It's 5 o'clock in the morning here - I've been awake since three after just a couple of hours of fitful sleep. Sitting in the study squinting at the PC screen in the half-light of early dawn, it's at times like these I'm thankful there's no partner to mumble "come back to bed"... My inability to sleep would only disturb them.Yesterday was about pretending. Pretending that everything is normal. Filling the house with smells (fresh flowers) and sounds (background music) to try and hide the familiar feeling of there being another living creature present, present for the last 22 years. The pretense doesn't go all the way though. I have been tidying up the house and whle I have cleared away her food bowls and other things, I can't bring myself to remove everything. Her brush still sits on the sideboard. Time heals, or so the saying goes but that's just half the story. Doing things, positive things is what heals because the alternative is doing nothing which changes nothing.