My starts are slow and perambulating these days, but they’ve taken on a routine. I turn up the thermostat, shuffle into the back bedroom that has a cozy chair and turn on the stained glass rooster lamp. (My friend’s deceased mama had a thing for roosters: they’re on much of her crockery, festoon the walls, and I’ve tripped over a few ceramic chicks as well.) 

There is a Keurig coffee maker so I easily brew myself a cup, adding cream, something I have never done until this new life started. I’m hoping sugar and cream will be a brief foray as I navigate my grief, and I’ll eventually return to my black, soily coffee that hits me in my pit. Right now, a little sweet, soothing is required, however.

Then I repair to the chair swathed with the down blanket, one of three we picked up from the local thrift store to make ourselves as cozy as possible in our grief/healing.

And maybe that’s what today’s post is about: coziness. Cozy socks to shuffle in, cozy turtlenecks to lose myself in, cozy bedding, cozy baths in the 1959 pink tiled tub with Epsom salts and bubbles that encompass me as I read my cozy books on my e-reader.

Two asides: 

1. Who knew ‘cozy reads’ was a genre? I tend toward high-calibre literature with celebrity magazines for balance, but the cozy reads have been a gift. I can read knowing nothing triggering will happen aside from brief break-ups or subdued stress of the I-think-I’ll-stay-at-home-all-day-and-read-a-book-to-deal-with-my-pain variety. The first cozy book I read after Emily’s passing, was The Bookshop on the Corner by Jenny Colgan about a woman who finds herself in the highlands of Scotland opening a mobile bookstore. In as much as something can be a delight when dealing with a tragedy, it was. The second, The Social Committee, I read in the time it took me to listen to Handel’s Messiah, so it was altogether my version of a very comforting experience indeed.
2. The new kindle e-readers are waterproof! And the warm back light is a joy for someone such as me who wants only lamplight and firelight as her primary sources of illumination, as well as some occasional sightings from the sun, rare here in a Vancouver winter. My friend, Rachel, helped me order this handheld miracle of a device when I told her I needed to read dozens if not hundreds of books with absolutely no distraction from the internet. It is now my only device that goes in the bedroom (or the bath).

So, yes, coziness. This is my MO: coziness with a dose of Emily’s spirit swathing me. I feel her, I talk to her, I yell at her on occasion: I NEED her to remain in my life as more than just a memory; I require her active presence, and right now I’m in the midst of figuring out what that can be, how it can be, how I can nurture it. Yes, her body is gone, but that spirit cannot possibly be. She is the universe. I invite her to all my cozy places, but I suspect she is in all the others as well.