David,
I'm happy you did your shoot of the staff; I wish I could motivate myself these days!
Part of my current malaise is down to the heat and sunlight: the very things that brought us here are now bad for my health - I have a skin problem gifted me via sunlight exposure, not just here but on photo shoots and years spent in India. As the doc said, skin has memory. Also, my eyes are probably going to have to be operated upon, and that means all sorts of problems about transportation in-between ops when I will have monocular vision and don't think I want to try to drive, though I knew two guys who had single working eyes and drove quite well - even Albert Watson has but one, and drives okay. Frankly, rather than risk myself and everybody else, I'd rather wait until both were done and then see (no pun etc.) how my repaired vision might be.
Trips in France. No, I really don't think it's worth doing it alone; the buzz consisted of the package - first in the newness of the area soon followed, on further trips, by familiarity and its different pleasures; the little hotels, the food (which mostly I can't handle now due to the cholesterol levels they have) and of course, the other person with whom it was a shared enjoyment. I used to think of those journeys as my personal versions of Route 66, but with a Ford.
Regarding the "How do you know it will not seem like a mere afternoon for her before you get your arse into heaven." bit, I agree: she's been gone almost nine years now, and it's like yesterday morning. Truth to tell, I don't much remember yesterday morning (happily uneventful!), but almost everything of that period those years ago.
Funny you wrote this: "In the meantime, maybe you still have work to do." I have felt like that since perhaps a year after she died. All I can think of is that it might consist of unburdening myself of this apartment and returning to Scotland, if only to relieve the kids of a bureaucratic nightmare should I die before I manage that. Trouble is, her departure coincided with the financial crash and the property crash here, worst possible time to sell. On the matter of who goes first, I agree: I'm pleased I was able to help her through it all, but her own spirit and guts did most of the heavy lifting. For myself, I don't fear the ending of self - more the utterly crappy situation where one can't be self-reliant any longer. On the final question, I have my personal version of faith, which includes a forevernes situation I won't pretend to understand or explain, though I believe it's connected with the concept in Russ' seer proposition. And if I am mistaken? Then I shall never know, but the passing will have been without terrors. Pain, of course, is an entirely different issue. I watched two documentaries today - one on the life cycle of the forests and their creatures as the year goes by, the other about a year in the life of the Caribbean seas. I found them amazingly uplifting, and made me feel so very much in tune with the wheel of life itself; part of something greater than myself. Daytime tv isn't my idea of a good time, but I was glad that I watched instead of facing the heat outside.
We shall see how it unfurls.
Rob