The Grieving Jester

Reaching a point where B has been dead for a year just seems unimaginable, and yet here I am facing that painful reality. How can it possibly be? How can I have lived a whole year without him? How can I say “my husband died last year”, when it still feels so recent? When talking about marriage, I sometimes used to joke, but with an element of truth, that the first year’s the worst. B and I had both been single and independent for some years and so, naturally, it took us a while to get used to each other’s quirks and habits, to learn to live with one another. Now that it is a year since he died, I wonder if the first year after his death is going to be the worst. I had assumed it would be, getting used to the massive absence he leaves behind, getting used to myself without him, becoming ‘I’ instead of ‘we’. Although I try to be hopeful, in my darker moments I do wonder how life can possibly get any better now that he’s not here. I have seen not a few others write that the second year is...

I like baths, so did B, but I read some advice a while back that if you are feeling down or depressed it is better to take a shower. I didn’t understand this at first, but I get it now. A shower is stimulating, you have to stand and move about. A bath is relaxing and it is easy to let one’s mind wander. This morning I was feeling quite positive. This surprised me when I compared it to the previous week, but don’t look a gift horse in the mouth. I realised that I didn’t even think about B until I got into the kitchen (it’s usually much sooner than that!). I didn’t get up until 8am, which is unusual, but I didn’t have to be out until 11.30am so I decided to have a bath. I was listening to the radio and a man was explaining why he felt it was important to tell his story having been treated for penile cancer. Stories are so important, but this made me wonder who I tell my story to. Obviously, anyone who wants to can read it via this blog, but I realised there are only one or two friends wh...

I seem to be back on grief’s rollercoaster and a lot of this week has been tough. My sense of hope seems to have diminished. One day that started really gloomily actually turned out very positively – it helped that the sun was shining, whereas there were others that I thought would be good but I just couldn’t pull myself out of the mire, despite the sun. But it’s Saturday and I have got through it, though that sounds such a terrible way to live, I wish it wasn’t thus. I have noticed this week that I have been reluctant to go to bed and I wondered why, as I thought I had been sleeping okay. Then I realised, I get into bed and the grief hits me again, whatever my day has been like. My thoughts turn to B, and the fact that I miss him so much, and sometimes my brain will start to replay things no matter how hard I try to stop it. I still read and this does distract me but if I stop, unlike previously, the thoughts just come flooding back. So, I either continue to read and fall half-asleep ...

Since coming back home after Christmas it has felt as though I have been moving backwards rather than forwards. The weather hasn’t been helping because, bar a (lovely) day or two, it has been pretty grey for the last several weeks and this has seemed to reflect, and magnify, my mournful mood. This has been compounded by the fact that I have been sleeping less well. For some reason, it has been harder to stop my brain going into over-drive when I switch off my bedside light, or if I wake up in the early hours, and it’s harder to distract myself at night. So, I have been feeling generally gloomy and the old feeling of grief welling up inside me has re-appeared – chest, neck, chin, nose, eyes. It’s strange, I hadn’t really noticed that it had gone, until it reappeared! It took me a little while to cotton-on to what had caused this change, but I realised that I have been getting out less because of the holidays, not to mention Omicron, and, more significantly, that the anniversary of B’s d...

It's a new year, and I guess that that makes us look to the future.  As B was older than me, I knew it was likely that, at some point, unless something happened to me, there would come a time when I would be without him. Over the last year, I have been aware of people my age who have lost their partner expressing their loss not just of their partner but of their shared future. I kept thinking that this didn’t really apply to me, as I knew the likelihood of being on my own again was high but, actually, I was wrong, as I realise it does apply to me. I didn’t imagine how different my life was / is going to be without B and I do grieve the future without him, all those things I won’t have with him again:  just being a couple, and all that means; another holiday together, and planning what we would do; visiting family and friends together; going to exhibitions together and sharing what we each like or dislike; going out for a meal together; making decisions about the house and gard...