I lost my darling Aunt last year, we are coming up to the first anniversary next week. I don’t know where the year has gone, it’s passed me by in a haze of uncertainty, grief, anger, battling with a useless solicitor and argumentative fellow executor, plus my feeling so lost without her. I was her main carer in her last few years and she was my best friend, confidante, partner in crime and second mum after my mum had died when I was 20 in 1984.
Yesterday was the anniversary of me finding her slumped in the bathroom following a major stroke and spending all day in hospital with her. From evidence I saw I worked out that it had happened the night before when she was preparing for bed. So, I had all the guilt feelings of if only I’d stayed another half hour, I might have been there when it happened and could have got her to hospital sooner!
I just miss her so much! She was a big part of my life. I’d garden for her whilst she sat and supervised, take her to appointments, take her to visit friends and family and out for coffee or lunch. In earlier years when she was fitter we would go on holiday together.
I can’t get used to not being able to pick up the phone to chat to her about anything - quite often just something silly I wanted to share with her. I get jealous of my husband sometimes when he phones his brother (they have the same relationship with each other) and they chat about non-consequential things, because I miss that with her!
I’ve had 6 weeks counselling, all I could get and then that was private through a charity, and it helped with my anger, but I’m still like a rudderless ship out at sea with no anchor.
I’ve got recordings of her voice on my answering machine, but I can’t listen to them at the moment as it would just tip me over the edge! I have terrible trouble sleeping, constantly waking up in the middle of the night, my mind wandering everywhere. What if! Why didn’t I! What should I have done differently? Hope she can forgive me for not fully following out her wishes with her funeral etc as I had pressure from others to do things differently! She didn’t want food at her funeral as it always gets wasted as people over cater, I had to compromise and provide cake as “some people were travelling from afar and would need food of some sort” - hope she’d understand. Her will wasn’t actually written how she’d told me it was written, so her wishes aren’t being followed there either. Bad advice from a solicitor who wasn’t at the firm long and also my Aunt was visually impaired following an earlier stroke so obviously hadn’t heard what the solicitor read out to her before she signed the will. It’s all been s major journey of compromise, so I hope she’d understand.
Some days I just want to curl up in a ball and tell everyone where to go! I am soooo grateful to my husband for his patience with me, he has been amazing, coping with my anger which was (wrongly) directed at him for the slightest thing, my moping, disinterest in life, constant crying, etc. He deserves a medal!
There have been good times through the year, but all tempered by the fact that she wasn’t here to share them with:cry:
