Of life? I don't know. Since being widowed I find getting up in the morning difficult. I wonder why bother? But I do, & then I am always busy. I don't "do" sitting around, certainly not watching day time TV, reading magazines, just listening to the radio or music.
I do the normal everyday things that we all have to do to maintain a life in the 21st century. The house and garden take lots of time & effort, despite the fact that I have a cleaner & a gardener for a few hours every fortnight. I still have to shop & cook to eat. Managing my financial affairs & paperwork seem to take inordinate amounts of my time & are often stressful because of the basic incompetence of so many of these institutions. Everything that 2 people did now I do. So it all takes time.
I swim regularly & see friends & neighbours & my daughter & her family. I don't mind my own company, I'm not actually lonely I don't think. I just miss David every day. Not all the time, but without fail every day. He was my best friend & my life centred around him despite the fact that we were both very independent & had our own interests. We were symbiotic & nothing can replace that. No one else knows me as well as he did.
I have an interesting variety of volunteer jobs - a tutor for the NHS Expert Patient Programme - a lay member of a NHS Health Technology Assessment Programme panel - a member of the Independent monitoring Board of Gloucester Prison. They are all challenging but very worthwhile & I get as much or more from doing them as I give to them. But I'm beginning to wonder why I'm doing them. They are all work. I'm 66 and like all of us I'm dying. But death is closer now than it was when I was 20 or 30.
My Calvanistic work ethic has always driven me, but isn't it time to feel the sun & smell the roses? Shouldn't I break the habit of a lifetime & be spontaneous & unpredictable? Could I? I don't know.
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