Bits and pieces

Recently, I’ve had an ear worm; you know, a song that sticks in one’s head and won’t go away. You won’t guess what it is, and I’m not sure how it came about, but it’s ‘On the Sunny Side of the Street’; at least it’s a cheerful song! On the whole, my life now feels like I’m walking along the middle of a road, with the possibility of veering off to either the sunny side or the shady side, but to the latter sometimes with no warning. This, however, is definitely better than being stuck on the dark side all of the time, so I’ll take that and try to enjoy the sunnier times when they come along. 

One of these has been this weekend, when I had a lovely weekend joint hosting two garden parties at friends in their beautiful garden. It was originally going to be one event, but the delay in restrictions changed it into two! It was so lovely to catch up with friends after so long, if just a little overwhelming. The reverse side of this, of course, is that when I’m enjoying myself it feels a bit like I’m betraying B, knowing that I can be (almost) happy without him. I can ‘hear’ him telling me that I am being too sensitive, but that’s just how it feels… I do know, though, that he would want me to live my life and enjoy it, and that helps. It’s that head and heart thing again. Of course, there were a couple of moments over the weekend when I switched into grieving mode, but I’m learning to accept these ‘episodes’ and know this is normal. I have to admit that I was exhausted by the time I got home on Sunday evening, though, which wasn’t helped by the fact that, for some reason, I stayed up later than I might otherwise have done to watch some football match (only the second one I’ve watched in my life – the first was when Burton Albion played Manchester United)!! 

You probably won’t be surprised to hear that I have been doing some more clearing out; old table mats, DVDs, cassette tapes (!), etc have gone. Fortunately, I am still able to play tapes and one of the cassettes, which had ‘blank’ written on it in B’s hand, actually has almost 30 minutes of him talking on it, with various abstract ideas and comments, seemingly about nothing in particular. I’m glad I didn’t take him at his word and throw it out without checking it first! I was trying to work out what the tape was about and why he recorded it and then, about halfway through, B says ‘this tape is nonsense’, which made me laugh out loud! At the end, however, he starts rehearsing his narration for one of the BBC / Open University programmes he made so, I suspect, he was just practising his narration skills, but it made me smile. Unfortunately, it’s still not the voice I heard at home but it’s definitely him and it does reveal his sense of humour. It is another little part of him, which I shall treasure.

I guess everybody’s future is uncertain, but since B has died it has been hard at times to see any future for myself as my life ahead seems blank. Although this is perhaps beginning to change, I have to admit that sometimes I have lost the will to live. I didn’t post this before as I didn’t want to worry anybody, and I didn’t and definitely wouldn’t do anything about it, but a few times it has crossed my mind that I could just take some paracetamol and all this will be over, and I will be with B. This wasn’t a serious intention, but I guess it reflects the bleakness of losing a spouse. After almost six months, not all my days are bad, as demonstrated by this weekend, but all of them still contain sadness and, frankly, some days are still terrible. 

Sometimes, I just feel sick. I may not be aware that I’m feeling sad (such an inadequate word) again, but then I notice the nausea and that makes me notice the sadness again. It’s strange how grief can affect one physically! Another strange thing is that, when I feel upset, I don’t / can’t look at myself in the mirror and I’m not entirely sure why. It’s me, I know I’m upset! But for some reason, seeing myself in this state just seems to magnify the grief. So I ignore myself and just don’t look…

They say (whoever ‘they’ are) “be careful what you wish for”, and sometimes this turns out to be true. As I have previously said, I had been wanting to dream about B. Well the other night I did and, as is common with dreams, it wasn’t set in reality. It also wasn’t a pleasant dream. I won’t go into all the details (I can’t actually remember all of them myself) but, suffice it to say, B and I were together, and I was cross with him for some reason, and we parted unhappily. Anyway, this wasn’t the kind of dream I wanted and, to cap it all, I didn’t get to hear his voice! In the end it was only a dream and I was able to shake it off, but it was bothersome at the time. The following night, I dreamt of B again. This time it was a very strange dream, but we did get to have a hug, so that was an improvement! But, lesson learnt, be careful what you wish for…

Of course, when B was alive, we would have rows, but not that often (I only remember a handful of really big ones in the 24 years we were married and I only remember him shouting a couple of times), although we would sometimes bicker. Maybe it sounds strange, but I don’t want to forget this as I want to remember the ‘real’ us. We could, sometimes, rub each other up the wrong way, we could sometimes bicker and argue, but at the end of the day we lived together happily despite all of our faults and quirks. 

I saw something on Facebook the other day, which said something like “I thought I’d spend the rest of my life with you, but I realised you spent the rest of your life with me”. B was older than me, so it was always unlikely that I would spend the rest of my life with him but realising that he spent the rest of his life with me makes me feel glad.  This might sound very obvious, but sometimes the obvious just needs spelling out! I smile because I know he loved me right up to the day he died.