Dear John

I’ve never known such a horrible gloomy day, such a dull, grey, oppressive, forbidding grey sky.  It doesn’t help that my spirits are so very low.  It doesn’t help to have to go to West Croydon (to pick up anti-depressants from the chemists) – with the atmosphere so awful.  I didn’t used to be so scared and worried, just walking round the streets.  Now I just can’t wait to get back and be on my own, even though the house is horrible and empty without you.

I’ve basically just been sleeping a lot, so as to not be conscious, and either reading an absorbing novel or watching telly – the sorts of things you wouldn’t have watched, John, dramas like Mr Selfridge and Poldark and The Paradise and Hustle and even Star Trek.  It works for a while to distract me but then reality floods back and the shock still hits me over and over again.  You’re gone forever, my life with you is over.  I’m in some new horrible phase now, I’m in the wrong ‘trouser of time’.  (Terry Pratchett died the other day, maybe you can chat to him in heaven.)

You used to be so affected by the weather, you used so say you had SAD – Seasonally Affected Disorder.  Your spirits would have been low on a day like today.  You would have been longing for the summer and lighter evenings.  I used to say the weather didn’t bother me that much.  But today it so matched the gloom in my heart.

But then I don’t like the sunshine now either, or blue skies.  They just make me feel sad that you’re missing them.  So maybe it’s better that it’s gloomy, cos you wouldn’t have missed a day like today so much.