The first weeks

I have been overwhelmed by the outpouring of love on Facebook after my first post, so thank you, and sorry I haven't been able to respond other than 'liking' your comments.

Why ‘The Grieving Jester’? Well, J.E.S. are my initials, and I have used the term Jester on another blog of mine, but it also seemed a natural title. Jesters were the court fools, those that provided entertainment. Some have said I am brave writing openly like this – I’m not sure about brave, maybe foolish, but I have realised that writing this stuff down helps me, even if no-one reads it. Also, that I find it easier to write it than speak it…  Another point is that humour is important. When I was a palliative care nurse, the times of greatest humour, often black humour, were at our bereavement meetings. It was a method of release. Grieving doesn’t mean I don’t laugh…

I thought I would write something of the first month after my husband died. I knew he was dying, indeed in the last hours I told him that it was okay to let go. I had started to grieve before he died, but his death was still a shock although I knew it was going to happen. (I was going to write “although I was prepared for it”, but of course I wasn’t.) A few days after his death I started searching for him – for personal letters or cards, anything... I didn’t find much but now have a small box of things, some of which bring comfort and others which I haven’t been able to look at as yet. I tried smelling his clothes; this seems to be a common experience, but I couldn’t smell him (and still can’t, and no I don’t have covid!). That was hard as it wasn’t what I was expecting. The worst thing, though, was that I couldn’t hear his voice in my head. I am very fortunate in that I have a thirty-minute BBC & Open University television programme with him narrating, as well as some recordings of him reading in church, but although this was his voice, it was not the voice I heard day-to-day. Then I remembered, I had a silly video on my phone following a balloon around the house (don’t ask!), but on that video there are a few seconds of him speaking. This saved me! I still can’t hear his voice clearly in my head, but I am closer to it.

I had to wait four weeks for the funeral and thanksgiving services, because of covid. On the whole, this was a blessing. I was able to be at home on my own, grieve how I wanted without worrying about other people. I wasn’t lonely, although I think now that I was numb-er than I realised. I was able to look at photos, read my diaries to remind me of happy times together, and focus on putting the services together. One strange thing that happened during this time, though, was that, for a while, I lost my husband as he had been before he died. I could only remember him as the man he was when we were first going out together and just after we got married. These are happy memories, but I desperately didn’t want to lose the more recent him. I wanted to remember the real man; the man with those annoying habits, the rows we had, the times when life was perhaps no longer exciting but we were content and happy with each other, part of each other. Slowly, this has returned.

After he died, I was overwhelmed by the cards, letters, emails, flowers and gifts that I received. They meant so much. What particularly helped me, though, was all the messages from people linked with the university where he worked (and was still active until a year before he died).  Mostly, these were from people I didn’t know. So many notes telling me about the influence he had had on them, both students and colleagues. These were like little rays of sunshine. Since then I have ‘attended’ an evening held in his honour, and there is talk of further legacy events. This makes me happy, though I think he would have been very surprised!