Writing in sad times

I’ve just realised that for most devastatingly sad times in my life I’ve written something down. I’m not a hoarder but I knew that somewhere in my collection of bits of paper I’ve got written memories – probably ones I’d rather forget so who knows why I wrote them down – maybe because at the time I never thought I’d recover. I’ve got a few poems from my dark moody 2nd-year university days filled with gin and dispair; a 2-page account of the shock of finding out that a very close family friend had been killed flying and seeing my parents and his family at the funeral and a letter I wrote the Mister when I was almost living in Blenheim when L was dying.

And just now when I dug a Maria Callas CD out of the bookshelf that I haven’t listened to in ages (sounds a bit grown up to be listening to opera on a Saturday night but we’re going to La Boheme in a couple of weeks and I’m exposing the Mister to some of the wonderful arias he’ll hear) I found some scribblings inside the cover of the CD booklet:

Monster’s favourite.
We’d just got this CD when he came to live with us – poor cat was subjected to it day & night. He just lay stretched out in front of the fire & didn’t blink an eye. We played this to him after he died.
15/3/99

God that memory almost brought me to my knees with fresh grief. I remember it so vividly. He was run over and we brought him inside to lay on a towel. I was so distraught crying histerically and choking on the phone to Dad that he had no idea which daughter it was nor which pet it was. For all the talk of living in an apartment I think this is the reason I don’t want another cat.