Reflections on a shitty week

I shouldn’t say that the entire week is shitty because it’s not over yet.  This leads me to wonder what next?  What other horrible news can I wake up to, tomorrow morning?  Which of my favourite musicians or actors or writers have died?  Which of my friends or relatives has been given a diagnosis of some horrible physical affliction?  Which group of innocent people who are just out in the world, trying to live their lives, will be bombed or shot at just because they are in the wrong place at the wrong time?

This week should have been good for me.  I’m getting ready to move and, for the first time since Mark died, I am feeling excited about something.  I’m looking forward, working my plan, getting things in order.  The only fly in my personal buttermilk this week was a small flu/cold bug which has slowed me down a bit this week. Stuffy noses aside, physically, I feel pretty good.

Emotionally, I’ve been all over the place.  Monday, I woke up and read that David Bowie had died.  How could he be dead?  On Friday, his birthday, I saw that he (or whoever looks after his profile) was active on Spotify, playing his new record.  He was all over the media, Angie was in the Big Brother house in the UK.  Surely this is a joke, the Onion gone mad.  Alas, it was true.  Several reputable new sources confirmed it.  My heart, once again, felt smashed.  Not broken necessary, but very badly mangled.

On Tuesday, I read Stuart Murdoch’s reflections on the death of David Bowie.  You can read it here:

http://www.belleandsebastian.com/diary/january-12th-2016-the-next-day

I left the following comment (although it looks like they don’t publish them) in response to Stuart’s great post:

Thank you for this Stuart.  Too often we do forget to count our blessings.  After we suffer a loss, we frequently focus on what is missing from our lives rather than what we once had.  Yesterday, I walked around feeling like I had been kicked in the stomach.  I lost my husband suddenly in August and learning about David Bowie's death dragged me back to those first few days after my husband died.  On very bad days, I sit on my sofa and cry and stare at the box on the mantle that his ashes are kept in.  On good days, I remind myself of how lucky we were to have had 16 years together when there are some people who never get five minutes of what we shared.  The same can be said for David Bowie.  He was always in my life, in the soundtrack of it, making me feel like I too belonged, that I wasn't alone on the planet.  You and I were lucky to have shared a part of our lives with David Bowie and we need to celebrate that once we've finished mourning.

This morning, I arrived at work and discovered that Alan Rickman, lovely, talented, amazing, best actor of all time, Alan Rickman, had died.  I was alone in my office and said aloud, “NO!” when I read it.  Again, making sure I checked several sources before believing it.  How cynical we are now that we can’t just read something in one place and believe it.  We’ve been lied to online so many times that we need to fact check everything.  I do anyway, I’m sure if you are reading this, you do that too.

The New York Times posted their obituary for Alan Rickman here:

http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/15/obituaries/alan-rickman-dies-at-69.html

Again, I left a comment on their post which I will share here:

In the last 5 months I have lost my husband, David Bowie and now Alan Rickman to cancer. It's SUCH a thief. I have said this a lot since my 63 year old husband died suddenly in August, cancer steals those people we love from our lives. Alan Rickman had an amazing talent. I was introduced to him via "Truly, Madly, Deeply" and have followed his film career ever since. One of my favourite Rickman roles was as Metatron, the voice of god, in Kevin Smith's Dogma. If god did exist, I would imagine that her/his voice would sound like Alan Rickman's. Oh that voice... cannot imagine that it's now silenced. What a loss, for all of us. My deep and sincere sympathies to his family and friends.

Add Lemmy to the list and it’s been a bad month to be an artist of a certain age who originated from the UK who I respected and admired.  Who is next? What horrible thing will slap us in our collective faces tomorrow morning?  I’m almost afraid to find out.  I will though, wake up tomorrow to find out what it is.  As I promised myself when Mark died, I’ll continue to get up each morning and keep moving forward.  It’s not always easy but it’s something that I have to do.  Unfortunately, it’s something that David Bowie’s widow, Iman and Alan Rickman’s widow, Rima Horton will have to do too.  They, like me, have lost their lovely husbands far too son and have joined a club, a sisterhood, that they would have preferred to have never joined.  Trust me, I know I can speak for them on that because I have yet to meet a widow who was happy about it.