The rabbit hole

This last week or so has been a mixed bag and some bits have felt tough. I wondered whether I had been trying to distract myself too much, trying to put on a brave face, and thereby ignoring my pain. So perhaps I needed the bad sad days. There weren’t any obvious triggers, I just missed B, felt sad, and cried. The pain is still there! Perhaps, I was hoping that it had disappeared… After a while, though, things started to improve again and, on the whole, I felt rather happier. I was able to enjoy times with friends, going to a gallery, choir practice, the lovely Spring weather, even mowing the lawn (which was much needed). Sometimes, there doesn’t seem to be any reason as to why I should feel particularly sad, whereas at other times something just hits me and triggers my sorrow. A thought might ping into my mind, or I hear someone say something, or sometimes it’s a situation I find myself in, though it doesn’t help when I am tired. It feels a bit like how I imagine Alice felt when she fell down that rabbit hole. Suddenly everything has changed, everything is different. I am different, everything around me is different, the shape, size and perspective of everything has altered. I find myself in this strange world where I don’t want to be and where mystifying things happen that I can’t control.

Last week I was on a bus going home. I’ve been on a bus several times over the last year, but this was the first time I found myself on this particular route. I was travelling along Fleet Street and I wasn’t really thinking much about anything until seeing some of the familiar sights out of the window I suddenly thought, “The last time I came this way B was sitting next to me...”. Bang! It still happens. I could feel the tears welling up. What I find odd is that I could just as well have been sitting there thinking about something I’d done that morning and this wouldn’t even have occurred me. The trouble is, once the thought is there, it can be hard to stop it spiralling out of control. Once prodded, so to speak, it’s so easy for my next (terrible) thought to be, "He should be here with me" or "Why this, or that?", and more often than not it seems almost impossible to avoid the forthcoming onslaught. Fortunately, on this occasion I was able to rescue myself (I really didn’t want to start crying on the bus!). In many ways, it seems so silly but, of course, it’s just another reminder that B is not here with me, and of how different my life is now. I do wonder why these things aren’t predictable, and why I don’t / can’t see them coming and stop them. If only it was that easy! 

Last night, I had a bad night, on top of losing the hour as we changed to British Summer Time, and I woke up feeling sad, again, and missing B. I had been planning to go to church but I realised that, if I did go, I was likely to end up feeling worse rather than better. So, I decided to be kind to myself and stay at home. I felt guilty, of course, but I also started to wonder why being on my own seemed the easier option. Sometimes, being with friends can really help to cheer me up, but on other occasions I’m realising that I find it easier to re-centre myself when I’m at home alone. Of course, it depends who I am with, the circumstances, and how understanding and empathetic those around me are, but sometimes it can take a huge amount of effort to put on a happy face, and try to appear as though everything is normal, when I’m just crying inside. Grief can be / is lonely, but sometimes it is still easier to be on my own, rather than to be in a place where life appears to be going on as usual and nobody else seems to notice B’s absence. Let me just emphasise, that not all days are like this now, thank goodness, but they still happen more than I would choose!

Coincidentally, this poem by Gideon Heugh arrived in my ‘in-box’, and it seemed particularly apt. 

Friend 

I would trade
in a heartbeat
all the light
poured upon me
for one friend
to sit with
in the dark.

Sometimes, it’s easier just to be with friends who can be with me in the darkness, and I am fortunate that I have one or two of these. I realise, of course, though, that people have to know when I’m in a dark place, which is getting harder for me to share as time moves on (it’s that self-critic inside me, The Jester, if you like). Now I have a bit more control over myself, I’m not always that good at sharing when I’m at my lowest, which can create somewhat of a vicious circle…

Yesterday, I had come across this quote on Facebook, and in fact, I shared it:

‘Let me grieve in whatever way I need to. Don’t let it frighten you. For we do not heal by forgetting, we heal by remembering. And for you who only see the tears and photos and balloons as a warning of my being ‘”stuck in grief”, please try for a moment not to judge me… for this is the only way I will ever learn to live with this shadow, and not be enveloped in its darkness forever. I will heal, I will grieve, I will remember, and I will love. This is my new life, and I am not stuck.’ 

It was written by Jamie Maurer for those mothers who have had still births, but it seemed to me that it applied to any of us who are grieving. I found it helpful, not particularly as a message to my friends, but as a message to myself, to remind me that it is healthy to grieve, and okay to grieve the way I need to, that there are no rights or wrongs, that it is not only good but necessary to remember, and that I am not stuck (or doing worse than I should be). My self-critic is saying ‘you should be better than this by now’, but I have to remind myself that I have come a long way since B’s death, although I know there is still a long way to travel.

I have finished reading a book by Joan Didion, in which she describes the year after her husband’s death. As an aside, I do sometimes wonder whether reading books about grief is healthy for me or whether they encourage me to wallow but, overall, I think they help me to think about and process my grief, to do the necessary grief work rather than hide away from it. It can also be reassuring when they affirm that what I’m experiencing is normal. Anyway, in her book, Didion describes the difference between how we anticipate the loss of a spouse will be with the reality. She says, 'We do not expect this shock to be obliterative, dislocating to both mind and body … Nor can we know ahead of the fact (and here lies the heart of the difference between grief as we imagine it and grief as it is) the unending absence that follows, the void, the very opposite of meaning, the relentless succession of moments during which we will confront the experience of meaningless itself.' I wish I could write so eloquently, as she hits the nail on the head. This is it; it is just so true! This led me to realise that, when I have been thinking about finding purpose for my life, I was concentrating on finding new activities, i.e. joining a choir, becoming a volunteer, etc. It seems obvious now, though, that what I am missing is my feeling of identity (half, more, of me is missing), my sense of self, my feeling of security. B’s death took these away and with them obliterated that sense of meaning. It follows, therefore, that re-establishing myself isn’t about doing things, but about learning how to live without him. If I think about it, in many ways my life isn’t really that dissimilar to how it was before B’s death (and pre-pandemic), in fact I’m probably doing more things now than I did before (trying to fill in the gaps?!), and yet it didn’t feel meaningless or without purpose then. It is B’s absence that has taken away my meaning and changed everything. So, my task is to re-find myself, in this strange wonderland. This doesn’t mean that I won’t look for new activities that will give me a sense of purpose, just that I won’t pin all my hopes on them making me feel ‘better’. They might be helpful but I realise that they won’t be a magical cure. So, I just (!) have to continue to work through my grief, to get used to living my life with the huge absence that B leaves behind and then, hopefully, I may find my (altered) self again. 

When I first started my blog, I remember writing about how some people recommend writing a letter to the dead person. At the time, I thought this was strange, to say the least, but gradually it has begun to make sense and so this week I took the plunge. I’m not going to put it on my blog, it’s too personal and just between B and me (I realise that’s an odd sentence, I know he’s dead), but it was helpful to write down, to tell him (?), some of the things I have been feeling. I had a good cry, but I felt better for doing it. I might not read it again, or I may look at it in a year’s time, who knows...

Just to finish, on Wednesday, it was the National Day of Reflection, two years since the first lockdown started. I joined a couple of the webinars that Marie Curie hosted, and found some helpful elements. During a session on Mindfulness the leader suggested finding a simple mantra that could be used whilst doing a breathing exercise, to help ground oneself. His was, if I remember rightly, ‘Here, now’, and I can see the point of that, focusing on the present, but I wondered what would be a good mantra for me, and I came up with ‘the blanket of our love’. This makes me feel warm and secure, and most importantly it makes me feel happy, remembering B’s love for me, so this is what I will try and, just perhaps, it will help me to smile when I feel sad. If it makes me feel sad, I shall just try ‘Here, now’ again!

Gideon Heugh (2021), Rumours of Light. Independently published.

Joan Didion (2005), The Year of Magical Thinking. Fourth Estate.