Melancholia

I have just been asked if I was free on Monday evening, and realised to my horror that it will be my 41st wedding anniversay. Not a day to celebrate. Technically I am still married - in limbo, I am afraid.

Today I finished clearing out the philandering husband's office and den - packing up the last vestiges of his life here in this house. I found all sorts of things tucked away behind books, and at the back of drawers I thought had been emptied a year ago. I sat on the floor, looking at photogaphs of us as a family when the girls were small, and we looked so happy and as if we were having fun. How ephemeral life is - here today gone tomorrow. Why do so many middle-aged men deny their families and yearn for a new life - as if the previous one never existed? So many mixed messages in this case - but our family life is certainly dead and buried. No more Christmases, weddings, christenings, family gatherings, holidays - the four of us together. It is the three of us, the girls and I, against 1 plus one. We really were a close-knit little nucleur family - and now it counts for nothing. He has nothing to carry into old age - and the three of us have so much.

Melancholia is setting in - I must not let it get hold - Monday 13 July will be the test.

The senior daughter has just rung from NY - so I am instantly feeling more jolly. I should have told her that I found a box of her letters home from boarding school, a bag of teddies and lots of school exercise books! How can I stay sad when reading through them, made me shriek with amusement! And I remembered the name of every bear, doll and cuddly toy and its history. Memories came flooding back.