Widowhood – two months in

 After my husband died, I decided that, if someone asked, I would try to be honest about my feelings. I think it’s the retired palliative care nurse in me - we shouldn't shut these things away. I have to admit, though, it’s not always easy. As a society, we are not very good at discussing dying and death, and / or bereavement and yet at the moment there is a tsunami of grief. A couple of days ago, I read (I wish I could remember where) that currently in our country four out of ten people have lost someone close to them, and six out of ten people someone that they would have attended the funeral of. It is a stark reminder that behind each covid number there is all this misery. And that is not to mention all the grieving people living in the war torn or famine-stricken lands in our world. We need to talk about grief. So I thought I would share where I’m at, what I’ve learnt. 

• I miss him so much – the intimacy, the companionship, the physicality, and dare I say it, the disagreements and rows

• It’s even harder now, after the funeral and thanksgiving services are over, and it is true what people say, support does drop off – so thank you to all those who keep in touch and check out how I am

• Conversely, it’s hard being asked ‘how are you?’, I’m likely to cry (and inside I want to yell ‘ how do you f….g think I am - not like me at all!) and yet I still want people to ask. Perhaps, ‘How is today?’ is easier to answer

• It does help to talk with people, but gathering the emotional energy to pick up the phone is difficult, so please don’t feel awkward (but, being honest, yes there are people who I can’t face talking with!)

• I am so grateful to all those that have been able to share my grief: to share memories; to laugh and cry with me; to allow me cry - it means so much and feels so helpful

• Lockdown makes it harder – I’ve given up packing things into boxes and bags (what’s the point, I can’t take them to charity shops and they just take up more room); I’m in limbo – I can’t go out for my first meal without him, or visit a gallery without him, or go to Bloomsbury without him (and this is going to be the hardest, hardest thing – it is hard enough on Zoom)

• Some days are pure misery, all I do is cry, whereas other days I can laugh, but there seems no rhyme or reason to it. 

• I have learnt that it’s ok to laugh, although it didn’t feel right at first.

• Ironically, the person I want to comfort me in all of this is, of course, the person who is not here

• After he died, I put up a particular picture of my husband. It has been a comfort to see his smiling face, until a couple of days ago, when I had to turn it round. How could he smile at me so, when I was feeling so miserable? There was the anger (for those of you that have read Elisabeth Kubler-Ross)…  It’s turned back now, though.

• I have been reading my diaries, remembering the past, building those precious memories, but in doing this I am aware that I don’t want to lose the ‘real’ him, the everyday him who walked with me through the mundane days of our life together. We weren’t perfect, we could rub each other up the wrong way, have rows, but through it all we knew we belonged together. This is as important as those special times.

• One of my friends wrote ‘no regrets’, almost as an afterthought, on her sympathy card, but this has been such a helpful, daily reminder to me. It’s so easy for the questions to rise up: should I have done this, perhaps if we had done that. I have to remember myself that the decisions we made were right at the time.

• Admin (or ‘Sadmin’ as Catherine Mayer appropriately terms it) is very stressful – so many hours of piped music whilst waiting in telephone queues; so many changes in voice once the person taking the call realises I’m bereaved; so many (seemingly unnecessary) closing and re-opening of accounts; wading through (to me) unintelligible forms, and guidance about thus mentioned forms, regarding IHT (Inheritance Tax - see, I’m learning the lingo!), probate and Land Registry. I am so, so grateful to those friends that are helping me with this (and yes, I could have paid a solicitor, but for what should be a relatively simple estate the cost seemed ridiculous!)

• Doing the simplest of things can be tiring - I'm so behind with my emails...

• There are two ‘me’s, the public face and the private me - I turn up at Zoom meetings, get-togethers etc but I’m not fully ‘there’ although I know it’s something I have to do

• I can’t get used to saying ‘my’ instead of ‘our’ – it’s still our house, even if it’s just me here now - or 'me', instead of 'we'

• Shopping is different, cooking is different, mealtimes are different, watching tv is different, being in bed is different – so obvious, and yet so hard

• There is no one there to warm my feet, or my ears, when they are cold!!

• It seems wrong to enjoy myself. Yes, I could take up my art or my family tree again, but it still doesn’t seem quite right – I know that I have to learn to enjoy myself once again but, at the moment, it still feels wrong. More of those ‘first time’ hurdles

• Grief is physical as well as psychological. It affects my eating, my sleeping, my memory… I walk around with this feeling in my chest, although sometimes it changes into a knot in my stomach. I can tell you how far up the grief is in my body: today it’s at my neck, sometimes it's lower but sometimes it’s my chin. It’s when it reaches my eyes that I can’t stop crying (and yes, that still happens – I’ve only had two days where I haven’t cried at all)

• Most days are long, nights are short - five hours sleep is now a good night

• It’s possible to wake up crying!!!

I do want to say, though, that I know this is all normal. My grief is a mark of my love for him. It will always be there but, in time, I will get used to living with it but it's a part of me, just as our love was a part of me. Grieving is a normal process, just a journey I have to travel. 

I hope I haven’t been too self-indulgent - I am finding that it is cathartic / therapeutic to write this stuff down -  but I also hope that if we open-up about these things it might help others grieve well.