The Jester (3)

I’m back, Jester, my author’s grief. Well, actually, I hadn’t gone away, I’ve just been lurking in the background a bit more but, this week, I thought I would shove my face right into my author’s, again. Ha ha! I think she thought that things were improving, that I was damping down a bit, so I thought, “right, I’ll show her”. She was actually looking forward to this week, as she had several things lined up. She met with various friends on several occasions, as well as visiting two exhibitions, all of which she enjoyed, but in doing this I just reminded her that life isn’t ‘normal’. Not that she really needed reminding, but I wanted her to know that she can’t just block me out. I let her have a nice time with her friends, but then I just hit her in the face with it, B isn’t here and he’s not coming back. It’s so easy, but she just wasn’t expecting it. She’d have a nice time but then get home and just cry. No rhyme or reason that she could see, except that I can just be cruel. I just made her feel miserable and exhausted. I won’t let her ignore me, she needs time to just be with me, her grief; to be with all that B was and meant to her.

Let me tell you, there’s been a fair few tears this week. Well, I can’t let her off that easily, can I? Before B died, I don’t think my author had thought much about crying, but I’ve made her aware of just how many different kinds of crying there are! She hasn’t howled this week, but she has sobbed for half an hour at a time. Sometimes, I’ve just let her sit quietly with the tears pouring down her face. I’ve sometimes let her cry for just a few seconds and then carry on with whatever she was doing, but I’m not going away. She hates crying, but particularly when she’s going to bed, as it unsettles her for the night, and her nose gets blocked up, which she hates, but it’s an obvious time for me to upset her. She does try to distract herself by reading, but I don’t always let her get away with this. She also hates crying in public and she will try her utmost to keep the tears inside, but usually not very successfully. I just push and push her until she can’t stop herself and then I make her feel so exposed. She does cry less than she did, though, and her emotions, mostly, are less extreme, but as a wise person once said, “The only cure for grief is to grieve” (Rabbi Grollman). My only beef with that, though, is that she won’t be ‘cured’ of me, she’ll just get better at carrying me, but you get the idea… She knows that B would want her to move on with her life and grasp her future but, as I keep pointing out (after all, that’s my job), the reality is that B’s not here anymore and a big part of her missing. She can’t just click her fingers and ‘get over it’. She has to allow her heart to feel those feelings, to think about all that they had and what is now missing, and what this means. I let her know that I am here with her, and sometimes I can make her feel as though it will never get better. I’m not going anywhere!

A note from the author:
This week, in my quest to make sure I didn’t just stay at home, I have over-done it. So, another lesson learnt, I need to get out and do things, but I also need restoration time in-between. I’m an introvert, I’ve always needed time on my own, or with B, to restore my mental and emotional energy. I had ear-marked some time for this this week, but clearly not enough. Obviously, I haven’t got the right balance yet. Grieving is hard, but I’m also realising that being on my own and having time to reflect is good, despite the fact that it can sometimes / often make me feel sad. If I don’t do this, though, in the end I feel worse. Another double-edged sword!

All this, made me ponder about the past. Generally, B and I lived in the present, not looking back or forwards too much, but over the last months I’ve been thinking about our past. It seems impossible to avoid that if one is grieving. I know, that in most walks of life, it isn’t helpful to keep harking back to times before. We need to move forward and build a better future, but in grief that seems very hard to do, hurtful even. How can I not think about the past? That is all I have of B now. At the moment, remembering our past mostly makes me sad as it reminds me of all that I have lost, but I know that in time it will become a source of happiness and celebration. Even in my sadness, reading an entry in my diary about something that I had forgotten can make me happy. I don’t want to remain in the past, but I am not ready to / can’t let B go yet. Thinking about the past helps me to remember the happy times and smile, and in time this will help me feel happy about what we had rather than sad about what I’ve lost. As I think I’ve said before, though, however much I want to be, I’m just not there yet.