The man got a new lawn mower, solar powered no less. He is happy and the lawn, though shrinking as we allow the wild patches to take over more of and more of it, looks smart enough for a match of tennis. But not our sport and much too cold still.

My employer has started to make suggestions of me working on beyond retirement, which is somewhat flattering and confusing at the same time. Confusing because I have started the notebook of ideas and thoughts of what I want to do when the time comes. A real handwritten notebook no less. I have also already put myself of the waiting list for the book club, the one I have been told about again and again, and they already emailed me to get in touch. I am not good at negotiating and have missed so many opportunities to "sell" myself but maybe now is the time. I have said nothing so far.

The eleven fruit trees in the garden have flowered or are in the process of it and no frost, so keeping fingers crossed. Eleven fruit trees makes it sound like an orchard but the trees are kept smallish, most of them trellised along walls and fence. Three pears, two apples, three plum varieties, one apricot, two peach trees. Plus two almond and one walnut. And a chestnut, of the horse chestnut variety, producing gorgeous blossoms, shade and conkers.

The tulips are in abundance, the grape hyacinths were massive. The forget-me-nots are about to take over. 

So that's the garden.

The latest immunologist, there's a new one at every appointment now, is not happy with the weight loss. Too much, he says, in three months. I explain that I go through phases like that, no appetite, less food, simple. I catch up in the summer, I tell him. He orders more tests which come back fine.

Grief is a strange thing. After my mother's death, I danced with joy and relief. And now that my father has calmly and quietly died in his sleep, no struggle, no drugs, no pain, I expected nothing less. And then I wake in the dark early morning and my mind tells me: I miss him, I miss him, I miss him. I go back to sleep and wake again, go about my day, sort out funeral arrangements, the music and the pictures and the food, with my siblings. R even books a short get-away treat for afterwards. We share memories of my father, silly, awful, hurtful, funny stuff he said and did. We laugh a lot. My employer grants me two days extra leave. Since yesterday, I struggle with a bad case of vertigo, I am seasick, when I move my head, I fall backwards. I walk through the house like a drunk, holding onto the walls. I have exactly ten days to get better before I will have to meet maybe 200 people in a chapel by the graveyard.

I can sleep, but cannot eat.