Posted by Yesterday I published a brief post. I took it down after a couple of hours, when a friend called to see if I was alright. I’ve not been alright for months: I foresaw the difficulty, but not the depth and duration of grief’s disempowerment. I took the post down because it was not honest. It did not own what it wanted to say, which is just that I’m not alright. Truthfulness is writing’s foundation, without which we can build only in straw. It alone can justify a reader’s time. I change my mind, revise my text, but only to be closer to my understanding of the truth. So. I am not alright, and I don’t know when I will be again, though I suppose that will come. It needs acceptance, not help, though my gratitude to family and friends has no end—acceptance from me, of its reality, its effects, its power. Simply meeting my obligations is like wading through mud, and that saps my sense of self. Yesterday’s post failed to say that.
Life is hard now for many people, in different ways and for different reasons. Getting through the mud begins with accepting it, and being kinder, to each other and ourselves.
What are these dark days I see in this world so badly bent
How can I redeem the time – the time so idly spent
How much longer can it last – how long can this go on
I embraced my love put down my head and I crossed the Rubicon
Crossing the Rubicon, Bon Dylan, 2020
Parliament of Dreams 
Dear François,
I can’t say any more than what you have undoubtedly heard from other friends. However, just letting you know that we do care 💜.
Love Nadia & Bill xx
Sent from my iPhone
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I am sure all our experiences are different, but I read these two posts through the prism of having last month lost my own wife of 36 years. Nothing can prepare you for the moment. You pass through a door into a harsh unfamiliar world, grey and motionless. Superficially everything looks the same, but everything is utterly and irreversibly changed. The former world was full of a noisy profusion of colours and warmth and companionship where the new world is grey, silent and solitary. It is a world that yesterday you could not imagine, and today you cannot escape. Grief takes glacial possession of your mind, your heart and your soul. Familiar things and places that for so long carried an ocean of warmly accumulating joyful memories are suddenly arid, cold and dry, staring mindlessly out onto the world from empty vacant faces. Thank you dear François for chronicling this moment of sudden transformation, passing through this bleak door, so truthfully …