Category Archives: Bereavement

Ooo, Hebburn is a Place on Earth

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English: Jerry Springer at a Hudson Union Soci...

English: Jerry Springer at a Hudson Union Society event in January 2011. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Don’t kids say the funniest things? (To be said in Tony Blackburn voice for ultimate effect).

My daughter last night, for example. Lying in bed, exchanging our ritual Jerry Springer-style ‘final thoughts’ before shut-eye.

Her: “Daddy didn’t die in Heaven.”

Me: “Mmmm? What do you mean?”

Her: “He died in Grandma’s bed.”

Me: “…Yes…”

Her: “Where is Heaven?”

My atheist bile began its stealthy rise. “Heaven…well…it’s not real, sweetheart.”

“Father Michael says Cheesus died in Heaven.” Pauses. No response from Mother. Sings: “I am the Lawn of the dance says He….”

It brought to mind the old play-on-words M used to sing about a town in our native North-East: ‘Ooo Hebburn is a place on earth!’

I tossed from side to side for a good while, contemplating religion. I concluded that maybe it would just be easier if I got one.

My daughter attends a faith school (Church of England I think, although not entirely certain.) It was the nearest one and to be honest, when I enrolled her I was in sudden-death induced catatonia. It could have been orthodox Jewish and I would have signed her up. But she comes home with all this gubbins and I don’t know how to deal with it. At Easter time, she was distraught because Cheesus was resurrected from the dead yet daddy wasn’t. But why wasn’t He?

“Because Cheesus is…a fairy?” I proffered.

It didn’t wash. A man in a dress had come into school and suggested that Cheesus was a real, live human being who had come back from the dead. The man was adamant about this point. He completely confused my daughter. And me.

Maybe it is just easier to believe that M has gone to Heaven. To an, ehem, ‘better place’, because actually the prospect of anything else is too much to cope with. In a sense, it’s too difficult to explain.

Yeah, at 10pm on a weary Friday night, that suits me actually.

He’s in Heaven, sweetheart. With Cheesus and the fucking Wombles.

If You Died I’d.

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DSC03355

The two loves of my life, six days before the big one died.

Cardiac surgeons! How come Eddie Large (20 stone and aged 72) lives on and prospers ten years after a heart transplant, whereas the love of my life foundered three years after aortic reconstruction surgery aged 37?

Answers in plain English on the back of a postcard please.

I became aware of Eddie’s death-dodging triumph tonight whilst watching – well, not watching, exactly, staring dumbly at – All Star Mr and Mrs. Ever seen it before? Me neither. I wish I’d never tuned in.

The premise hasn’t changed for a hundred years, only the prize (it’s gone from carriage clock to charity donation) and the calibre of the contestants (formerly members of the public, now people who were famous but are back to being members of the public again.)

Eddie Large and his wife Patsy – er – Large came stumbling onto the stage (no really, they did, Eddie tripped) and announced the startling transplant news. Happy though I was for Eddie, I couldn’t help feeling affronted. What’s his secret?

The show went from bad to worse, as VTs of the three happy couples showed them all at home, fluorescent-toothed and in love, kissing in slo-mo and telling the public how they couldn’t live without the other.

“I can’t imagine life without him,” said Yvette Fielding of her husband Wotzizname.

“I can’t talk about how wonderful she is, otherwise I’ll just fill up,” said Eddie of Patsy.

And who can blame them? I feel the same about my husband. I couldn’t, and can’t, imagine life without Him. I can’t talk about how wonderful He is and was without filling up.

I feel resentful, though, that other couples still have the luxury of only imagining the worst. I feel resentful that Eddie survived what my husband could not. This is a selfish, reproachful and childish response, I know, but there it is.

We used to say to each other, M and I, the line from Lemn Sissay’s Love Poem: If you died I’d.

He did, but I haven’t. I feel selfish about that too.

Pithy post with a reference to Psy

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Gangnam_Style_PSY_19logo

Gangnam_Style_PSY_19logo (Photo credit: KOREA.NET – Official page of the Republic of Korea)

5 Things He has missed so far:

  • Our daughter’s first day at school
  • Her successful employment of the word ‘actually’ in a sentence
  • The organisation He used to work for being at the centre of a global scandal (what would You have made of that, pet?)
  • Two Spring-times
  • That bloke singing Gangnam Style (arguably not a bad thing)

5 Things He will miss in the future:

  • Everything. Can’t think of anything else.

Two fatal errors

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English: cigarette butts

English: cigarette butts (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The family weekend at my Dad’s was unusual in two respects – there were no arguments and I was first to bed. Granted, we’d been drinking since lunchtime, but I pride myself on normally being the penultimate one to stagger up the wooden hill at these events – Dad is always last on the pretext of ‘locking up’, which is shorthand for a whisky nightcap. (Gotcha!)

This time, however, I was tucked up by eleven, shedding fat mascara tears onto the pillow. It was my sister-in-law’s fault. She has the misfortune of being a good listener and a pragmatist, and also had a soft spot for M, all of which combine to make her a lamb to the slaughter in the face of my mental state.

She made two fatal errors. Earlier in the day, she mentioned Him in conversation. No-one EVER mentions Him. Indeed, she went so far as to reminisce about a time when He was alive. Then, much later, she invited me outside for a cigarette and put an arm around my shoulder. Consequently, she bore the brunt of an emotional eruption of seismic proportions. She stood, helpless against the onslaught and said, finally;

“I’ll dispose of the fag ends. At least it’s one thing I can do to help you.”

I’ve been weepy for days, so it was perhaps inevitable that a sun-soaked, booze-fuelled family gathering without my beloved family member was going to be tough. And the reality is, there’s nothing anyone can do. Except dispose of the fag ends.

The Bridge of Love

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A detail of the Bridge of Love in Kiev

A detail of the Bridge of Love in Kiev (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

“There is a land of the living and a land of the dead and the bridge is love.”

A friend who has also faced the agony of sudden death of a loved one introduced me to this Thornton Wilder quote on the day of M’s funeral. I didn’t understand it at the time, but it has started to make sense to me as time has gone on. I have frantically tried to reach Him since He died – I am weary with it – but I have to finally accept that nothing will bring Him back from the land in which He now resides. Only my love for Him remains.

Accepting this is the thing I’m having most trouble with. I see graveyards with their lines of tombstones and floral tributes. The hyacinth-studded world of the dead. But I cannot place M in that world – probably because He doesn’t belong in it yet. So where is He? I have tussled with this question night after night. Where is He? Where are You? He is neither here nor there. (He is in the bottom of my wardrobe, actually, but that’s just dust.)

This is why giving Him up to the grave is so unthinkable for me at the moment. Placing His remains in the ground and marking them with a headstone is so final, so permanent. It is akin to upping anchor on His ship and sending Him off to that land of no return. At least while He’s dust in my wardrobe He is still within reach. I feel as if I’m in choppy waters at the moment, that anchor is the only thing keeping me from being set adrift.

The Bard’s birthing room

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English: Birth place of William Shakespeare, S...

English: Birth place of William Shakespeare, Stratford upon Avon, England. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Several years ago, M and I visited Shakespeare’s house in Stratford-upon-Avon with some friends. The house stands alone and detached – a wattle-and-daubed anachronism in the middle of a busy commercial street. It was difficult to approach it with the reverence it no doubt deserves though, as the four of us couldn’t stop laughing. Each room had been set up as an approximation of its 17th century self, each with a descriptor stuck near the door. “This was probably the birthing room”. “This was probably the scullery”.

“This was probably the shitter,” my mate said, peering into a small locked closet round the back.

The problem was, we all knew how we were supposed to feel on a pilgrimage such as this  – awe, deference, respect – yet shuffling around the tight little corridors behind a fleet of Japanese tourists, I’ll admit I felt nothing. And neither did the others. Except an overwhelming desire to take the piss.

My experience of widowhood brings to mind that trip. I think I know how I’m supposed to feel. Indeed people tell me how they think I should feel and how they think they would feel if it were them. But in reality, how I feel bears no relation to how I think I should be feeling.

Just as I was a bad visitor to the Bard’s birthing room, I wonder sometimes if I am ‘bad widow’. Because some days, I feel positively joyful. Other days I wonder how the hell I’m going to go on. Most of the time, I just want to take the piss.

The Rule of Three

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Dog sunny Day Afternoon

Dog sunny Day Afternoon (Photo credit: allert)

Do I resent the dog? I was signing a birthday card for my Dad today and there he was, the little git, his name third on the list of well-wishers after me and my daughter. I’d even drawn a cute little paw-print on his behalf in place of a kiss.

Thing is, the pooch wouldn’t even be part of the family, let alone sending paw-prints to my Dad, if M hadn’t died. He was a comfort purchase, a distraction. Something I’d always aspired to own, one day, once my desire to circumnavigate the globe and earn a million had been sated. Besides, M always vetoed such an acquisition. Ever the pragmatist, He worried it would end up like the dog pictured. Don’t worry – the hound is definitely part of the family now. Head on the pillow. Raincoat. Whiskey nightcap.  Much like the dog pictured, actually.

In the very early days, I found it hard to write cards without M’s name. I tentatively included Him on birthday cards, as if writing His name would magically mean our little family was still intact. Those in receipt of the cards must have thought I was delusional. But to not include Him was yet further evidence – if any were needed – that a) He was dead and b) I was now a single parent. My daughter and I, two lone female warriors in the cut-and-thrust world of greetings card etiquette.

When did I stop including Him? A few months after I got the dog, I think. The triumvirate that was M, me and our daughter became Me, my daughter and the dog. Not that the dog has replaced M, but somehow he makes me feel less alone. Despite his relentless bloody chewing and his exuberance to get up at the first sign of dawn, I like having him around.

It seems the rule of three exerts itself in grief, too.

Tales of the Unexpected

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1st edition

1st edition (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Strange what a lock of hair comes to represent. I have ashes, I have clothes, I have footprints in shoes, but the lock of hair that I took from the body in the funeral home is the hardest thing to contemplate because it is the only thing which remains of the living being. Every other cell of His body is burned. I look at it (very occasionally) and remember running my fingers through it when it was part of a full head of hair.

I had an unsettling and slightly comedic thought last night (drink-fuelled and missing Him dreadfully) – what if I’d had Him stuffed? Like one of those glassy-eyed badgers you see in display cabinets, where the teeth are always not quite right. How wonderful would it be, I thought, to have Him sitting on the sofa in His usual spot, with every mole and blemish in place. Conversation wouldn’t be great, granted, but at least if I had Him posed with His hand reaching over to mine He would be there, instead of a pile of ash in my wardrobe. It would be like the old days – drinking in moderation whilst laughing at that Arts Correspondent on Channel 4 News.

Tales of the Unexpected plotlines aside, I just miss Him so much I swear given the option now I might just go for it. I have come to the realisation that He is in my head constantly on one level or another. Like tinnitus. Sometimes He’s loud, other times He’s just background noise, but He’s there nonetheless.

So, having forfeited the opportunity for taxidermy, the lock of hair is all I have left. What would Roald Dahl have made of that?

The sock, the genitals, the musical genius

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Love Sick

Love Sick (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

James bloody Blunt. I wouldn’t listen to him unless my daughter (aged 5) didn’t keep asking to hear him in the car. Yes, it’s my C.D. But I was young when I bought it. And woozily in love with my husband.

I have forcibly rediscovered it and actually, I kinda like it. I’m putting that out there because this blog is about honesty and raw emotion, and though James is far cry from my main musical love, Bob Dylan, I have found myself on the motorway weeping at the profundity of his lyric. Well, OK, maybe not the profundity of his lyric, but the fact that he seems to record everything in D-Minor (the saddest of all keys), therefore rendering me a wibbling wreck.

I have talked before about Gary Barlow (the sock, the genitals, the musical genius), and the reaction he elicits from me since M’s death. But unlike M, music was never something that was hugely important in my life. I’ve always looked on in awe at people who have extensive vinyl collections and are able to talk about Northern Soul without reference to Ant n Dec. However, since He died, music has taken on new importance. I find solace in it in a way that I never have before.

Take Dylan’s lyric from If You See Her Say Hello:

And though our separation, it pierced me to the heart. She still lives inside of me, we’ve never been apart.

Listened to sung in Dylan’s inimitable plaintive warble, it is simply heart-breaking. My separation from M is akin to some kind of torture, but this one line may end up on His gravestone (if I can ever bring myself to give Him up to the grave).

Meanwhile: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NgViOqGJEvM

Number 11

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Take Out

Take Out (Photo credit: AMERICANVIRUS)

It’s hard not to feel the weight of the loss of one’s dead husband at a gathering where everyone is in couples. I have just come home from a night with some lovely friends, none of whom make outward shows of their togetherness (unlike those nauseating types like M and I used to be, kissing at every opportunity to the point where people would say ‘get a room!’). But the odd thing slips out which makes the widow in me lurch to the fore and shout ‘Taxi!’

The order for takeaway food tonight is a case in point.

“Let’s work out what each couple owes,” someone said.

It was fourteen pounds per couple. And seven pounds for me. I was number eleven in the group. The odd one out. I realise that divorcees may feel like this, or single people. But whether you loved or hated your ex-partner, or long for a meaningful relationship, the emptiness of the feeling of your partner having once been there – and the vacuum of the space that they once occupied – is so devastating, the only thing to do is pour another tumbler-full of Rioja and hand over the money.

I miss Him tonight. To me, He was so vivid in that group, I could see Him, sitting with the guys, riffing on the guitar.

I just wish it wasn’t Forever.