Part of me is always missing

[Prof]

Yes, we are listening and yes, the second year is worse than the first.

For so much of the first year, we are in shock, disbelief and a general numbness, acting as a sort of anaesthetic and protecting us from total breakdown.

Once the first anniversary has passed, reality makes its full impact. We become resigned to all that we have had to do alone and begin to look at the future with greater dread.

Compounding this is the behaviour of family and friends. They really have moved on, long since. Their lives are unchanged and they simply cannot comprehend that we who are left, are no longer the same people we once were, let alone capable of “moving on”. Presently, we are treading water, desperately trying to keep from going under. Making headway is impossible - for now.

We need to turn on our backs and float, have a rest, collect our wits and thoughts. Some can do this but for others, it is the same frantic running to keep on the spot. Perhaps we should be bold enough to tell it as it is to the next person who asks how we are. I feel like saying to one such lady, “If I give you a heavy boulder to carry, and ask you to walk with it round the village without stopping to put it down, do you think you can do that? if so, when you get back to where you started, do you think you can go on again without stopping for a rest or putting the boulder down? Do you think the boulder will get easier to bear or more difficult?”

My experience of grief has been like this, a burden I cannot put down and which grows heavier and more awkward the longer I carry it. However, please, all of you who are suffering this right now, believe me when I say that there ARE resting places after all. We didn’t see them the first time round or the second and third but then comes the day when we find we HAVE rested a little and the burden HAS seemed lighter. We may not realise it at the time but once experienced, we can begin to look out for the helping hands and places of refuge, sometimes found in the most surprising ways.

I know people who have, “got over it, moved on” as they have told me so themselves. Their lives are not the same but they are enjoyable and quite quickly after their bereavement. I might have known that I would be the other sort.

Perhaps it is different for people with families, where it is natural to keep talking together, looking at photos and reminiscing over all the minutiae so totally outside the comprehension of even close friends.

For me it was in total lockdown. We couldn’t have a proper funeral and there was no hugging and crying together. I have no family and was in no-one’s bubble but my lovely cousin stepped in and brought me through those first weeks spent in deep fog.

Even so, no-one talks about my husband. I want him to be part of the conversation. Well, actually I want him to be the centre of the conversation. How is possible to spend forty minutes talking about Boris or rugby or cooking or the health service and no minutes at all on the only subject that interests me? I want him to be the subject, just as he was the core of my life and now, I find, still is.

There are stages to grief and these cannot be skipped or gone round. We must pass through them in order to “move on” like a board game. I have missed that sharing, caring, talking stage. I am in gaol, have no get out free card and there is no six to throw. I am stuck. If you are stuck with me, there is hope.

Fortunately I am receiving counselling from a really good psychiatrist who understands and who will help me to take steps. I have had glimpses of what is possible - even brief moments of happiness so I know something can happen. I have discovered that my life didn’t end. It changed out of all recognition for something I don’t want but may learn to if I live long enough. It would be unrealistic to expect sixty years of loving and cherishing to be left behind after twelve months or even two years.

I am wading through the hated, daily, lonely chores and facing serious health issues - alone, afraid and sorrowing but holding onto hope and faith in a future that is more than just endurable, one that holds contentment until I can finally rejoin my soulmate.

May God bless us all.

For now, my mantra is, “i’m doing this so that he never will.”

[Solost]

Very wise and beautiful words Prof. I understand exactly about wanting your beloved to be the centre of attention in a conversation, how can anyone possibly talk about anything else? I feel the same, my nightmare also happened in Covid lock down, actually it was the first day of our 2nd total lockdown here in Italy (15/11
/20), and it was all so lonely, no home visits allowed, limited number in church, and so on… The sad part is that nothing changed a few months later when restrictions were lifted, it seemed as if Covid was just an excuse for people to ‘ignore’ or ‘avoid’ us. Not that I really wanted to talk to anyone, apart from my kids who live with me,or my parents and FIL.
Thank you again for your comforting post, I hope you, too, find some solace in sharing your grief here with us, and together help each other along this rocky route which we had never expected to come across.

[Debbie57]

Hi Prof,

Lovely words, I often feel I’m carrying that heavy boulder around. We couldn’t have a proper funeral either due to lockdown, many people wanted to come so we had to compromise by having the service streamed. No getting together after the service to laugh cry and remember him.

It is so sad you haven’t any close family to talk to about your husband, I understand the need to make our husbands the centre of our universe. I feel very lucky that even my Friends are still happy for me to talk about him, and our family talk about dad, granddad all the time, he still very much is the centre of our lives.

I read many books about grief, and one sticks in my mind that says, we don’t move on, but forward on our journey taking our loved ones with us as we go.

I often look back at photos of us when we were young, can’t quite get my head around he has gone and that makes me sad. But I do know I love him even more and that will have to do for now, until we are together again.

Debbie X

[Jodel712]

Hi Prof
What a powerful & emotional post, resonates with me being almost 2 & a half years along the journey. I’m currently at our apartment in Spain, the one we bought & were intending to retire to in 2020. Derek had taken early retirement in 2014, we bought it initially as a holiday home until I could take early retirement due March 2020. He unexpectedly passed away just before Christmas 2019.
I’m sitting here now in our favourite bar, thinking on the one hand what should have been & on the other as I say, putting my big girl pants on because I feel I need to try & enjoy it. The first year, people are with you on your journey, the second not so much but I’m lucky to have friends & family who will talk about Derek & I bring him into most conversations because he’s part of me.
I’ve made a conscious effort not to be the sad person in the corner who doesn’t join in because that’s not what he would want, but every social interaction such as weddings etc. takes a whole lot of effort & the emotional after effects take a few days getting over.
Making that life for yourself is the hardest thing you can ever do, because our life ended with them, your joint dreams & future. But what else can we do?
Love to you all Xx

[Grandma]

Dear prof,

Your post should be passed to everyone who joins this forum.
Wise, wonderful thought provoking words & I thankyou. They make perfect sense to me 15 months into my journey.
So much gratitude.
G. Xx

[Prof]

Dear Solost, Debbie, Jodi, Grandma and everyone hurting,

Thank you all for your posts, which show me I am not alone. Each of us grieves uniquely and we feel as though our loss is so much worse than anyone else’s. In a way it is. If I break my toe and you break yours, it doesn’t ease the pain of either of our broken toes but at least we can empathise. Our pain thresholds may be different and we are each entitled to feel as though we hurt much more than anyone else. In fact, we do because our own pain is the only one we can truly feel.

I have never been an envious person but since the loss of my love, I have come close to it, wishing that I had a family, wishing that at least some of our old friends were still alive and looking with longing at couples.

You are right, Solost, to say that COVID has provided an excuse for avoidance. That was the first sadness but, for me, not the worst. That came when all restrictions were lifted and the world went back to “normal”

For us, there is no normality and I became even more sick at heart than I could have imagined possible. One particular friend, during lockdown, told me every day how bored she was. how awful not to be able to see her sons and grandchildren, how in need of a holiday she was. Now she tells me most days about her holiday bookings, where they have been, what they have done and seen and which outings and parties they are planning. She is fanatical about her garden, which must not have a blade of grass more than 4 cm high. When I was lamenting that my husband’s masterpiece of a garden was looking like a jungle and upsetting me badly, she told me I was “being very silly” for caring about it.

During lockdown, people had time for me so I had plenty of emails, texts and occasional visits, albeit just standing behind closed gates. Going back to normal has made things far worse because work and leisure have taken away my former contacts.

Still, I am feeling something changing within me. Like you, Debbie, photos have been my companions and now I am finding that they provoke smiles as well as tears. I still long for the opportunity for those spontaneous outings or a simple lunch in the garden (I can’t do that alone, despite making the attempt a couple of times) but I can remember with pleasure the occasions.

Jodie, being in company at a wedding would be impossible for me at the moment as I still struggle to be with more than a couple of people at a time. I don’t understand this because I have always been a sociable person. Last week I had to attend a funeral, the first since my husband’s. It was supremely difficult but I think no-one would have guessed the turmoil inside as I spoke to groups of people and comforted the mother who had lost her daughter. Even then, I was selfish enough to think that my loss was worse and that I must be hurting more. I’m ashamed to admit it and wouldn’t to anyone else.

For us, everything has changed, not just the daily, long-distance 'phone call. The physical absence is with us, here and now, every day and for those of us who are retired, there is no escaping the gaping hole, which inhabits our homes. It is a loss like no other because normal existence ends with the death of a spouse.

Nevertheless, on goes the bright smile and no-one is aware that there’s nothing behind it.

I heard just the other day that bereavement is like entering a dark tunnel. My interpretation of that is, there is bad news and good news. The bad news is that it is long and twisting and we can see no end. The good news is that it IS a tunnel, not a cave. In other words, there is an end and there is light. The bad news is that it has closed off behind us and there’s no going back. The good news is that we have taken the first steps and have begun our journey toward the light.

We are travelling alone unless we count the guiding hand of God and we are all at different places along the way. We cannot SEE but we can HEAR one another. I can hear your weeping and I can hear your words of encouragement. The really good news is that there are resting points if we can find them in the dark and where we can put down a little bit of the load we are each carrying. As we travel round each bend, the air becomes less suffocating and we begin to sense that there is an end. We are encouraged and our faltering steps become confident strides. That feeling may not stay with us for long but it is enough to sustain us next time we feel in the depths of despair.

Thank you all for being with me on this journey through the dark.

God bless us all.

[Grandma]

I have a deep admiration for profs words so beautifully put.
Reminded me of a comment from a neighbour last summer -
I remarked how I missed my husband’s shirts blowing on the line & she laughed and said :
Are you just going to keep them & put them out on the line then??
What i would give to have them in the washing pile again.
I have since had to distance myself from her & her unbelievable comments - too many to mention.
She still has her husband I may add!
G. Xx

[Prof]

I still have two of my husband's shirts in the ironing cupboard. Ironing has never been something I enjoy but now I am pulled two ways. I so want to feel that action and the satisfaction of getting them just right for him but won't/can't allow myself to do it because then I shall have ironed for him for the last time.

The few people taken into my confidence have just started at me uncomprehendingly. Perhaps I am strange.
Love to everyone enduring a solitary bank holiday and bravo to those able to embrace it.
God bless.

[Jodel712]

I have lots of my husbands clothes, gave a lot of his work stuff to charity but he had a multitude of T-shirts that have memories attached to them. Cricket ones as we followed them n many countries as members of the Barmy Army. He was also our Mr Christmas & had many Christmas shirts that I can’t bear to part with either. The fact he passed away just before Christmas makes his favourite time of year so hard now, almost unbearable but I do it for him.
I’m in Spain in our apartment for the Jubilee weekend & a few weeks beyond, I’m on my own but in a way it’s an escape from putting on a show.
We can only do the best we can Xx

[Sharon60]

I wear my husband’s socks, tee shirts and pyjamas.

[Debbie57]

I still have alot of my husband’s clothes, trainers, shoes and slippers, he loved wearing caps, still have those too.

[Grandma]

When a neighbours dad passed many years ago, his mum worried about all the possessions & clothing as she couldn’t part with anything.
Family told her to enjoy the things around her and they would sort everything out after she had passed too.

G. X

[Sharon60]

My husband loved his caps. On the day of his funeral I wanted to take one and put it on the coffin but couldn’t find any of them. I used to joke with him about getting rid of them but he clearly did not want one to go. I might try wearing one myself one day but they make me too sad yet.

[Prof]

I wear my husband’s jumpers, which bury me but it’s the closest I can get to him. His shoes, on the other hand, are forming a wall of their own in the garage - walking, running, cycling, gardening, slippers, trainers and dress shoes - all size 13. No-one wants them and I have become used to having them. I wear his socks as bed socks because they are roomy but I did that when he was still with me. Nearly all his suits, trousers and jackets went to charity shops, taken by “helpful” people when I was still not thinking straight. Perhaps, now, I would have kept some. I don’t know why I still have his shirts and a huge rack of ties.
I find myself holding onto such trivial things, such as a scrap of paper on which he had scribbled down the meter readings or his “to do” list with sizes of wood he needed to order.
God bless.

[Sharon60]

I have kept such scraps with my husband’s writing including the last meter reading he took. Seem too personal to part with.

[Prof]

Thank you, Sharon.
It helps to know that I’m not alone.
God bless.

[Debbie57]

I have a couple of scraps of paper he wrote on, one was a shopping list.x

[Alston56]

Dear @Prof,
I smiled a wry smile when I read your comment about holding on to scraps of paper on which your husband had written, and similar comments from others. I have done exactly the same with my wife’s writings. I have a collection of old and more recent letters, bills, etc, on which she had scribbled her comments; on her table in front of our couch are a couple of little paper scraps on which she’d written for me details of bills to be paid, and that was literally just a few days before she passed. I still have a stack of papers in our dining room which I need to sort through, all of them containing her writings. I try to scan any general corrrespondence, letters, etc, onto my computer, so I can find things more quickly and it saves me from having to keep the paper originals (yes, I’m a hoarder), but I need the original documents with my wife’s writings because those are the ones on which she put her hand directly to paper. Virtually all of my wife’s clothes are where she left them, and I have tried not to move any of her other belongings too. It’s as if I need to have our home as it was the day she left, almost like an alter to her memory. It is strange how our minds work and how the tiniest of items that have the slightest trace of our partners become so significant. As long as I am here - which I hope isn’t for much longer - I will never get rid of her things, because their presence helps to keep her more alive to me. Some other poor soul will have the task of emptying our house once I’m gone.

[Grandma]

.
The last thing hubby bought me was an eraser for using when I’m knitting
for marking the rows.
It may seem a bit odd, I know, but I hope to have this for as long as im still able to knit.
His writing was quite illegible - but I’m keeping the 2020 calendar with his notes & reminders on it.

[Broken2222]

Hi I still have all hubby’s things. They not going anywhere.stopping here with me . I also have a lot of his old work diary’s .only numbers in and things I don’t have a clue about but it’s his writing. I was always on at him to sort them out and get rid of them .to me they were rubbish . Now they are precious . So glad he took no notice of me .xtake care x