The non-linearity of time

Tescos supermarket. Apparently the company has the turnover and affluence of a small country. We needed food and so my husband took the afternoon off to take me shopping. Except for the train journeys it is the first time I have been out since Huw died. It seems a long time since he went now, but it is less than a week. Time has slowed, every hour drawn out, everything is hard and almost too much effort.

Already I have seen my brother's ghost. It happens everytime someone I know is lost - they appear to me in the faces of strangers, in the movement of a hand, the turn of a head - little parts of them reminding me of the person who has gone. Then, as we reached the main street there was a busker playing an electric violin. It was such a sad tune, one I recognised, one that Huw once played, that it drew away all my energy and left me numb, as though I'd been placed in a jar, not quite in the world any more.

Normally I walk fast. Normally people complain that they can't keep up, but today, after I heard that violin, I seemed to be wading - down the road and into the supermarket, my husband picking things off shelves while I leaned on the handles too tired to care. He says it is shock, quite normal, but I hate being like this. Everyone is telling me to stop and try to recover but I keep on trying to keep going and not sleeping much at all.

It will get better, everyone tells me, it just takes time. But I am frantic to continue, afraid I have done too little. Eighteen months writing and rewriting and I have got nowhere.