“… and there followed a moments silence”

I’ve just logged onto The Monday Project and seen Kate’s response to this month’s theme ‘…and there followed a moments silence’.

I’ve been thinking about my own response to the theme and have been mulling over what I think it means, where the silence has come from, what it was following and whether it is a good silence or bad. At first I was thinking about a moments silence following a shock of some sort, then I decided that maybe a moments silence could be respectful, or less profound just an awkward lull in conversation.

I’ve been having trouble deciding how to respond as this is my first time responding to The Monday Project.

I hate long weekends. Always have. I always seem run out of milk on Sunday morning.

Thinking about this long weekend I realised that this one was particularly rubbish, and thought that sharing it would probably be good for me, as well as be an appropriate response to The Monday Project, as a moments silence is what I would expect while people process and work out what to say.

I’m on antidepressants. I usually remember to go to the chemist a couple of days before my box finishes. This weekend I thought I had another box in the cupboard but come Friday night I discovered that I was wrong, and I had just taken my last tablet. While my dose is only low going cold turkey off antidepressants is horrific. I had the shakes, dizziness, nausea, a horrible drop in my mood, swings between been starving and full regardless of when or what I’d eaten I couldn’t focus on anything properly, my eyes slid in and out of focus, and my ears kept going fuzzy like a radio trying to get a signal.

I had work, I was housesitting and my step-grandmother was admitted to hospital after a fall. She was anxious, confused, very unwell and unresponsive to antibiotics for the pnumonia, infections and renal failure the doctors discovered. My mum’s been at the hospital every day while my sister and I have been at work. On Sunday we all went up to visit and she was ok some of the time. She crashed while we were there and so the nurses sent us to the waiting room down the hall. She recovered but died this morning at 9.30. I’ve spent the afternoon helping mum clean out her room at the Aged Care Hostel hoping for my antidepressants to kick in.