Gangnam_Style_PSY_19logo (Photo credit: KOREA.NET – Official page of the Republic of Korea)
5 Things He has missed so far:
5 Things He will miss in the future:
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…
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.
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.
Behind Closed Doors (Charlie Rich album) (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
My Mother asked me the other day whether I thought my daughter needed grief counselling. It wasn’t a question; it was a statement designed to make me consider whether I had done the right thing in organising some for her.
This isn’t a dig at my Mother – she is a wonderful and caring soul who only has our best interests at heart. Yet for her, the concept of counselling is anathema. She simply doesn’t ‘get’ the notion of sitting in front of another impartial, trained individual and exchanging dark thoughts for potentially healing ones. She has been through her share of grief – one way or another – and as far as I’m aware has never had more than a small gin and tonic and a blast of Charlie Rich to get her through it.
After M died, I was referred for some counselling through my GP. The first woman I saw practised what is known as ‘person-centred’ counselling. That is to say, we sat in a hot little room for an hour and looked at each other. The next woman I saw was much more my style. I wailed, she offered me practical advice as to how to get through the week until the next time I saw her. She conceded that I would probably cry for M every day for the rest of my life. There was no ‘solution’ to my grief, but it was possible that one day, I may be able to accept that He had gone. We reached a point in our counsellor-client relationship where she couldn’t do anything else for me, but the time we were together was undoubtedly beneficial.
As for my daughter, she is having her first round of grief counselling later today. She doesn’t cry for her daddy, but she does mention Him a lot. Last night, for example, she drew a picture on a piece of paper and rolled it up.
“This is my map to find Daddy,” she said. She unfurled the paper. “Daddy is in the cupboard in a box. Daddy was set on fire.”
Maybe she doesn’t need counselling, but I feel as if I have reached a point in her grief where I can’t do anything else for her.
Yoda (Photo credit: davidyuweb)
As another pot of industrial-strength eye cream bites the dust, I find myself reflecting on the way in which grief expedites the ageing process. I woke up on the morning of 11th February 2012 an average 36-year-old woman. Fourteen months later and I look like Yoda. Grief’s final insult, etched into my face.
From nausea and vomiting, through dizziness and the shits, not to mention alarming weight loss (hell, this beats The Atkins Diet hands down!), since M died I have experienced the physiological equivalent of Hurricane Ivan. I suppose it’s little wonder I found my keys in the microwave and a birthday card in the fridge the other day.
Grief has spread itself throughout every area of my life by stealth. It won’t allow me to watch certain TV programmes (be gone, Horatio Cane, for M and I used to laugh at your inanity together! Beat it, Paddy McGuinness, for I am ashamed to admit that we were about to watch your moronic show the evening M died!) It silences most of my CD collection, turns the spines of books the other way, leads to detours around whole towns. It dictates who I will and won’t see, declines invitations on my behalf.
And it ambushes me at the most unexpected moments. I’m in the middle of a dream and it wakes me; I’m driving the car and it forces me into the layby. It taunts and mocks, a remorseless aggressor. It will not be satisfied until it has broken me.
My heart is broken, that’s for sure. But in memory of M and for the sake of His daughter, I won’t allow my spirit to be.
Wife After Death 