Stumbling
Here am I. Facing the most painful experience of my life, my partner’s dying, his death and
my grief. Distraught about the loss of so many things - stability, security, certainty. His love,
his company, his knowledge, his memories, his voice, his arms, our life. Rattled by the non-
grieving world and perplexed about the new emotional me.
Waking to silence
Waking to silence is my
Daily reminder that you are not here and
Will never be here again.
It follows me from room to room
Where you are everywhere but nowhere.
Its companion, loneliness, sits in the
Back seat of your car as I drive to work
Jostles for space next to me on the crowded train
Lurks in my workplace doorway at night
Waiting to escort me home
Where I pause under the trees
Looking up to the sky for a moment of peace
Before I can find the courage to put the key in the lock
Where silence is waiting, always waiting.
Deathly silence.
Loneliness
Loneliness is a new experience for me. I thought it meant the absence of company. How wrong I was. I have lots of company, at work or with friends and family.
Company does nothing for my deep, aching, emotional loneliness created by loss. The loss of love, and the security that came with it; of loyalty, of someone who always had my back no matter what; of being understood and accepted; an intimate relationship; shared memories and history, now just my memories. So many intangible things, I’m still trying to figure them all out.
This loneliness can hit me in a crowd, or with friends, when the trite conversation of others makes me want to scream. Loneliness waits for me to come home, then follows me from room to room day and night. It sits in the back seat of the car and jostles for space next to me on the crowded train. It lurks in my workplace doorway at night, waiting to escort me home.
Loneliness has nothing to do with solitude. I have often craved more solitude, the space to do my own thing. But right now solitude feels like loneliness too.
I react with tears. Ways of taming this loneliness are not clear to me right now.
Stumbling
For the last eight months I've been leading this weird life, going to work and pretending everything is normal then weeping at home, in the car, in the street. I can't think or talk about my partner without weeping but have hardly ever sobbed or felt better for crying.
I’m finding it hard to reconcile the new me – emotional, needy, stumbling around in the dark – with the old me – rational, capable, independent. The old me is the fake me. My face to the outside world, my workplace, officials I have to deal with about my partner’s death, the friends and acquaintances who don’t understand grief.
I chose to operate in two worlds when my partner’s health deteriorated at the start of 2015 by not talking about it at work after my first emotional meltdown. People are supportive and mean well but I couldn’t deal with caring enquiries multiple times a day. I couldn’t / can’t deal with my inability to control weeping, this fountain in my head, every time I think or talk about my partner - even though I see the weeping as a good thing, my body’s way of coping with stress. Work was my escape from the pain of home, from the heartache of watching my partner’s health decline and his / our struggle with this.
I treasured the mental distraction of my job with lots of deadlines and complexities. It was work that I could do increasingly at home when my partner was too sick to be left alone. It kept me sane through his dying, death, and after death. It helped me to stay strong as his strength faded and to step up to an increasing role of caring and health advocacy in a way that surprised me.
As the first anniversary of the beginning of the end looms this week, the last four months of his critical stage of illness, it feels like his dying was harder than his death or my experience after his death - a surprising turn of events when death and after death have until now seemed the hardest of all.
Since December, the pain of his dying has been hitting me full in the face in a way it hasn’t done previously. I’ve become obsessed with researching dying, death and grief, looking for who knows what – comfort, clarity, stories, poems, words in any form that resonate with our experience and my grief.
Work now feels like a double-edged sword – a useful distraction but also a means of avoidance, a crutch for helping me skirt around the edges of pain instead of facing it. The only thing I know for certain is that I must begin.
Communication
Communicating with the bereaved. What a minefield this is.
Me, I’m daunted by telling people in my life what is true about my grief. I’m an expert at hiding emotion, downplaying impact and putting a positive spin on any situation. I make a joke or change the subject when I weep in front of others, apart from a few people. I erect an invisible electric fence when I walk along the street crying – ‘don’t look at me, don’t look at me!’ But I’m working on this with a grief counsellor, the only sensible decision I’ve made so far.
What does not show is the gaping black hole of loss that I’m trying to comes to grips with. Or that this grief is more painful than any other I’ve experienced. I’ve learnt that there will not be a linear path to recovery, it’s more like one step forward, three back. If I have a good day it doesn’t mean my grief is over. A bad day doesn’t mean I’m falling apart, even when it feels that I am. Laughter and tears can exist together in grief. I will build a new life around the hole, not erase it, but have no idea how long this will take or what it will look like.
I need to go at my own pace. You don’t need to comfort me when I cry, the crying helps. Please don’t feel you need to struggle with words, a hug is enough. Black humour helps – its how my partner and I got through his dying and I miss this so much.
Home
Home is an empty and lonely place now.
It used to be our home, the place we moved to four years ago when you couldn’t manage the 47 steps to our old place on the hill. The new place we loved for its light and sun and flat land.
We, our, us. I, my, me. How I hate those words and the way they tangle in my brain and tongue.
The garden. Each evening I pause and look up through the tall trees - for a moon, branches silhouetted against the sky, a few moments of beauty to give me courage to turn the key in the lock.
The table. Six chairs, only one used now.
Meals. Haphazard. You were the cook, the foodie, the planner of fine dining.
3 am. Silence, deathly silence.
Dawn. The birds outside, me inside. One breath.
Sundays. The one day I have to myself. Bliss and despair.
The hall. Where I dragged you on a chair to bed that day your legs stopped working.
The doorway. Where I fractured a vertebrae trying to help you up after a fall.
The bedroom. Where I spent that last night crying because you were so sick. I waited until dawn to call the ambulance one last time. Empty now.
You. Unconscious for two weeks, then surrounded by patients and nurses, but lonely, hating the hospital, hating being so sick, desperate to come home.
Me. Heartbroken at your distress and because we hardly ever had a private conversation again. Desperate for you to come home.
I would never have called the ambulance that day if I’d known you would spend your last four months away from home. You could have died in my arms at home instead that day or the next.
Is that a crime?
Lessons
Self-kindness? Nope, no time for that. Too busy running through life, always on the go with multiple projects at work and home and for every cause that presses my buttons. Call me crazy but the more challenges, the more I love it. No stone is left unturned.
My partner slowed me down. I was the organiser. He was the socialiser – the generous, funny, loyal and carefree man who was always happiest lazing around with friends and family. In our last months together, we came to value the simple things in life - time in the sun, a plate of oysters, five minutes alone together in the busy hospital.
I’m trying to learn from these precious lessons but it’s hard to let go of old me.
Colour #1
Before, blue was our colour, it was everywhere. Timber cottage painted blue. Clear blue sky behind the branches of the tall trees, seen from every window. Your flamboyant blue coat, our blue jeans. Blue shirts, yours and mine, plain, patterns, striped too but only for me, never you.
The muted blue and brown painting, our favourite, a semi abstract sea and mountain. The giant blue and red Modigliani print. Those extravagant small paintings we couldn’t resist with their sharp blue jumping out from the walls as we walked into the room.
In your last four months there was only white. Those long white hallways filling me with dread each time I walked in. White hospital gowns, undone at the back and always falling off your shoulders, no dignity there. White sheets and blankets, never enough of them, you were always cold.
White beds with patients being wheeled along corridors like giant white beetles. So many four bed bays, with visitors and hospital staff looking in as they walked past. We were part of the almost still life picture with no private conversations any more.
You were surrounded by people but lonely, brave, afraid, fighting death, wanting to die. In the end, just a white sheet covering you. No breath, your sick heart stopped one last time.
I promised over and over in your last year that we would make the long journey together to the end. It breaks my heart that you died suddenly before I got there that last morning. I’m afraid you were very afraid. I need you to come back, just for a day, so we can lie in each other’s arms.
Only black now.
Fear #1
When your death entered my world, I ran as far as I could for six months, trying to stay sane. Escape was my only refuge. To work in particular where it was safe and I understood it.
Two years of your decline was banked up in my brain. And the intermittent health fears for years before this. Your destiny was laid down by that first heart attack, on the small island far from home where we thought you would die. When that terrifying plane trip brought you home on a stretcher, cardiologist in tow, fear tagged along for the ride, as if you weren’t taking up enough seats already.
We were thankful for modern medicine giving you multiple shots at life after this. We tucked the fears away each time they shot out and got on with our lives, living for the moment, not the past or future. Not realising those fears would follow us right to the end, slipping out in tears but never full faucet.
The pain shifted recently, turning with the wind as I hunted out new knowledge about love and loss. I’ve escaped from that suffocating world where grief is swept behind closed doors after the funeral. I’ve learnt that being in the present only works if you deal with the past. Fear and pain lurk in your mind and always get you in the end.
Stoic old me is becoming more reconciled to new emotional me. Now, facing that pain is not daunting at all. It’s taken knowledge and courage but above all else the safety of shared understanding, where pain is allowed and supported by select individuals.
It’s a relief that buckets of tears have replaced running.
Hearts
I have tried to visualise my heart, over and over. I wanted a new image, a different way of looking at a broken heart. But nothing comes, only a blank canvas, not one drop of paint. I want to throw paint on the canvas and swirl it around with my bare feet to see what happens.
When I try to visualise my new heart, all I see is your sick heart. It forces its way into my head no matter how many times I push it away. It’s an anatomically correct heart, the kind you see in text books but alive, not like the plastic one on your doctor’s desk, the one he would pull apart to show us what was going on.
It’s pulsating slowly, a muscle wrapped with arteries and veins, but not attached to your body any more, just blood leaking out of the open ends, too slowly to replenish other organs.
It’s your vital organ, dying bit by bit. You can live without some organs - gall bladder, part of the liver, one kidney, even your eyes, tragic though that would be. But not your heart, a vital organ, nourishing every other part of your body. Or not.
Your sick heart and your dead heart and our broken hearts are inextricably intertwined forever.
Forgetting
Grief is my friend. It surrounds me as I sit on the ocean floor amongst the tears of the world.
Fish of all sizes and colours are swimming around, the small ones darting in and out with flashes of good memories. The ugly ones carry painful memories, some slowly meandering across the ocean floor, evil looking but harmless. Small sharks with flashing bodies come and go.
My tears flow into the water, helping me come to grips with love and loss. I want to keep the painful memories too, they are part of the whole, part of our love, my loss.
I’ve spent two years avoiding the pain of your health decline. So many small memories seem to have slipped away when I need to dig them out of my brain to deal with the pain. Forgetting terrifies me. It feels like I’m cutting my partner out of my life bit by bit. Along with the tangible things that have gone too - clothes, books, phone, joint bank accounts and bills; the main bedroom just for visitors, looking more and more like some weird hotel room shrine.
The endless list of our, we, us becoming I, me, my. How I hate those words. If it feels like this eight months after his death what will be left in eight years?
There can be peace on the bottom of the ocean floor, pain and all. What I can’t face is being left with the loneliness of grief, the loss of all those intangible things like emotional security, being understood and accepted, shared memories.
All the fish gone, memories fading or gone, you drifting away with the fish and me left behind.
Remembering
I remember water. We spent a lot of our life near the water. On the coast with long stretches of golden sand, waves crashing down on the shore and salt covering us in a fine but invisible mist. Oceans reaching half way around the world. Nature’s perfect combination of sight, sound and smell.
There is nothing quite like that first dive under a wave, with body and wave going in opposite directions, washing away your cares.
We would hunt out new beaches on holidays, the more isolated the better. Beaches with no buildings in sight and just our footprints in the sand. Every beach with its own unique character.
Me. I love the beach in winter, the wilder the better, gigantic waves, booming sounds and wind whipping my face and hair. Hardly anyone around.
Him. Beach addict. Up before dawn every day of the year and down to the beach to swim, body surf or ride a surf ski. You need to be strong to paddle the ski out through the waves, to turn yourself upright when a wave tips you over and you’re strapped upside down under the water.
As my partner’s health declined over the years all the things he loved disappeared. The ski first, then body surfing, then swimming, then the beloved motor bike that took him down to the beach and finally, the car, one year out from his death, no more driving, independence gone forever, world shutting down bit by bit.
But the beach boys kept us both sane. His mates who used to meet at the beach every morning. They would walk, run, swim or surf then solve the problems of the world, or their lives, over coffee. An amazing men’s club, all ages, about twenty all up with ten or so there every morning.
I took my partner to the coffee shop for as long as he was able. They would do what they always did, laughing and joking, teasing each other, keeping the door open on the world, and sticking with my partner to the end..
If he was still here
If my partner was still here he would be astounded at seeing the new needy me wandering around in grey shadows. He would tell me he loved me in that voice I’ve been longing to hear, make me laugh with his wicked sense of humour, cook sumptuous meals I don’t want to eat, strewing mess from one end of the kitchen to the other, and hold me for as long as I need to be held, which is forever.
Scarce moments of peace
As I face my pain full on, grief is in my brain for a lot of my day. I’m obsessed by grief. I can’t get enough of it. It’s my friend, my nourishment. I search, read, think every spare minute and in that process, dredge up memories and turn them over and over again. I’m annoyed when life interrupts. My mind is constantly chattering about grief. It just never shuts up.
It’s exhausting. My insomnia is worse. But there are small moments when my heart lightens bringing scarce moments of peace, often on my long journey to and from work.
Those magic glimpses of nature at its best. A lone bird calling in the dawn silence. Sunsets above the city skyline from my workplace window highlighting the old rooftop clock among tall modern buildings. Branches silhouetted against the night sky as I drive through a forest on the road with no lights. A full moon casting light over the sea as I come down the steep hill to the coast.
Those quirky instances of human interaction. A small child on the train with an infectious and uninhibited laugh in the midst of silent commuters peering at their screens. A woman sitting cross legged on a long stairway, eyes closed, meditating, oblivious to the commuters brushing past her as they rush up and down the stairs. The trumpet player, sitting on a post in the street, playing haunting music in the midst of noisy cars and people. Light connections with strangers - a smile, a quick chat or joke, a thoughtful move out of the way.
Meditation helps most of all. Even ten minutes a day brings an underlying sense of peace where my mind is calm and my body relaxed. It’s a miracle that brains can be so clever, that I can carry this invisible gift around inside me, turning it on or off as I please, wherever I go.
Not just any story
This is not a story.
It’s YOUR DEATH.
Your death is my life.
My lonely life
Filled with your dying and death.
Your DEATH REHEARSAL
That began so long ago
Slowly at first, intertwined with our lives.
Then our entire life.
Now my life.
Your DYING nine months ago
Away from home
Our heart break, your bravery and fear.
Now my life.
Your DEATH not unexpected but sudden
And ALONE.
Now my life.
The one time I need you
More than any other
You’re NOT HERE.
All I want is
Your voice
Your humour
Your arms
Your love.
Four small words
Don’t seem very significant
But they are EVERYTHING
To me right now.
Day and night.