The Grieving Jester

 Well, I’m here again! Sometimes I just feel the need to write… I write in my journal most days but, somehow, my blog is different – I write differently. Perhaps, knowing I’m going to make it public helps me to process my thoughts rather than just vomiting up my feelings onto a blank page in my journal. It might sound daft, but I think more when I write my blog rather than just venting and forgetting (not that that can’t be helpful). Recently, someone I know lent me a book called ‘Levels of Life’ by Julian Barnes. If you’ve lost a partner I can’t recommend it highly enough, or read it if you just want to understand a little about what losing a partner is like. Read it anyway! It’s a short, simple read, and yet so eloquent. Barnes wrote it four years after his wife died. The first two sections are interesting and add to the third, or just read the third section where Barnes talks explicitly about his grief. The book did make me cry, but not because it is sad but because I identified...

Well, it’s two years since B died and, no, it doesn’t seem possible. How can all of that time have passed without him? How can I no longer be able to say, “my husband died last year”? And yet here I am. To be truthful, although I couldn’t see how it could possibly do so, life does carry on and I no longer think about B all of the time. I can go out now, have a good time, and really enjoy myself. Admittedly, the underlying sadness is still there but it is less potent, and I haven’t had any more of those terrible dark, crushing times of misery, for which I’m thankful. There are still the occasional bad times but, on the whole, they are shorter and I bounce back more quickly. Whenever I feel sad, I just also try to feel grateful for what we had and, generally, that helps. It no longer feels like yesterday that B was here, though. I can feel the ‘realness’ of him slipping away and, I guess, this is the natural process of grief unfolding, which is probably good but, if I’m truthful, I don’t...

Well, I thought I had finished with my blog, but the recent death of the Queen has prompted some reflections. It was clear the Her Majesty’s health has been declining and, although her end seemed quite sudden, it was in fact, as Dr Kathryn Mannix pointed out, an ordinary death i.e. her slow decline had been apparent, if one cared to look. My lasting memory of the her will be of her sitting alone, wearing a mask, in St George’s Chapel, Windsor, for her husband’s funeral. With quiet dignity and strength, and at the most painful of times, she showed solidarity with her people by following the restrictions imposed because of covid and, as we later found out, in stark contrast to our government. And for that I thank her.  Whatever one’s views about the monarchy, I think it is interesting to observe how the pomp and circumstance since the Queen's death has been playing out. I find the mass grieving an interesting phenomenon. Why is there such feeling for a person who most didn’t know per...

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 ple...

More to the point, B married me, and for that I am so very thankful. He and I were, perhaps, an unlikely couple, not only because of our ages but because we were different in so many ways, but we had a good marriage, an imperfect but happy and enriching twenty-four years, till death did us part. Both of our lives were changed forever when we became friends, and then more than friends, and for that I shall be eternally thankful. Now I am endeavouring to live the rest of my life without him, and to live it to the full as he would want me to. I hope I can live up to that challenge. Just as our marriage passed from that initial buzz to contented everyday life (and none the worse because of that – better even), my grief has passed from that initial state of desolation to a more familiar companion. In many ways it is, now, more 'everyday', except that that perhaps suggests that it is comfortable, whereas it can, and still does, put me through the wringer. That Jester, grief, remain...

Well, last week felt a bit bumpy. There were some good times, but at the low points, it sometimes felt as though I was smiling on the outside, whilst crying on the inside. Don't get me wrong, I can, now, just feel happy and that is lovely, but it also feels much harder to let people know when my grief is weighing me down (except when it spurts out of its own accord!), despite the fact that I promised myself that I would be honest. Knowing this is quite common in the second year is good to know, but it doesn’t really help! There’s still this dialogue that runs through my head: ' They're going to get fed-up with me', 'Why do I still feel like this?', ‘How will they react if I tell them?’, 'Why can't I manage my feelings better?', etc. I recently read an article that suggested when somebody asks how you are the best response is to say 'I'm fine', the rationale being that, if you keep saying it, it will help to achieve it. I can see the logi...

As the document where I write all my blog posts opened, I noticed that in April last year I wrote a post entitled ‘how am I?’ Good question, I thought. So how am I, eighteen months on?  For a lot of the time now, it feels as though I have reached a sense of peace with my grief. That doesn’t mean that I no longer miss B, of course I do, just that I am better at living with the sorrow. I try to accept the sadness when it comes and, mostly, I am able to carry on anyway. Although I still cry it is far less often. Occasionally, I still have a good sob, but quite often now I will only cry for a matter of seconds. I find this a bit strange. What are these tears worth if they only last for such a short time? But they are not crocodile tears, rather a way of letting go of the feelings before picking up where I left off. I think, perhaps, that I’m nearer to what I, wrongly, imagined grief would be like when I contemplated it before B died – a deep feeling of sadness whilst just trying to get...