Z is confused

I also think that time going by can make significant events more difficult. I can’t describe the feeling, but there should be a special word for it.” Scarlet Blue in a comment.

I think so too. I’ve noticed it for many years. In part, I think it’s because you’re caught off guard. After a few months or weeks or years, the bereavement isn’t at the front of your mind any more. So when something happens to make it hit you, your defences are down and it hits hard. Also, and I’m not sure whether people realise this or not, you are “allowed” to be hit hard at first and then you try very hard to cope, and you manage all the things that have to be done, such as a funeral and writing letters and dealing with the practicalities and being brave and coping. And, after a few months, you’re exhausted with the strain of all this. It coincides with people thinking you’re doing very well and starting to not check on you every week, but actually it’s just then that it dawns on you that being brave and decisive and coping doesn’t reward you at all. Nothing has got better. It’s got worse.

This can go on forever, in its way. The 50th anniversary of my father’s early death, back in January, whacked me and I’d known for weeks that it would. My defences are still high in regard to my mother’s death and Russell’s, I don’t think I’ll ever let them down. I think, but I don’t speak about it much.

Anyway, enough. I feel for you and sympathise if you have any inkling of what I mean.

Back to the present. I went out to feed the cats and hedgehog and shut the chickens in their greenhouse. I haven’t been shutting them in their shed for a while because it’s been so hot, but the shed is in the 40 feet by 14 feet greenhouse, so they’ve lots of room.

The chickens get shut up first because they will go and chase the cats and eat the food themselves. I noticed a cream-coloured chicken in the run where Scrabble brought up her chicks. She was sitting contentedly and I said to her, she was welcome to sleep there if she wanted to. I shut the door, went on to feed the cats and fill the hedgehog’s plate, then went back to fetch her some corn and water. She got up to show me ten chicks.

I’m completely confused. I knew a brown hen was missing, presumably sitting, but I can’t work out which one this is. I haven’t missed her. I’m finding it difficult to keep tabs on them all and I’ll have to have a good look in the morning.

Luckily, I still had some chick food and I sorted it all out. They’re all well and lively and mother hen is attentive. And she had the good sense to take them to the best possible shelter. So surely she isn’t Slapper, who’s a bit daft. Polly Garter is sitting on eggs that I’m sure won’t hatch and the four buff-coloured sisters are sitting on duff eggs in the nest boxes. I frisk them for newly-laid eggs every couple of days and have marked the old ones with indelible Xs. It’s all a disaster, I’ve got so many chickens I don’t know what to do and it’s all because I stupidly let Canasta sit and rear chicks instead of just letting the flock die out. But I’m so fond of them and they’re lovely bantams and we’ve had them for over 30 years…but they’re just so damn maternal.

One comment on “Z is confused

  1. Scarlet

    The loss of loved ones certainly gives life an added dimension, and there is a strange rawness that revisits over and over when I don’t expect it – someone could be chattering away, or I might be doing something unrelated to my loss, and I can be overwhelmed by sadness, or memories.
    Thank you.
    Sx

    Reply

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