Tag Archives: young widow

Meep meep!

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

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.

Pithy post with a reference to Psy

Posted in Bereavement, Uncategorized by
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.

I Should Be So Lucky

Posted in Every day survival by
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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.

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

A Post That Is Not About Puppies

Posted in Whatever gets you through the night by
English: Newborn Golden Retriever puppies.

English: Newborn Golden Retriever puppies. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

The therapeutic benefits of writing this blog have been challenged this morning, people.

Last night I had a dream about one of my more macabre posts (one in which I contemplated whether taxidermy had been a missed opportunity as an option for my Husband’s body – read it, it’s not as bad as it sounds. Honest.)

In the dream, I had indeed taken the decision to have Him stuffed. However, He was not immobile. He was able to move about in a kind of lobotomised state. Like Nick Frost in that zombie movie, but better looking.

He was lying in bed next to our daughter, not realising He was dead. And I was frightened of Him.

I woke into a disconcerting semi-reality – half awake and muggy with sweat. I had to get up, starkers and hung-over, just to check He wasn’t lurking in the corridor.

Much to my chagrin, I hardly ever dream about M. I would love to dream about Him more, because the odd time He has made an appearance, He is always alive, flashing that mega-watt smile that my heart aches to see again.

As it is, by transcribing my psychotic innermost thoughts about His death, I fear I may have doomed myself into some kind of ghoulish Jungian dream cycle, in which He always appears as an extra from Shaun of the Dead.

Maybe I ought to ditch this as a subject and write about puppies instead.

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

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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.

A blast of Charlie Rich

Posted in Bereavement Advice and Support, Uncategorized by
Behind Closed Doors (Charlie Rich album)

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.