Category Archives: Every day survival

On homesickness

Posted in Bereavement Advice and Support, Every day survival by
Nostalgia's not what it used to be

Nostalgia’s not what it used to be (Photo credit: marc e marc)

In one of those weird moments of simultaneity, after I wrote yesterday’s post about homesickness, I opened my bedtime reading to find William Fiennes talking about the same thing. (Although he made no reference to projectile piss at a Madness concert.)

Fiennes describes how the condition was given a medical designation as far back as 1688, by a Swiss physician named Hofer. He called it ‘Nostalgia’, and described it as a ‘serious disease’ characterised by the following symptoms:

‘…continued sadness, disturbed sleep either wakeful or continuous, decrease of strength, hunger, thirst, senses diminished, and cares or even palpitations of the heart, frequent sighs, also stupidity of the mind – attending to nothing hardly, other than an idea of the Fatherland.’

The idea was picked up again in 1754 by a fella called De Meyserey, who observed ‘nostalgia’ in a military context. He emphasised the importance of ‘keeping any soldier who showed signs of homesickness busy, diverted, occupied by tasks or vigorous activity. He recommended medications that would allow the blood and humours to circulate more easily…’

Anyone who has experienced grief will recognise the symptoms, and the prescription for its ‘relief’. Diversions, medications. Anything to help contain the spread of the ‘disease’.

The passage in Fiennes’ book (The Snow Geese) helped elucidate my feelings of ‘homesickness’ within the context of my grief.

For grief is a ‘sickness’ in itself, impacting on every aspect of my new life. And as far as I can see, there is no cure other than to keep going.

Dirty Old Town

Posted in Every day survival, Uncategorized, Whatever gets you through the night by
English: The exterior of the Tyneside Cinema i...

English: The exterior of the Tyneside Cinema in Newcastle upon Tyne, looking towards Pilgrim Street. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Why would anyone feel the need to throw a plastic cup full of their own piss across a crowd of concert-goers?

I found myself pondering this as I tottered on my heels in a field on the outskirts of Newcastle this weekend, watching a Madness gig.

My heart ached as Suggs sang It Must Be Love under a clear Northern sky, the lyric invested with new meaning since M died (As soon as I wake up / Every night every day / I know that it’s you I need / To take the blues away…). But after the umpteenth arc of piss straddled the crowd, I beat a disgusted retreat into the beer tent.

Was this phenomenon unique to Geordieland, I wondered, or does this happen at gigs across the world? (I don’t do gigs, generally. This one was an adjunct to the Races and included Suggs so I made an exception.)

Geordieland. My home. It’s in the marrow of my bones. It has soothed and nurtured me since M’s death to point where I am increasingly reticent to leave it.

It’s where we met, lived, loved and ultimately, where we parted.

We sang Unknown Legend to each other under the Tyne Bridge. We walked around the Laing Art Gallery on an early date, chortling at the exhibits. We drank coffee outside the Tyneside Cinema and warm beer in the Crown Posada.

Some people dream of living where the climate is warm, the landscape beautiful. But after years of living away, our only dream was to come back here – together.

So I’m back now, without Him. It’s a way of keeping Him close. He is in the pavements, the river, the grey rainclouds overhead.

And whatever the source of the precipitation, I’m staying.

Meep meep!

Posted in Every day survival, Uncategorized, Whatever gets you through the night by
54226

Look out! Acme anvil!
(picture credit: http://www.rankopedia.com

I’ve started smoking again.

Strictly other people’s fags though – I wouldn’t dream of buying any of my own. (Have you SEEN the price of a pack of Marlboros?)

So essentially, I’m smoking on the odd occasion when I go out and find someone who is smoking, and who is prepared to give me a cigarette.

Hardly anyone smokes anymore though, with even fewer being prepared to share a commodity which costs more per ounce than solid gold, so I’m averaging about one cigarette a month.

If I’m honest, I don’t even like it. It tastes like shit and turns my brain into a waltzer. But! I can add it to the checklist of Reckless Things to do Since Sudden Death of Beloved Husband, and that is its one redeeming feature.

I find that I have stagnated at a confusing intersection on this journey. I am terrified of boarding a plane for fear of dying, yet I’m beating my liver into submission on a nightly basis with red wine. I catastrophise the potential for danger in EVERYTHING my daughter does (Look out! Falling Acme anvil!), yet feel like fucking the first man I meet.

In short, I am wilfully tap-dancing around the edge of oblivion and at the same time I’m scared shitless of my own shadow.

To an extent, I have always had this contradiction in my personality. But since M’s death, the two extremes have polarised further to a point where sometimes, I think I have regressed to my University days – the ones in which I would drunkenly ambush the lead singer of every band who played the Union and insist on taking over the mike. (Cringe!)

Anyway. Enough of this shit. My alter-ego wants to know if she can borrow one of your cigarettes?

Hunter-gatherer

Posted in Every day survival, Uncategorized by
NigelCarry_2102807c

This is not our doctor friend

Conversations with our doctor friend usually start with, ‘Could you just have a look at this rash?”

However the other night, when he joined us for a glass of wine after another gruelling shift,  I asked: ‘Working such long hours, do you miss spending time with your son?’

The answer was of course, yes.

But, he said, he is ‘programmed’ to provide for the family; for him, this involves long hours and therefore affective impulses must be muted.

Perhaps this is true of many men – they have an ’emotional stop’ button of sorts which prevents them from breaking down whenever they have to leave their kids to go away on business. Female friends who are mothers and career-women  inevitably end up making sacrifices with work (part-time hours, early finishes) in order to assuage the guilt they feel at having to leave their offspring with aged Aunt Maude for the rest of the week.

This is a generalisation of course, but in the realms of my own experience, it’s absolutely true.

I palpitate if I have to leave my daughter overnight, whereas M went off to Australia for two weeks with work, waving His cork hat behind Him. He may have wept into His Vegemite sandwiches whilst He was over there, but if He did, He never let on.

Another great sorrow, then, that I feel on His behalf. He too was ‘programmed’ to provide, a role which was so important to Him, especially when our daughter was born. I know He it would break His heart to think He’d left us to fend for ourselves (no matter how capable we are of doing it.)

So here we are, rattling about in this little house of ours, carrying on as best we can. I just hope He ain’t looking down.

Anyway, back to this rash…

BEWARE HOUSEWORK!

Posted in Every day survival, Uncategorized by
Fringe on the Royal Mile 2011 061

Fringe on the Royal Mile 2011 061 (Photo credit: byronv2)

The problem with housework is that it is so unfathomably tedious, it gives the mind an opportunity to wander blithely into that hinterland known as ‘Bad Thoughts’.

And as if on cue, today, whilst scrubbing round the u-bend, my mind got snaggled on a particularly thorny subject.

Loss.

Yes, I’ve lost M. But I’ve also lost the future we had planned together.

(Not that we had much planned actually, except to grow old together, laughing at that Channel 4 Arts Correspondent, whilst continuing to call each other Pet and Buble.)

One thing we had planned though, was to have another child – a sibling for our daughter.

Those who become embroiled in the complicated world of conception know that there is a ‘moment’ during the month in which all systems must absolutely go – you have a thirty second window before the egg explodes and the sperm shrivels or something. So that was our window, the night He died.

We’d lost a baby in the September. (Like grief, that’s another taboo subject, so DON’T tell anyone I’ve told you). I still think about that baby – it would be fifteen months old now, no doubt ginge like the first one, no doubt causing me endless worry about its blue shit. I mourn for it because of what it has come to represent – loss, on so many levels.

Yes, in theory I’m not too old to have another baby. But I don’t want any other baby  – I want HIS baby. And I am eternally grateful for the baby of His I already have.

But today, whilst on at the u-bend, I thought about my siblings – the one whose sole purpose it is to make me laugh and the one who is my best friend – and I felt like a right git for denying my daughter those relationships.

The lesson? As I always suspected –  DON’T do housework.

I Should Be So Lucky

Posted in Every day survival by
untitled

Waiting for his homies to arrive

In an echo of Kylie Minogue’s seminal hit, I did, today, feel Lucky. In Love.

(And in life, actually, but Minogue clearly didn’t feel inclined to go that far.)

The feeling of good fortune started when I was walking the dog last night. I passed a row of bungalows for the elderly and in one of the windows sat an old man, just staring out. I smiled and he smiled back.

I looked into the room where he was sitting and saw he was alone. There was no TV lighting up the corner, no cat curled on the windowsill.

It made me consider the gut-wrenching loneliness I feel on a daily basis since M has died. And it is gut-wrenching – a physical sensation of someone ripping out my guts. (And I should know – I had a Caesarean).

At least, I thought, I’m going back the loving arms of my daughter and the enthusiastic leg-humping of my dog. I am physically well and able to visit friends. I have enough money in my pocket for a bottle of wine when I need one. (Essential, according to advice from my grandpa).

I wondered about the old man. Clearly I could have been jumping to conclusions – he might well be the Peter Stringfellow of the village party scene, just waiting for his homies to turn up. But more than likely, he wouldn’t see another face until the postman arrived tomorrow afternoon.

Today,  I feel lucky to have met M, and privileged that He chose me to spend His short life with. I feel blessed that I experienced love like that – tender, respectful, intense, to the exclusion of all others.

We had just ten years, and hell, I feel cheated and enraged at it being so savagely cut short. But some people don’t have that in a lifetime.

I guess you’ve got to count your blessings while you can.

Well so fucking what?

Posted in Every day survival, Uncategorized, Whatever gets you through the night by
Image of Stephen Fry

Image of Stephen Fry (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Should grief and expressions thereof be a private affair?

Is it crass to publicise feelings, emotions, acts of recklessness, over a public forum where anyone from Tahiti to Taiwan, to the girlfriend of the Plumber with whom you were having a fling might read it?

Apologies for two posts in one day, but I am grappling with this tonight and need to set it forth. Close your ears, shut off your eyes if you’ve had enough. And if you are offended, refer to Stephen Fry:  “Well so fucking what?”

I want to write about M and the devastation His death has wrought. And none of my words are taken lightly. I have to set time aside to think about what I want to write – I am busy, I’ve got other shit to do. But the hour or two dedicated to the blog is sheer, unadulterated ‘M’ time. I can think about Him, me, my girl, my life since He’s been gone. It’s indulgence, but hey! What an indulgence!

In writing the blog,  I am attempting to decode my actions and emotions. Generally, they makes no sense until I write them down and then miraculously they all come together. I have no idea why I want to fuck the Plumber, but thankfully I write about it and it turns out it’s normal. Other people in similar situations feel the same way. This is strengthening, and as far as I can see, I am doing nothing wrong.

All compelling evidence why for me, grief should be a public affair, and why I will continue with this blog. If I am betrayed and get a brick through the window so be it.

With due respect to all other approaches to grief…

Sunscreen

Posted in Every day survival, Uncategorized by
Sue Ellen Ewing

Sue Ellen Ewing (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

“The real troubles in your life are apt to be things that never crossed your worried mind; the kind that blindside you at 4pm on some idle Tuesday…”

For me, it was 8.15pm on an idle Saturday, but Mary Schmich’s advice to the Class of ’97 has stayed with me since I first heard it read by Baz Luhrmann in his song ‘Sunscreen’.

And I continue to be blindsided on this road I’m on; ambushed by grief when I least expect it.

Last night in the pub, M’s mother showed me a photograph she had on her phone. It was of M when He was in hospital in 2008, 21 days after His emergency heart surgery. He was smiling (He was always smiling), yet He had the pallor of a man who was seriously ill. He too had been blindsided (6pm on an idle Sunday), when His aorta ruptured, spontaneously and inexplicably at the age of 33.

Seeing the picture, I fell apart. Right there in the pub, dirty great tears plopping into my Rioja! (To be fair, it wasn’t a particularly good vintage).

And I couldn’t stop. His mother desperately implemented her tried-and-tested ‘grief diversionary tactic’ – that is, to begin a conversation about their bathroom extension – but this time it didn’t work. The grief would not be vanquished! My lip wibbled like Sue-Ellen Ewing on speed, and we had to sup up before the barmaid threw us out for upsetting the emotion-free equilibrium of the pub. (Being full of North East workmen, it had flat-lined).

Even despite liberal applications of emotional sunscreen, sometimes the just grief gets through.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sTJ7AzBIJoI

My reptilian brain

Posted in Every day survival, New relationships, Uncategorized by
English: Artist interpretation of reptilian al...

English: Artist interpretation of reptilian alien. Human is shown for relative size. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Widows! You know that shame you feel when, even fleetingly, you have the desire to sleep with another man? The postman, the bus-driver, that bloke sitting opposite you right now – anyone will do.

You don’t want a relationship, or love, or even respect particularly, you just want to look up at a stubbly face from the vantage of a hairy (perhaps tattooed) chest and take in the warmth, the *smell, the closeness that has been missing from your life for sixteen long months. (*debateable).

In short, you want to engage in arguably one of the most life-affirming acts in order to feel…alive.

Perhaps, like me, you have already succumbed to the desire, and are currently listening to the sound of self-loathing and insatiable lust tussling with one another in your brain.

Well I wanted to share something I heard today in my counselling session which reassured me that my behaviour wasn’t as deviant as I’d imagined.

It turns out this is a well-documented phenomenon. Yes, other widows are doing it!

Faced with trauma and loss on this scale, humans refer to their reptilian brain, (I wasn’t even aware we HAD one!) and the familiar three ‘Fs’ of survival – Fight, Flight or Freeze – become four. I’ll leave you to ponder what the final one could be.

Psycho-babble or not, it sure as hell made me feel better.

The Petticoat Government

Posted in Every day survival by
Approx. second half of 1880s poster showing An...

Approx. second half of 1880s poster showing Annie Oakley wearing short-skirted attire (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

There were six of us this weekend.

Females, that is. My friend, C, and me, and our four daughters.

C’s husband is working away, so it’s hardly surprising that her six-year-old son, the lone male wolf, staged a protest at having been over-ruled on the choice of DVD. He wanted Star Wars, they got Annie.

“I’ll bet he can’t wait for his dad to get back,” I said to C. “Must be a fucking drag being surrounded by all these girls.”

Coming from a long tradition of feisty, independent women, I am well-versed in the power of the sisterhood. My granddad used to call us The Petticoat Government. (Under his breath, whilst fetching us our fourth round of crust-less toast as we painted each other’s nails on the bed.)

M was a tremendous foil to the sisterhood. He was comfortable enough in his own skin not to be threatened by it, and at the same time provided a strong, positive male role model for our daughter.

I am aware that since He died, my daughter has a negligible amount of contact with men. She can go for days without seeing or talking to an adult male, let alone one who loves her and will read The Gruffalo three times to her before bed.

This bothers me. Just as I miss male company, I’m willing to bet she does too.