Just hours after I hit ‘publish’ on my post last night in which I updated on the abseil that wasn’t and announced our plans to fly in a hot air balloon this morning, we received notice that our flight had been cancelled due to ‘low clouds and poor visibility’. You can see what they mean in the pic above.
To say I am deflated (no pun intended), would be an understatement. It isn’t a great deal of course and, in the grand scheme of things, a cancelled hot air balloon flight isn’t the be all and end all of anything. Setbacks seem to be par for the course this week, a week in which I was desperate to be kept occupied both mentally and physically in order to deal with the upcoming first anniversary of losing my father to cancer. Instead, it seems to be a time of constant waves of shocks and surprises – some good, some not so great and some yet to be ascertained – all of which seem to have thrown my brain into a frenzied overload. The two people I need to discuss matters with the most aren’t here to chat to and, particularly now, the void is unbearable.
I’m tired and battle worn and just need to put my energies into something completely different and unrelated.
I guess this is one of the things about grief and grieving – that you don’t actually know how to handle it from one day to the next. You don’t know how you will feel or how best to deal with the emotions because you don’t know what emotions you are going to experience. It only comes down to getting through each and every day, one by one. And when something completely unrelated throws you off guard exposing just how lonely your loss has left you, the grief is uncovered all over again like a plaster ripping from an unhealed scar.
Even when it’s something like not being able to dangle off a building or peer over the edge of a basket high in the sky.
They cast a shadow you don’t even realise is there, even when you can’t see them.
Those clouds.
