The Grieving Jester

Yesterday, despite having had the best night’s sleep since B died, I had what felt like a truly awful day. There was no particular reason for it, but all I wanted to do was cry. I went to church and cried. I tried to stop myself, but couldn’t. I hated myself for doing it, and I kept thinking ‘this is ridiculous, pull yourself together; why are you doing this; don’t let people see you like this; I thought you’d got over this; people aren’t going to know what to do with you; you just remind them of death; what’s wrong with that, we all have to die; t h ey’ll think you’re a right mess, well you are a mess , I can understand why they might wish to avoid me, you're like a little black cloud ; etc.,etc.’ but I couldn’t stop. I tried to distract myself but it didn’t really work. Eventually, I managed to pull myself together, chatted with some friends, had a nice lunch out, but once I got home the floodgates opened again. It was like being sucked back into a black hole. I guess sometimes...

Do you believe in signs? I would definitely say that I don’t, and yet the other day I found myself thinking, “if only I could have a sign, just to know you still ‘are’, that I know you still care for me”. My brain tells me just how illogical this is, B is dead, but I guess my heart just wants to seek out even a tiny part of what it is missing. I feel rather wary writing this here, but I promised myself that I would be honest. There have been a few instances when I have had similar thoughts. One was the sighting of the solar eclipse (see 12 th June). Another is the day I found a piece of confetti lying on the floor of the spare bedroom, where B used to sit in the mornings after he became ill. Then recently there have been two other instances. The first was when an ornament just fell off the bureau for no apparent reason! Even the friend that I was with said it was bizarre. Admittedly, I had moved it that morning and put it on a couple of coasters, simply to get the coasters out of th...

Today it is eight months since B died... Two thirds of a year… It no longer feels like a blink of an eye. It feels like an eon... I was feeling quite positive this morning. The sun was shining, I had a list in my head of things I was going to do, and then I went to my computer and found that I had no internet. I tried to re-establish a connection; my phone was working; my hub was working; I tried to look (and understand!) how to re-connect my computer. It took me a while to realise that actually the internet is down and that it’s actually an external fault. What it made me realise, though, was how quickly I still get stressed, and when I’m stressed it just plummets me back into, for a better way of putting it, ‘grief mode’. The complexion of the day just changes. Anyway, before all this happened, I thought I would list all the things I am grateful for. When I can, at the end of each day, I record things I am grateful for within that day. If I can’t manage that, I’ll list the positives....

Yesterday, posts about grief started popping up on my Facebook page again. I didn’t look at most of them but one caught my eye, as it felt especially relevant to my week. It said: “Having to emotionally prepare for every day and task is perfectly normal in grief. The lived reality of grief is full of so many reminders and grief land mines that the non-grieving wouldn't even think of. The effort to simply join the world is Herculean and interacting with humans is often exhausting. Everyday tasks and decisions are overwhelming. Every last little thing is emotionally loaded and taxing and requires more energy than you have.” (Refuge in Grief, Megan Devine.) I actually found this very reassuring, as it seems to sum my life up at the moment.  I’ll let Jester (the personification of my grief) tell the story… Well, the other morning, I had a bit of fun. As you know, my author is having some work done in the house, so I let her start her day at 5.30am (I’m kind like that). She made the mos...

I have been wondering about this ‘real’ versus ‘unreal’ thing, trying to get my mind around it. When B was alive, obviously, he was very real to me. Now he is dead he is no longer real, i.e. he no longer exists, though he feels both real and unreal to me. If I was observing me from the outside, it all seems very obvious: what was real is now no longer real, it is in the past. It would be easy if I could just put it (such a little word for everything it means) all behind me and start afresh but, of course, I can’t (and this must be why we don’t understand grief until we go through it ourselves; I certainly didn’t). I carry B and all that we had, and were, together, within me. He remains a part of me, and he is still a reality for me, albeit in a different way. My grief is an expression of my new reality, as I recognise and acknowledge what I have lost. The hard thing is, though, although I have lots of happy memories of B and our time together, our reality is no more. I no longer hear h...

Well, the plateau didn’t last, or at least it did, but on a lower level then previously. This week I have just felt low for a lot of the time. As far as I can see, there is no obvious reason as to why (apart from the very obvious one, of course), but it’s been harder to shake off this week. There have been no obvious triggers, but the usual distractions haven’t worked. Previously, I have just tried to do something to occupy my mind and the sadness retreated somewhat, but this week the low feeling just remained. I don’t quite know how to explain it. The pain is always in the background, but I can usually take my mind off it for a while, but this week it’s just been sitting there whatever I do. It has almost felt as though I have regressed to earlier weeks, except that the pain is not so raw. The loss of B, and the fact that he won’t be coming back, seems to have hit me again. My head knows it, but my heart just doesn’t want to accept it! I know it as a fact, but the reality is punching ...

Well, I may no longer be on the roller coaster of earlier months but I’m learning that, within this new existence where I now find myself, there are still ups and downs, it’s just they seem to be a little bit gentler. There are many shades of grey! If truth be told, I find this reassuring. I wasn’t ready to not miss B. I now find that I sometimes talk with B, mostly in my head but sometimes out loud. When he first died, the fact that others did this seemed strange to me, but it’s happened without me thinking about it. I guess, it’s part of maintaining the relationship we had (acknowledged by experts as a normal part of grieving) and it seems more natural to me now. It’s that head and heart thing again. My head knows it’s not logical, but my heart needs to express itself. The other evening, I was sitting on our bed when I started to have a (one-sided, tearful) conversation with B that went something like this: “I still can’t hear your voice, but what upsets me most is that you no longer...

Well, since I last wrote, I’ve had some good times and some not so good times. I thought I was past sobbing my heart out but, no, it happened again a couple of Sundays ago. I knew it was a bad day when I got up, and I was tempted not to go to church but I made myself go, thinking it would be better to be with others rather than moping around at home. This time, though, instead of the grief levels subsiding they just spilled over. Not how I want to be in public! I am so grateful to the friends that just give me a hug, let me grieve, and tell me I don’t need to apologise. After that it got a bit better. I went away for a few days, and it was good. I felt happy, and I didn’t feel guilty about feeling happy! I was staying with friends who looked after me – they fed me, took me on outings, chatted, let me talk about B and, basically, kept me occupied. They were also very tolerant of my poor sleep pattern and the many yawns I kept exhibiting. We even had some sun! Obviously, I thought abou...