A stranger in a foreign land

These past ten days or so have been strange. And as I write that, I realise that I use this phrase a lot. This is, for me, what grief is like. This week I posted one of my collages on Facebook. I didn’t think much about it, except now I notice the words on it – ‘embrace the journey’, ‘be open to whatever comes next’, and ‘a stranger in a strange land. A foreigner in a country unfamiliar to him’. I am a stranger in a strange land!

Why have these last days been strange? Well, because:

• It was my sister’s and my birthdays – we had two lovely days, but overall they were a strain. At the back of it all, I just kept thinking, ‘B should be here’ and ‘I miss him so much’. Fortunately, after that it felt easier.
• I left my phone behind when my sister & went out for a walk. When I realised, almost my first thought was ‘B won’t be able to get hold of me’. Another evening, I thought, 'I'll just ring B and tell him what we've been doing'. It’s over six months now, and yet thoughts like this still pop into my head, and it can stop me dead (excuse the pun). 
• When I got home from my time with my family, I was feeling quite positive and I thought it was time to take down two A4 photos of B that I had up near my computer. It felt like a constructive step (there are still lots of other photos around). Guess what? I then just felt guilty that I could imagine any future life without B (I know, there's a big jump in there, but that's just what my brain was telling me!), and I just missed him as much as ever. I've been back a week, though, and the pictures haven't gone back up, yet...
• On Sunday, we had a really thoughtful and thought-provoking service (don’t get me wrong, most of our services are like that) but this one hit a nerve. It was both beautiful and raw. I was joyful one minute and crying the next, and vice versa (I wasn't the only one, so this helped me feel a little better about myself). 
• On Tuesday morning I woke up thinking that I hadn’t yet heard from the crematorium regarding the memorial inscription for B. They had told me that it wouldn’t be written until July, but now it was August. And then I opened my emails, and there was the email telling me that it was written, with a copy of it attached! It took me quite a long while to open the email and even longer to look at the picture. It was another reminder that B is dead. I know he is dead, but, and excuse yet another pun, it was just felt like another nail in his coffin. It still hurts.
• I have had days where I have felt almost normal i.e. been out and got on with life; achieved several things on my ‘to do’ list; looked at organisations I might join – a choir, a walking club, etc; not cried; and so forth, and then I have had days where I have felt almost back to square one. 

And, for me, this is what it is like. I am in a foreign land, one that is bittersweet. It has a terrible sadness (I need to find a better word, as this is such an understatement, perhaps misery or anguish...). It is a place of rawness. Strangely (!), there is also a terrible kind of beauty, I guess that's the love coming through. There are so many juxtapositions, I can be happy and sad at the same time; I can have a really positive day and then the next I feel totally miserable again; I can know that I trusted B completely and then the next moment get filled with all sorts of doubts; we had a good marriage (although imperfectly) but then I think, 'why didn’t we do this, why didn’t we do that…'; my head tells me, and yes you’ve heard this one before, B would want me to live my life to the full, but my heart says ‘how can I do that without him?’. I try to move forward with jobs that need doing on the house but then things that previously would have been small excitements or minor irritations now become great big stress-inducing hurdles. It seems as though I am wandering through a strange land, and often in the dark…