Tag Archives: bereavement

Kevin McCloud’s Secret to Anti-Ageing

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In idle moments, I have wondered how Kevin McCloud from Grand Designs manages not to age.

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Kevin McCloud, aged 97
(photo credit: http://www.swindonweb.com)

His bald patch seems to have miraculously maintained the same circumference, and years of raising eyebrows at crackpot projects appear to have had a negligible effect on his forehead.

I realised the other night how he does it. By appearing in repeats.

M used to love Grand Designs, hence why I have studiously avoided it since He died. However, my daughter and I ended up watching it while we waited for The Apprentice to come on. (Go, sultry doctor, go!)

Again I marvelled at McCloud’s age-dodging prowess, until the date of the project was revealed. May 2006.

It was the year M and I married. May would have been around the time I was ready to combust with the pressure of choosing napkins for the tables.

It struck me how much has changed in the seven short years since Tim from Cirencester started his Grand Design, and M and I said ‘I do’. How little was foreseen of life in its current form.

In that time, I gave birth. We moved house four times. M fell ill. I became frightened of the world. M died. I faced off the world. I bought a house and a dog. I started a PhD.

And unlike Kevin, I aged. Not only physically, but mentally. I became well-versed in the workings of the blood pressure monitor, in Warfarin and in cardiac rehabilitation. Then I had to watch Him die, and face the reality of a life without Him. As a single, widowed parent.

Can I hit the stop button and appear in a repeat too?

“Would you love me if I walked like this?”

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M

As someone who needs something to worry about, my current fear is that I might forget Him.

OK, not Him, but the little things He used to do.

One buried memory came to me in my sleepless state last night. Sometimes I would wake to find Him propped up on His elbow, asleep, swaying to and fro like one of those wooden pecking bird toys. So enthusiastic was the swaying, that occasionally His nose would nudge into my back. (Yes, you sniggering at the back, it WAS His nose.)

Another bed-based memory is of Him sleeping, perfectly straight, in a diagonal across the mattress, bisecting it into two equal-sized triangles, leaving just a tiny corner for me to curl up into.

I found the empty wrapper of a Breathe-Right strip at the back of a drawer and it reminded me of how I used to hold His nose during the night to stop Him snoring.

Sometimes when He walked in front of my daughter and me He’d lift His knees up one by one and say, ‘Would you love me if I walked like this?’

Photos hold static memories, or memories surrounding a moment in time. But the camera cannot capture the essence of the person, the precious M minutiae which made Him, and our relationship, unique.

The Prophecy of the Bald Surgeon

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Agadoo

Agadoo (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

There was a crash outside our village this weekend. Ambulances, police cars, rubber-neckers, the lot.

My heart sank at the prospect of fatalities. Which poor sod would get the policeman at their door telling them that their loved one was dead?

Whilst no less devastating, losing your spouse suddenly is a different experience to watching them succumb to a long illness.

You have no time to prepare, to say goodbye, for them to make any last minute confessions or request Agadoo be played at the funeral.

Equally, you don’t face the agony of the slow diminishment of the person you love, of steering them through the realities of imminent death and the fact that they will never see their kids grow up.

In a sense, with M, we went through both of these scenarios.

He fell ill, suddenly and catastrophically, in 2008. He was wheeled into emergency open-heart surgery, not knowing whether He would see daylight again.

But He survived, and the prognosis was good. A ‘normal lifespan’ was to be expected, according to the Bald Surgeon in the Blue Scrubs. (How I came to fear the Bald Surgeon in the Blue Scrubs  – he and his team of wingmen would come sweeping onto the ward and announce yet further obstacles to M’s recovery – collapsed lung, mild mid-brain stroke – but despite it all, we were discharged with the belief that a ‘normal lifespan’ was to be expected.)

I had watched my beloved suffer though; I had seen the fear in His eyes. His rehabilitation was gruelling, but His determination to live somehow over-rode every setback.

It seemed like God’s final insult, therefore, to have finished Him off in the way He did. Unceremoniously, with no regard for how far we had come.

So much for God and Bald Surgeons.

A Very Moving Moment

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Statler and Waldorf

Statler and Waldorf (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

“Not bloody tennis again,” said my daughter, aged 5.

“Hail John Inverdale and be quiet. I need to watch it,” I replied.

We were trussed up on the sofa in our pyjamas under a duvet, bickering like Waldorf and Statler. Me with my Rioja, her with her milk and biscuit. The dog was also in residence, inevitably, chewing on the fetid raw-hide remnant he had just exhumed from the garden.

This is what we’ve become. Waldorf, Statler and Animal.

Most parents I know have their kids bathed, booked and in bed by seven. Our evening routine consists of a charging of glasses, a short bicker about choice of televisual viewing (Mummy TV presides after 8pm – my daughter now loves The Apprentice and is rooting for that sultry doctor), then an exodus to bed around 10pm.

Occasionally we’ll have pillow-talk:

“I don’t want curly hair.”

“I don’t like broccoli.”

“Why is Daddy in that box in the wardrobe?”

And then we sleep. Much like the evenings I used to have with the other love of my life, actually. (Pillow-talk aside…)

And when I wake up at 2am, thinking of M, I look over at the person spread-eagled in the bed next to me and the weirdest thing happens: I see Him! In the curve of her neck, the roundness of her cheek, the total calm blanketing her face.

(Statler: This is a very moving moment.

Waldorf: Yeah. I wish they’d move it to Pittsburgh.)

Lady in Waiting

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My dog, waiting.

If only all men were as pleased to see me as my dog.

I came home earlier and there he was. In the window. With his waggly tail. And one of my daughter’s toys in his mouth, disembowelled and relieved of all its facial features.

Whenever I leave him, he takes his place on the back of the settee and stares out, waiting for the moment when I reappear. Sometimes I’ve only gone to the car and back, yet he greets me as if I’m Lord Lucan.

He spends his entire life waiting, actually. He’s sitting under my desk now as I type, waiting for a biscuit. He waits for walks, food, bed-time, up-time. In the year that I’ve had him, he has become utterly devoted to me and my every move.

In the first few months after M’s death, I spent much of my time waiting too. Like my dog in the window, I stared out, waiting for Him to return. Time marched on but still I waited. I wasn’t entirely sure what I was waiting for, as logic dictated that He wasn’t coming back. He hadn’t just nipped to the car. But still, I waited.

I realised today, when I returned home and saw the dog at the window, that I am no longer waiting.

I’m not sure when I stopped waiting. I still hold on to a brittle hope that somehow He’ll come walking round a corner – indeed, I fantasise about it: that He’ll materialise out of a crowd of shoppers, or step out of the woods while I’m on a walk.

But the waiting has ended. He’s not coming back.

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

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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!

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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

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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!

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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.