Downpour

It's raining cats and dogs outside. I don't know if I'm forgetting all the other downpours we've had but it seems to me that it hasn't rained much in Holland this year so far. I sort of NOTICE this rain. Pounding on the rooftops and filling up the drains. I feel mildly down. Maybe it's the weather or maybe it's because I've just called home to have the first chat of the last ten days with my mother (we've e-mailed several times in those ten days). We were only on for twenty minutes but it was just long enough for me to hear that she's struggling with loneliness - too many days trying to find a friend to go a walk with or trying to catch someone, anyone at the other end of a telephone line. It's been like this for as long as I can remember. Sad thing is, even when my father was alive, she was lonely. I knew it but could never say it. As a daughter, you just feel things like that. Loneliness, endless loneliness. Sometimes it's solitude and she likes that but quite often it's just being on your own, putting up with your own company, with no respite. I hate knowing that a relative's lonely - even though I've been that way so many times myself. I'm always trying to patch it up, make it better, fill the gap. In fact, I've spent so much of my time trying to fill that gap in my mother's life that I've not got on with my own in the way one should.... Self pity looming here.
I feel a bit down when I hear my mother's on her own - even though it's nothing new.
But, heh, cheer up, it's Friday night and I can still get back into full swing and plough ahead with this paper I have to write.
Now THERE's a happy thought!