Dear all,
When my wife Anne was with me she always questioned my term ’ friends’ She said ’ They aren’t friends Geoff they’re acquaintances. There are very few friends in life.’
although she never named hers and strangely I didn’t ask. Recently I’ve been pondering Annes philosophy and suddenly realised I’ve only ever had two real friends in my life - apart from my darling Anne. Firstly my old police colleague John Gardiner who - when he was alive - for over 40yrs was always in touch either in person or on the phone. And my cousin Doug who phoned every other day to check on my welfare after I lost Anne to pancreatic cancer. Doug phoned me like this for over 9 months till I somewhat stabilised, yet even after that, still phones me to this day 21 months on after Anne passed at least 5 times a month. I never had that attention from either our son or daughter after their mum died. Even after Annes funeral I was left to cope on my own at home.
Our son visits once a fortnight and our daughter the fortnights in between. Apart from that I get no communication at all by phone unless my daughter just happens to think about ringing once in between her visits. My son never does. When they visit its obvious they love me very much but having left its very much a case of ’ out of site and out of mind’ Once I used to worry about the effect it might have on them if I died in the house and one of them was to discover my decomposing body maybe a week old. But now I couldn’t care less. Let them deal with it. Ive experienced true friends. Now I just have family.
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Hi Geoff, I understand how you must feel about being left to “get on with it” by your family. For them, their life moves on shortly after the funeral, but for us, it never moves on, we are left where our world fell apart. My family were the same, though fantastic up to the day of the funeral, there were few calls and few visits afterwards and 7 years later pretty much the same, except my two grandsons, we see each other regularly. One away at uni and the other, well uni wasn’t for him and he is a tiler, and doing very well. My sister Liz, we were always close, but after I lost Joyce we seemed to become even closer, she would call twice a week and pop in to see me at lunch time when I was home, her work was not far away. This went on for over a year before it suddenly struck me that maybe I should call her once in a while. Even now, she keeps in touch every week.
I try to remember that our children grieve too, though it’s hard to understand their lack of thoughtfulness when they have a partner and children of their own for support. I guess you can never understand what it feels like to grieve the loss of a partner until you have experienced it yourself.
I think your Anne had a great philosophy and you are lucky to have a friend like John and Doug.
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Hi to you both, oh how I agree with everything you both have written. John your wife Anne had it correct, she must have been an amazing person. Our sons are always there for me but both live abroad so pretty much useless and my sister is older than me and is house bound. So yes I am afraid to say when it does happen, well I won’t be here, so if things are in order then they will have to cope.
To finish on a funny note, I have said the best place for me to ‘drop down’ would be in Sainsbury’s but in particular the booze isle but on reconsidering the pet food isle because I do go down that isle every week.
Blessings to you both Sxxx
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Your post made me laugh Sue. For me it would have to be a DIY shop!!
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I always wanted it to be on a sunbed although I don’t like the idea of someone finding me naked and probably burned to a frazzle.
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Pleased it made you smile, just watch every time you all go into Sainsbury’s you never know if I have already been there😺
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I like the subbed idea but not where I live today, we have had snow and hailstones so I may be frozen
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Dear susie123
Sainsbury made me smile. I want to go in my own bed. My teenage grandson lives with me, but I can go days without seeing him, so if I did pop off this mortal coil it could be days before I was discovered. Probably he would seek me out when he ran out of toilet roll or coco-pops.
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Moto, only have the ‘bear’ essential number of toilet rolls and only buy Coco-pops when the packet is nearly empty. xxx
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