I am nearly at 20 weeks. I am so fed up of crying. I fall apart at the thought of him. I keep finding jobs to do, sorting cupboards. I even tidied the freezer!! I don’t want to see anyone. I am so tired,but can’t sleep. I have had insomnia for years. Each day is the same…Groundhog day. I don’t even recognise me. The lonliness is awful. Not a life I would have chosen.
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Hmmm. I’m a man of my father’s generation! Duty will keep me at post, not resilience.
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Resilience or duty, whichever; it will stand you in good stead.
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Cleaning the freezer?
My freezer (our freezer no more) is rammed to the gunnels with cake.
Flowers & cake have been arriving here for weeks.
Cake because I love cake. But it tastes like deception now. Can’t eat it, because that is a betrayal. Can’t eat because she can’t eat it & what right do I have to enjoy anything without her?
I don’t want to enjoy anything without her actually.
Round about now we would be settling down for the night. Spooning and talking. Squeezing hands, shoulders, kissing her neck.
That’s all I want. Everything else feels like a burden or a sham.
Adrian
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Really? Inertia seems infinitely preferable.
But that implies choice.
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I miss the things that drove me nuts…The TV volume turned to zero because he never muted the bloody thing. The top is always on the toothpaste. The toilet lid is always down. I don’t have silly things to have a moan at. I really miss being told “I love you”. I miss uncondtional love. I miss his silly sense of humour. I miss us. I have some great memories, I will miss making more. I am really p’d off he had the bloody nerve to leave me.
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Oh exactly so! Part of my anger is that I’m the old one, the misanthrope, the loner. She was meant to survive me because her life would still be living. It feels like she cheated in some way. Like some sort of affair.
The house is full. There are people from all over the world now, virtually every room is occupied at night. The place is a mess. It might surprise you to know that I have a hoover fetish. I have (&they were ours but mine) 8. Now to be fair to me only are the same model and make (one for upstairs & one for down). I’m a compulsive hooverer. But I cannot be fagged. What’s the point? A clean house made her happy (& meva tad OCD). But really what is the fucking point?
Sorry about the language, that’s how I talk - 25 years at the criminal bar will colour your vocabulary.
I do like to hoover, I do like a clean house, but letting it not be, as hard as that is for a man who literally followed friends out the house using a hoover as they went, is because much as I liked it, it was all for her.
I use her tooth brush.
She was why I got up in the morning.
I am tempted to take sleeping tablets day and night to escape the sympathetic pats on the back, sad looks or downcast observations from the other side of the room. Or particular people. My father-in-law, with who I must presently have lunch, is a man I despise. Just despise him. Cannot understand how she came from his loins.
I digress.
I miss her physical presence, I miss her smile, her voice - why didn’t I record her? Film her? I miss the too hotness of her bum as we spooned before we went to sleep. I miss her first doggy breath kiss in the morning.
Cancer, fucking cancer stole all that. That’s the truth. They didn’t desert, they didn’t choose to leave us, there is no betrayal, only cancer or some other genetic delight like MND.
I assume it was not addiction?
Only 2 Hoover’s are the same…
@arjo One of the things I ‘am’ thankful for, I have plenty of voice recordings of J, for obvious reasons because of his work. The most poignant and upsetting (for me) is a recording of his musings on how he was progressing following his craniotomy last Sep. It was quite positive. God, that’s tough to listen to.
R had been ill for over 25 years. An endocrine condition. He never complained about anything. He did what he could, he suffered with chronic fatigue and had to take a huge amount of medication. He was a lovely, kind and gentle man. Liked by everyone. Great sense of humour. I am the practical one, the person who gets on with everything. Even though he had been unwell for so long, I really did not expect him to just die!! He was 61. We had been friends from the age of 11. We lived together for nearly 40 years. He was at our holiday home and died of pneumonia. He was just gone.
I to have a collection of hoovers and steamers! I am a tad OCD. I find jobs to do, I also invent them!. My house is empty. Only me and the dogs. I hardly see anyone. Our children, all adults, think I am so resilient and need no one. They are very wrong.
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I’ll bet.
I have been reading about C S Lewis again because I remembered he quotes a poem that has always haunted me. So I looked it up. Turns out it’s by Longfellow. The bit that has always haunted me is
“And I heard a voice cry
Balder the beautiful is dead, is dead”
It is epic, but long before she died I tried out surviving her by substituting her name for Balder’s. Sarah the beautiful is dead, is dead.
Now I am crying & must compose myself.
Adrian
Sarah was ill for 13 years. For most of that time to be fair though, if you didn’t know, you wouldn’t know. Her decline was meteoric.
My kids are still treating me very gently. I try to be strong for them, but at times the effort to just not fall apart is too much.
I am to go shopping with my daughter later. Terrifying.
But if I stay in, some of our friends will be here. Equally terrifying.
Bugger.
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Hi there.
I’ve not posted for some time now. I lost my husband of 46 years in January and understand what youre going through. Its definitely a roller coaster of emotions and nothing can stop it, you just have to hang on. The thought of feeling this way for the rest of my life is awful and one day it might change but at this moment in time its rough. We got engaged on boxing day and this is my 1st xmas without him.
I still talk to him every day
Its heartbreaking.
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Hi Lottie,
46 years? How do you put life back together after 46 years.
My mum and dad were married for 60 years. When mum died we all thought dad would die quickly, but he held on for another 8 years.
I am 66, Sarah was 49 when she died. It should have been me.
It’s too new to look ahead. I know she would want me to be happy, but she lost the right to vote on that when she died.
I’m sure your husband would want you to be happy.
Thank you for your message. I hope Christmas is not too hard for you.
My brother’s wife, who also died of cancer, was born on boxing day. Christmas is hell for him. Sarah died 3 days before our twins’ 18th birthday, and 7 days before my 66th. I guess, on the plus side, it’s a lot of firsts already done.
Today has been a mixture of tears, rage & exhaustion.
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Hi Lottie 79, I totally relate to what you are going through. My first Christmas without my husband of 45 and a half years too. We met 50 years ago when he was 20 and I was 19. He died suddenly in May. He wasn’t ill and was really active and living life to the full. I know that this is a blessing but I am missing him so, so much. As you say. It is heartbreaking.
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I am reading all your posts on this thread, since O’clock. As someone shared before, I wish I could have you all in my kitchen for a flat white or a Pinot Grigio. My darling husband Pete died last week, we were married for thirty weeks since his diagnosis in February, together for thirty five years. Christmas bah humbug’. Nigel cat and I are so lonely, mooning around with no purpose
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I think I may cancel Christmas this year. What’s to celebrate?
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Indeed. You write well’, barrister language eloquent, but I trust the expletives too, this whole paper round’ is shit. Christmas cancelled
C.S Lewis A Grief Observed is worthy of reading. My dear Pete annotated my copy for me a year ago, it was on my Christmas list. The pessimist in me. Joan Didion, The Year of Magical Thinking’ worthy too.
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Pooka? Wasn’t that a book in the 60s? My sister had it.