Hi Lovely Newsletter Family!

If you are in lockdown right now please know I’m thinking of you all, hoping like hell you can all get back to some sort of normality (and financial stability) as soon as it’s possible.

What a shit show hey!

Thank you for your lovely messages and comments as always. I appreciate you. I apologise for going missing in action again. This grief stuff is hard and sometimes I just need to cocoon.

Love having you here with me.

Stay safe all. Xx

Dear Doug,

I actually dreamt about you the other night. This never happens. I was pushing you in the wheelchair through some very unfriendly terrain when a bear started following us.

I walked on slowly trying not to be alarmed but it eventually caught up, placed its paws on your shoulders and licked your head. Then it sat on its butt and preceded to roll on top of me. I remember thinking “Don’t bloody squash and smother me” and then I woke up sweating and panicked.

Weird.

Dream analysis gurus, make of that what you will.

It reminded me of the time we took our boy to Kinkuna Country Amusement and Fauna Park at Lakes Entrance when he was a kid.

Walking past the lion enclosure (which I might add was more like negotiating a mountain bike track while trying not to upend you out of the wheelchair) a very bored lion sprang to life from his lethargic lounging, landing on all fours with a look of total disbelief.

He very much resembled The Tawny Scrawny Lion from The Little Golden Books and he thought you were a ‘Meals on Wheels’ delivery for sure Doug.

We’d often joke about that uneasy feeling of being stalked by the astonished lion all the way around that fence line enclosure, hoping all the while we’d not discover a gaping hole in the wire as we trudged on keeping a very close eye on each other.

Tawny Scrawny’s eyes were still dinner plate size when we looked back from far away. He wanted you bad.

That day our boy was nipped by a monkey and a dingo, my wallet was eaten dry and you were salivated over by a lion. We never went back.

In other news…

Everything is messy. The laundry, the garage, the kitchen table, the shed, the drawers, the paper work, my head. Messy. It’s ticking me off.

Outside looks like crap. The garden looks sparse and sad. The outdoor area looks unloved. Even the indestructible Sir Walter Buffalo grass looks miserable.

I can’t wait for winter to bugger off.

Yeah, I’m a bit cranky Doug. And yeah, I’m having a privileged whine.

Why do worms decide the alfresco is a really good place to wriggle away from the sodden ground only to die there, stick like glue and need pressure cleaning off?

Why do Mudlarks and Magpies poop while they eat the insects from the tracks of the sliding glass doors on the veranda? We don’t poop at the same time we eat! Again, the need to pressure clean.

These are the big questions you are not here to answer or riff over anymore… and that’s ticking me off too.

We’re coming to the end of the second week of Lockdown 5.0. I wish this virus would bugger off as well. I’ve been very sad. All the feels again for me concerning those not able to be with loved ones. If you’re reading this open letter and are doing the hospital vigil under tight restrictions, or trying to support someone in care, I feel you, I feel for you.

My thoughts wander back to the morning of your last day. I was standing at the hospital window looking out at the morning coming to life when two of the night nurses came in on their last rounds for the shift. I pointed out the pink haze slowly engulfing the apartment building nearby. Pretty soon the whole building was haloed in translucent colour and as quickly as it rolled over the scene it was gone, like a cloud on a breeze. We stood together watching, not speaking.

After they left the room I found myself hoping it was a nice moment for them to breathe and end their shift with. Who knows what trauma they’d dealt with during the night while I’d dozed in our room holding your hand, oblivious to the going’s on of the immediate world around us.

So thankful we were moved to that room. Prior to that, for three days, you had been moved to a four bed room in the middle of the ward floor. An open corridor linked the space to the rest of the ward. No windows. Only walls. You felt like you’d been wheeled into a back garage and parked to die.

The garage move (from the cardiology ward) happened at the beginning of a weekend. The palliative care team, come Monday morning, soon organised a room with a view. Oncology and Palliative Care are a breed of their own. I’ll not forgot the kindness and compassion they afforded us all Doug.

Next week it will be six months since you left our world.

Six.

Months.

And the only time you’ve visited me in my dreams was for us to be hunted by a bear, licked and sat on.

Lift your game Sunshine. 😉

Love always,

Sandra.

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Megan Devine says “We help each other by sharing the truth about our experiences”. With that said please feel free to share this newsletter with anyone you feel it may resonate.

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Hi from Sandra!

That Time You Were Stalked By A Lion!