on a semi regular basis. I know I am so lucky in so many ways.