Marie Symeou's Blog: Purrs Full of Love

Just popping in with this Halloween Caturday Art and Sunday Selfie. I am still not motivated to post and run two blogs at the moment. It’s not just the blogs as there’s social media too. I try and post regularly on Athena’s Twitter and Instagram and her Facebook page, but I don’t bother with my own accounts much. It’s been three months without my brother and I am not coping well. In fact, it’s a nightmare. Pure hell. But I don’t want to write about it here. I keep a journal but even there I find it so hard to write my thoughts. I can’t write about the pain without my heart racing and there’s that gut-cutting churning pain that terrifies me. I miss my brother. I miss talking to him. We both had a similar outlook on life. We had shared interests. Who do I talk to about music? He was the best. And like me, he was very philosophical. Do you know that I can’t cry? I wept at the funeral but I just can’t cry when I want to. When I think about him I feel such torture from within my soul and my heart breaks but I can’t weep. I need a release. I get so overwhelmed with grief at times that I want to run away from it all. But I can’t. I have to be strong for my mum. I have to be here for her and Athena. And you know why the tears won’t come. I will tell you. It’s one of the side-effects of Citalopram. Those shitty anti-depressants that I have been taking since 2009 due to the depression I have had since my teens. I’ve had decades of depression so I’m used to it. But I can’t get off those meds. It’s so tough. I will leave it there now. It’s my blog I know but I don’t want to depress people. Can’t write anymore anyway. It triggers me and I don’t want to go back on the wine. Thanks for all your supportive comments in previous posts. Here’s a recent photo of Athena and me in our witches’ hats     This post may contain affiliate links. Disclosure. Christmas Gift Ideas for Animal Lovers If you love animals and are into animal rights check out my vegan clothing range at Purrs Full Of Love Shop. Lots of gift ideas for animal lovers and those on the side of the animals! Perfect for raising awareness for the rights of animals and spreading the word of peace and love. You can also check out Athena’s WiseKitty store for lots of cat-themed gift ideas. Caturday Art Blog Hop  

  It’s been 8 weeks since I lost my little brother. My only brother. My only sibling. Life will never be the same again. I am totally heartbroken. I keep thinking this is some horrid nightmare that I will soon awake from. But the funeral made it all real. Too real. Because John had to be repatriated from Sweden to the UK, as well as having to have two post mortems – one in Sweden and one here in England, it took weeks to bury him. I cannot describe the torture and strain my mother and I had to endure, we couldn’t grieve properly. Finally, a date was booked for 19th September. I kept myself busy organizing the service and had help from my amazing aunt dealing  with everything else. Anyway, I want to keep this post short and share some photos of my darling brother, John. I have included the eulogy I wrote as a tribute to him below.           My Eulogy My darling brother John, I can’t believe that I’m saying goodbye to you so soon. As I’m the eldest, I thought I would be leaving this planet before you. But life isn’t like that, as we all know. I want to tell everyone gathered here today about you, my brilliant brother. My kind, sensitive, talented, handsome brother. We were close growing up and shared a special bond. We were so alike in many ways and both had a passion for music and cats. We also shared a weird, twisted sense of humour – only you and I got it. A born musician, you were truly gifted, composing and recording your own music and songs. You taught yourself to play. It came to you effortlessly. As a lead guitarist you were outstanding and your solos captivated many. If only you believed in yourself more. But you were always such a perfectionist. We wrote songs together. How I miss those days. We were young and everything was possible. I sang and we went on to form a band, quite a few bands in fact. We took care of one another. I was like a mother figure to you growing up. I would stand up for you in so many situations. You looked out for me too, on drunken nights out when we were older. You understood me. I understood you. Unfortunately, we both took some wrong turns – I missed you so much when you moved to Sweden. Nonetheless, I was so proud when you formed a rock band and enjoyed success locally. You got to play live gigs around Sweden and Denmark and no doubt it was great fun. After that you continued to write and record your own music and I continued to be amazed by your extraordinary creativity. As I’ve already mentioned, we shared the same humour. We laughed at the same things. I remember how you would make me laugh with your celebrity impressions. In the 80s it was Bruce Willis in Moonlighting, in the 90s you did a great Jim Morrison (or Val Kilmer as Jim in the movie The Doors.) Also Gary Oldman as Dracula from one of our favourite movies Bram Stoker’s Dracula. You were always spot on. Space and UFOs fascinated you and so you enjoyed observing the night sky with your telescope. Like me, you had an enquiring mind, always questioning things. You were an amazing cat dad and I know you are with Molly and Suzy now, beautiful souls that they are.They are part of our soul family, after all. I have to say Goodbye, now, dear brother, but I will never forget you. You will remain in my heart and Mum’s heart forever. One day we will meet again. To quote Jim Morrison: “We live, we die, and death not ends it”. © Marie Symeou 2022 And now a short poem by Percy Bysshe Shelley Music, when soft voices die, Vibrates in the memory— Odours, when sweet violets sicken, Live within the sense they quicken. Rose leaves, when the rose is dead, Are heaped for the belovèd’s bed; And so thy thoughts, when thou art gone, Love itself shall slumber on. These are the songs that I picked for the service. John loved the film E.T. He was also mad about movie soundtracks and he so loved this one, The Flying Theme (ET the Extra-Terrestrial) as well as many others by John Williams. As soon as I heard it played as the entry music while my brother’s coffin was being carried into the chapel I cried and shook with the unbearable grief. I hugged my mum and we both wept as we sat down. I couldn’t bear to look at his coffin. I picked the folllowing hymn, Jerusalem, because I am not really into hymns but this is my favourite and I know John would have liked it too. I loved singing this back at school in the 70s. Say Hello 2 Heaven was the next song I chose because it’s my message to my brother from me to say hello to heaven, and other loved ones we’ve lost.  Also reminds me of the fun we had going to all the rock clubs during the early 90s when the Grunge scene from Seattle was very popular. Temple of the Dog was formed by Chris Cornell of Soundgarden and members of Pearl Jam to record an album as a tribute to their late friend Andrew Wood, lead singer of the bands Malfunkshun and Mother Love Bone. Andrew sadly passed away in 1990 from a drug overdose. The raw emotion of Chris’s beautiful voice tore me up and I couldn’t stop crying. The fact that Chris died in 2017 at the age of 52, the same age as my brother, hit me even more. We both loved the Beatles and this wonderful track Let It Be seemed a perfect song for reflection. My brother was a massive Who fan and Listening To You, from the movie Tommy about the deaf, dumb and blind boy was one song he would listen to non-stop. He went on to record his own version, which was amazing. I’ll see if I can dig it up and share it one day. This was the exit from chapel music. Thank you for reading this far. I don’t know when I will start blogging here again as I am still grieving and need to take it easy and not to get overwhelmed. It’s not like it will ever get easier. But I still can’t believe that I’ve lost my little brother.

I won’t be posting on this blog anymore. At least for a very long while. If you follow my Athena Cat Goddess blog you will know that my family is going through a very traumatic time right now. In fact, it is the worst nightmare. My beloved brother John has passed away from a heart attack. He would have been 52 next month. It was unexpected. We are in shock. Devastated, I can’t think straight. But I am trying to be strong for my 78-year-old mother. The future is so uncertain. I am heartbroken. I can’t come up with any words to describe this tragedy. Rest in Peace, my darling brother xx    

The effect I used for this week’s Caturday Art is Retrolux in Snapseed. On Thursday it was my furbaby Athena’s Gotcha Day Thank you for all the lovely comments on her blog by the way!   This post contais affiliate links. Full dislosure.   For every order from the Purrs Full Of Love Shop or from any Teemill store during the ‘One Tee One Kg’ weekend promo, a kilogram of ocean-bound plastic is recovered and recycled – the equivalent of 50 plastic bottles. Teemill will count the orders and fund the plastic recovery, which is done through Plastic Bank.  Caturday Art Blog Hop  

July is Watercolour Month so I decided to try out these watercolur BeFunky artsy effects on one photo of Athena. I think the first one is best.         This post contais affiliate links. Full dislosure.   Every order from the Purrs Full Of Love Shop or from any Teemill store plants a tree this weekend. We need more trees so buy a tee this weekend!   Caturday Art Blog Hop  

.   I thought I’d have some fun experimenting with other arty effects in BeFunky and I thought the Holga one above looks quite cool. I’ve also been experimenting with the Black and White mode of my Canon EOS 600D camera. I’m quite pleased with the photo below. As I always shoot in RAW I still get a colour version to edit in the appropiate photo editor. In my case I use Photoshop Elements 13. The only adjustment I made to the black and white photo was that I added a vignette. For those who don’t know, a RAW file is lossless, meaning it captures uncompressed data from your camera sensor. Sometimes referred to as a digital negative, you can think of a RAW file as the raw “ingredients” of a photo that will need to be processed in order to bring out the picture’s full potential. RAW files are in fact slightly larger than JPEG files but professional photographers shoot RAW because it gives them more information to work with in post-processing. SOURCE: https://www.adobe.com/creativecloud/p....   This post contains affiliate links. Full disclosure     Caturday Art Blog Hop  

  FREEPOST ALL WEEKEND FOR UK ORDERS This post contains affiliate links. Full disclosure Free UK shipping on all orders on Teemill from 9am Friday to midnight Sunday. Clothing that matters. Clothing that gives animals a voice. Promoting love and kindness to ALL animals with my animal rights designs and slogans to hopefully raise awareness for the voiceless animals. Many people do not know the true horrors animals have to endure in our so-called civilized society. Be kind to animals. Be their voice. All products on Teemill are vegan, cruelty-free and organic, produced in the UK using renewable energy and plastic-free packaging.   Caturday Art Blog Hop  

On 29th June 1998 I lost my precious Suzy. She was my other soulmate kitty. I wrote about her in my memoir The Cat Years: How My Cat Soulmates Saved Me (2012) and novel The Snowflake Pendant (2014). She was with me from when she was a tiny baby kitten until she passed away from cancer at the age of 13. Here we are in 1986 or 87. And I created this weird and colourful crazy 80s type art with BeFunky for today’s Caturday Art. Here are some more Suzy pics that I’ve shared on this blog before. Caturday Art Blog Hop  

Happy Father’s Day to all the amazing animal and pet dads out there! This post contains affiliate links. Full disclosure here.   Teemill Buy One Get One Tree All products made at Teemill are environmentally friendly, sustainable, made from natural materials using renewable energy. The whole company is GOTS certified organic, vegan and cruelty-free as products don’t contain animal products and are not tested on animals. Products are made from plants. How great is that? Check out Teemill now.   Caturday Art Blog Hop  

Whenever I’m in the kitchen cooking I get a good view of Athena sitting on the stairs. After I feed her for the afternoon she knows I will be going upstairs to my bedroom where my desk is located to do a couple of hours work. She sits there looking beautiful, tilting her head adorably, waiting for me to go up so she can return to napping while I work on my computer. Anyway, she looked so cute meowdelling on the stairs like that with the sunlight streaming through the front door, which is opposite the kitchen across our tiny hallway,I just had to take a shot of her on my iPhone. Such a proffesional meowdel! And then it was over to BeFunky to turn these photos into art. Chromatic Effect TinType Viewfinder Pen Art     This post contains affiliate links. Full disclosure.   I’ve just added a new product at my Teemill store. Like all products printed by the ethical supplier, this Tote bag is vegan, cruelty-free,100% organic cotton and renewable. I find that Teemill is a first-class company to be partnered with because their values are in line with mine. Many of you will no doubt have the same values if you follow this blog. Why is Teemill different? Most clothing out there is made from 60% plastic and 99% is never recycled. But UK-based Teemill uses organic  materials and renewable energy, which means every product is also designed from the start to be returned and remade should it wear out. This is great news because instead of polluting Mother Earth with all that discarded waste piled up high in landfill, new products can be made from it. Teemill is free and enables anyone to start a sustainable brand on a circular model from day one. Want to try it for yourself?  Visit Teemill here   Caturday Art Blog Hop