Five months in - extremes

I had intended to write about bereavement poems and sayings, but that will have to wait until another post. 

This week has been a shock! I had thought I was doing pretty well (even though I do say so myself), but this week has felt extreme. On Sunday I had a lovely day – a picnic with friends and then a treasure hunt, which was great fun – and on Monday I had a very enjoyable al fresco lunch with friends. And then, bang! On Monday evening, B’s death just hit me full force again. It almost felt as though I was back to square one. And it continued during the week. I went out for a lovely lunch with friends yesterday, thoroughly enjoyed it, but got in and felt bereft again, although not as bad as Monday. 

On Monday evening I just cried and cried, whilst hugging a jumper of B’s. It hadn’t felt this bad for a while and, to make it worse, it didn’t pass as it often has. I got through a meeting on Tuesday night, but was so grateful when a friend rang afterwards to see how I was doing and didn’t mind when I cried down the phone. I have family and friends that have said “ring if you need to” but the strange thing is that the times you feel you need them are the times you feel you can’t phone them! I know that’s probably just me, but that’s just how it is. I thought I was past all this, but clearly not! I think, perhaps, I had been lulled into a false sense of being in control of my emotions once more, when actually my grief is still in control. I now understand what people are referring to when they talk about waves of grief!

The worse thing was, I couldn’t work out what was triggering feeling this dreadful. It felt like an ambush without an actual ambush (another paradox)! I was wondering if it was due to an accumulation of nights with only 5 hours sleep, or a reaction to other things going on in my life – new glasses that aren’t quite right and need adjusting, a new printer that has broken and needs replacing (thankfully sorted now), the roof and windows… It wasn’t obvious to me! Whilst out on Thursday, however, I found myself thinking “B should be here, enjoying this with me”, and realised that perhaps this is the underlying cause. It sounds so obvious, but B is not here to enjoy these things with me. I can be happy, enjoy myself and have fun but, when push comes to shove, I am on my own and B is not here to share these things with me.

It is usually acknowledged that three months after a death can be one of the hardest times, when everyone else thinks you are / should be getting back to normal (!!). Perhaps, my three months has come later because of covid. Now I am getting out and about into the world again, (hopefully) post-covid, the reality is hitting me afresh… I am used to being at home on my own now, but I am now going out more and it makes me realise how different things are going to be – no longer having a companion by my side to go out for a meal with, or to go to an exhibition with, no one to discuss things with afterwards. Obviously, I miss B (what an under-statement!), but my heart is now beginning to realise that I am going to miss all the things we used to do together, our everyday life together. I guess my head already knew that, but the reality is just beginning to sink in, life is going to be very different! And that is hard…

On a different note, I have started following Julia Samuel MBE, a psychotherapist who specialises in grief and loss, on Instagram. She recently had an online conversation with the potter and author Edmund de Waal, who, I admit, I had not heard of before. They talked about how “you don’t fix loss, you show loss, you navigate loss. You don’t mend it.” “You make something out of the rubble that includes the rubble and is beautiful.” Edmund de Waal showed a beautiful 18th century Meissen plate that had been broken, into many fragments,  by the Nazi’s and then ‘repaired’ by filling and joining the cracks with gold. It was whole again, but it was not the original plate. It was beautiful again, but it looked different. It showed the fissures and breakages, and thus revealed its history and told its story. As they emphasised, grief is not about closure, but rather about healing or, in other words, becoming whole again, and I guess that is what I’m aiming for.

Julia Samuels also talked about writing a letter to the loved one who has died, and I am now contemplating writing a letter to B. When I first heard this suggestion, frankly, I thought it was bonkers, after all, B is dead! It just seemed weird to me. Now, however, it feels a bit different, as though it could be a helpful / comforting / positive thing to do, so maybe… I’ll let you know if I do it.

Today I have been scanning various papers of B’s. These are papers that I put in my memory box. I decided to do this as, when I went to visit my family, I felt the need to take the box with me. I didn’t look inside it, but it was the thought ‘what if there is a fire whilst I’m away?’ that prompted me! If the papers are scanned, I know there will always be copies that I can access.  Perhaps this is a bit extreme, what are the chances of a fire, but it was just something I needed to do…