@FleurDeLis
You are doing so well, your post has many positive elements to it. I too had an amazing, sunshiny cozy lockdown with my gorgeous Steve, a really special time. Our wedding was cancelled in June, we were disappointed. We watched a nest of Wrens flee the nest, fed the birds, gardened together, drank and sunbathed as if we were holidaying. Steve would cook me omelettes and keep my drink topped up. He would get the sun bed out and say ‘Thats it, enough now’ because I rarely sat still, hence the Cinders nickname he gave me… For a short time at the end, I became Cinders Nightingale… jokingly threatening him with becoming Matron!!!
my relationship with Steve was just me and Steve, without interference, even if it threatened to come, we would shoo shoo it away and worked very hard to avoid any drama infiltrating into our lives…we spent every day living for today and ‘just being’. We were very lucky, we had no bad times together but our time was short. Our Covid wedding in August was just the best, we had no idea what was lurking in his body. He knew there was something due to symptoms that started at the end of July and kept it to himself as he wanted the wedding to be the wedding and not marred with worry, I had no idea and he was well, a little tired maybe but he was well, I had no reason to suspect that he was deteriorating at that point. You may recall - it was literally diagnosis and then 13 days later he died.
What I’m getting to here is, I had no idea, I was capable of loving someone the way that I loved him… it was all so easy to do, so very natural. I had never had that. I’m not saying I have not loved before but not in the simplistic and unspoken way we worked together. So straightforward.
I feel cheated, I should have had this beauty in my life for longer but it wasn’t to be for us. The key thing is, I would not change it, I would not wish to have not had that time ------ can you see? — can you see? How lucky I was to find that?
Are you lucky, to have had that?
Sometimes, I am so lost, so devastated that I would use that scale and say a 0 too. However, I tend to see it as bad day, ok day (There are no good days right now) and I almost make the decision to have the bad day… why… because… I am actually choosing to grieve and that is ok! I hope you can see where I am going with this… we don’t want to let them go… we are scared of losing the memories… we are scared that if we don’t have those intense feelings of devastation that we will forget… we are scared that if we appear ok and look normal, people are then, going to think we are ok, when WE ARE NOT, and we wont be for a long time if not ever. But, I almost wanted a badge at the beginning, on my head saying MY HUSBAND HAS DIED… I would go to the local shop and someone would say Have a good day and I would say I cant, my husband died … days … weeks ago… I wanted them to know… Now I just say yep you too…
When I go back to work, I may cry all the way home on some days … I may shut myself down and not speak to people in the evenings… who knows but, what I do know, is I will reflect on every day, I will compartmentalize and choose when to have my Steve moments. When we were together, but I was away or he was working away, Id say… Im Stestarved… now Im Steveless… hes busy elsewhere in another dimension of his journey…I will plan my Stemoments and then move through my day.
It all seems so brave and I am better today and yesterday - over the turn of 20/21 - I was so so on the floor but I’ve decided, I cant spend every day like that and I’m working really hard. I may come across something later that will send me into a sobbing spin… and then I will shake a tail feather and avoid it for a time. I am going to strategise slowly, in time, how and when I grieve and when I give my time to grieving.
The reason I am doing this is 1. I am a control freak 2. I am methodical. 3. I know us humans can do anything we want with our minds and we choose how we think, we have control over our grief.
I have learnt so much from Steve, the wonderful wonderful straight forward, non complicated, giving person he was… there was no space for fuss and bother - we were very similar like that … I intend to use this time because I learnt so much about myself…
@FleurDeLis I want this to help you think about your time, what you have learnt and I hope that this post gives food for thought and how we can take control.
We will never be ok, I have no doubt but we will smile, we will live and we will have moments of content and enjoyment of the world and we will smile towards an empty space, knowing that they are there always because they are within us darling. The way we spend and show them we love them and them us, has changed but they are not gone. We have to live a different life but they will always be a part of it x x x
Please trust, I know how vile this is at times I am distraught, I can think the right way, act the right way when all the time, the depth of me is screaming This is so unfair, this is cruel etc etc… and then in my heart, I know that others are going through it, others have worse, elderly people on their own who have just lost and have no one. People who have lost their children in car crashes or accidents. People who are not loved, who are living a hell life right now. People who have not ability to be happy because of their lives… I have to … I have to hold my head up and be grateful for what I had and still what I have which is the memory of the best relationship of my life … I wont title it as some people do but I do know that I was meant to be there for him as he was me and we were meant to be exactly where we were at that time …
All the love… Im thinking of you and every single person who has lost — these are hard times for all of us ------ I reach out my hands with love - sheer love and hope that we can all live with the loss and pain and give x x x x Cinders