Occasionally oppositional forces whelm up, most often attacking from within rather than an attack from outside sources, more easily defended against.

When Mottsu died so suddenly I did feel some blame, just for having been there and not having fully anticipated his direction. I did regret not having done more, and I also regretted some of the things I did. The blaming is not right or wrong; perhaps it is almost inevitable in the situation. Death by suicide has some far reaching impacts, I did gasp and figuratively stagger – no I literally staggered. In staggering I flailed and reached out into darkness grasping for explanation.

For a while I was guilt ridden by the bleak book recommendation and the vindictive pillow snatch, and while I am mired in regret, there was also the bathroom towel colour and the spiky plant.

I live in a house in a fabulous location; I have never really liked it. It is not that I don’t like it, it is just a house. Mottsu on the other hand loved this house, from the first minute we inspected it. We’d been looking for months this one he was immediately taken by. I didn’t see the attraction at first, I had to be shown its features, through his eyes. We bid at auction and procured our house.

I engaged a feng-shui consultant. Mottsu thought I was nutty but indulged me. It was an interesting exercise, she used our birth years and the age of the house to determine the directions of various influences and how to support good influences. She might have called them dragons, are there lucky dragons?

The feng-shui consultant determined that the house was perfect for Mottsu, my consolation was that the bed faced a good direction for me. There were some adjustments to be made. I placed a little mirror behind the toilet, added little coins to some rooms and encouraged more harmonious feng-shui. The consultant recommended I change the plant that sat in the light well in front of Mottsu’s desk. It had spiky leaves, bad for the energy which is better in smooth waves and not broken by spikes.

The violet towels in the bathroom had to be replaced with green. Violet is a metal colour and green a wood colour. The bathroom would have been much more harmonious with green towels. I looked for new towels and couldn’t find a shade of green I thought was attractive. Too fussy.

The spiky plant and the wrong colour towels, I have too often regretted my inattention to fixing those simple-to-change-things.

The pillow, the book, the plant, the colour of the towels, all of those things contributed to his demise, there isn’t a straight linear relationship between cause and effect, little things just add up. Given a chance to keep Mottsu here, they are all things I would change.

Those are some of the elements I grasped for explanation, while seeking meaning for the meaningless. It is not funny how when I thought I was recovering, things could grab my conscience and pull down…