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Archive for July 8th, 2025

Diary #784

Posted in Diary, tagged , , on July 8, 2025| Leave a Comment »

Those who follow me on Bluesky or Twitter know that every day, I do a short thread with links to my posts from one, two, and three years before that day.  Well, a week ago today this was one of the links, and when I saw it I started crying.  That may seem strange to you; after all, there’s nothing sad or moving about the column, which merely describes the process of tearing the nasty old roof off of what was originally the wellhouse and is now the utility room in the center of my atrium.  But I remember that day well; it was one of those days which, when described concisely, seems not to have anything especially memorable about it, and yet are etched indelibly in memory.  From the dates of pictures and text in my Annex columns, it appears to have been Thursday, June 9, 2022; I had only recently finished the atrium roof, and I asked Grace to come out and supervise while I tore off the old wellhouse roof and replaced it with a clean, flat surface.  It was raining heavily (“a toad drowner”, Grace used to call such rains), but I had done a good enough job on the roof that there were no leaks.  I think we played music while I worked, but whether we did or not, we certainly joked around and teased each other as we always did in such circumstances.  Even though I had to do all the physical labor, I relied on her advice about the best way to do such things so I didn’t injure myself or work harder than necessary to accomplish the task at hand.  That’s really all there was to it; just a work day like any other, made lighter and more pleasant by the company of a dear friend.  But now that she’s gone, there will never be another day like it again; that makes it a precious thing, to be treasured in memory.  And perhaps one day, I’ll be able to look back at it (and others like it) fondly, and it will evoke only a poignant nostalgia rather than sorrow and tears.

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