Boxes

 Apologies. This may be a long one.

The human brain is cleverly wired to notice differences. Changes in the status quo. It notices the things that are out-of-place, but ignores everything it is accustomed to. We never notice the cardboard box of who-knows-what, in the corner of a room, which has no business being there but has been present for so long that it's no longer noticed. Unless it's pointed out, gets in the way or brought to our attention for some other reason, it just doesn't register.

Perhaps grief is a bit like that ever-present cardboard box. The contents don't get any easier to deal with, but as time goes on, as it becomes a familiar feature, maybe we'll feel less compelled to open it up quite so often. That's the hope. 

The difference though, as I've already written about, is that there are reminders everywhere. The box seems to spring open when you least expect it. You bump into somebody you've not seen for a while who asks how you are, or worse still how Gina is. You stumble on something that belonged to Gina or simply something you know she would have loved.

A more literal example is the bags of Gina's clothes recovered from the flat in Glasgow. Some sorting has been done, but it's traumatic, so they've sat in the corner of our living room awaiting a time where we feel emotionally able to deal with the task of deciding what we can let go and what we must keep. Even those bags became a fixture and something my brain could ignore 90% of the time. Even the urn in the corner of another room, which was awaiting a place in the garden, was studiously ignored almost every time I passed it. Thankfully both of those things are now elsewhere. The urn has its place in the garden, surrounded by plants and flowers. The bags of clothes? Well, they'll have to wait for another day. They are at boxed-up and stored away safely.