The Jester - the last word

-

Well, I’m not letting her have the last word!

She’s managing quite well, and perhaps she more often seems like her old self, but she is a changed person and underneath it all she is still grieving. I still make some days quite tough for her. Mostly, though, I just sit in the background and she thinks that she knows how to live with me, and she can and does think about living the rest of her life, but I can still needle her. I mostly use different tactics now – after all, I have to remind her that she’s not finished with me, even though she would like to be – and I make her realise that her emotional resilience is still quite low (what an understatement!). If she gets stressed, I just poke at the pain deep within her and I can soon overwhelm her. She has come a long way, but she’s still got a way to go. If you think about it, it’s still early days for her; she’s only known me for eighteen months or so, whereas she and B had been together for twenty-four years and more.

You’ll be pleased to hear, though, that I have made some things a little easier for her. She has relinquished a few more of the remaining things of B’s, though she’ll always keep some, of course. Personally, I’m waiting to see whether she takes off her wedding ring. I’m not sure that she’s brave enough to do it, and I’ll be surprised if she ever takes B’s off, but who knows? I notice, though, that she is endeavouring to loosen ties with me, trying to find a way to let go, although I keep trying to tell her that that’s not really how it works. She just has to keep travelling with me until I feel like an old friend or a pair of comfortable slippers that she doesn’t really notice. In the end, nothing will change the love they had for one another, otherwise I wouldn’t be needed, I wouldn’t be here …

Thank you for supporting my author, and please remember that she still needs you. I am going to be around for a while yet. But, just in case you still haven’t twigged, and this is very important, even though I can be difficult to live with (to say the least!), without me she would have no future. She needs me so that she can move on with her life and experience some joy again. To put it another way, if she ignores me, I will come back to bite her! So, if you see her and I seem to be troubling her, please know that I am her friend, however hard it is for her. Lots of people don’t get this, but it is true!

Anyway, not to be outdone, I’m also going to finish with some quotes:

“And once the storm is over you won’t remember how you made it through, how you managed to survive. You won’t even be sure, in fact, whether the storm is really over. But one thing is certain. When you come out of the storm you won’t be the same person who walked in. That’s what the storm’s all about.”            
                                                                              Haruki Murakami 

“The risk of love is loss, and the price of loss is grief. But the pain of grief is only a shadow when compared with the pain of never risking love.”     
                                                                                    Hillary Stanton Zunin 

“The melody that the loved one played upon the piano of your life will never be played quite that way again, but we must not close the keyboard and allow the instrument to gather dust. We must seek out other artists of the spirit, new friends who gradually will help us to find the road to life again, who will walk the road with us.”       
                                                                                    Joshua Loth Liebman

Comments

Post a Comment

Thank you for your message. Please be aware that I may not be able to respond.

Popular posts from this blog

Three and a half years - layers of grief

-
A lot has happened since my previous post. Sadly, B’s sister died unexpectedly in April and exactly a week later her husband died after a long illness. In June my Mum died, after a long period of physical incapacity. And then a cousin, whom I rarely saw but was fond of, also died. More grief, but different grief… I’m not sure I’ve processed my Mum’s death yet. For her, her death was a blessing. She had been bed-bound for some years with her quality of life slowly deteriorating, and so in some ways it was a relief for all of us. I know, though, that when I feel at my saddest I am also aware of the absence of B’s comforting presence. This then this makes me feel more sad, confused and guilty… should I still be grieving for him when I should be grieving for my Mum? But I reassure myself, rightly or wrongly, that it’s alright to feel what I am feeling… Of course, my sister-in-law and brother-in-laws’ deaths were so much harder for my nieces than for me, and I was glad to be able to support...
Read more

My story

-
 A while ago, our Church Secretary, a reader of The Grieving Jester, asked if I would tell my story at my church and a couple of Sundays ago I did so. I was very nervous, and there had been several questions going around my head: will people really want to hear this stuff? Am I going to bore them or upset them? Is it appropriate? Am I going to be able to do this? But, one of the reasons I started my blog in the first place was to talk about this stuff and get it into the open, so how could I refuse? Well, actually it was fine and I received several appreciative comments afterwards. I did wonder whether I should post it here, it feels quite exposing, but in for a penny… In essence, it’s a summary of all, or most of, what I’ve written over the last three plus years, but also referencing my faith. So, here it is: “For those that don’t know me, I have been coming to Bloomsbury (my church) since I started my nursing training, and I spent the majority of my career working in the field of...
Read more

Three years and moving forward

-
B and I were married for just over twenty-four years, and were ‘an item’ for several years before that. In many ways we were opposites, but we complemented each other. Above all, we were each other’s best friend. We fitted together and we were happy together. And now I am on my own, and today is the third anniversary of B’s death. So how am I? What have I learnt? Well, it’s good I didn’t know how hard it was going to be without him, but I know that the pain of his loss is the price for the happiness we found in each other. Would I do it all again? Of course, I would! I now know that grief is about learning to bear the unbearable, but I also know that I can do the impossible, I can bear the unbearable! I didn’t have a choice, B didn’t choose to die, but I did have a choice about how I dealt with his absence. I chose to look squarely into the face of darkness, to learn to live with the abyss that appeared in my life. I could have shut it all out but I knew that, ultimately, that would ha...
Read more