BAM!

As I sat at the hairdresser's on Saturday morning, hair being ...ahem ... returned to its *natural* colour ... ahem, a bunch of 3rd grade science papers I was in the process of marking in my lap, I hear that unmistakeable screech of tyres on bitumen then BAM! right outside the front of the building.

"Its a car accident" one of the ladies said.  Next thing, I found myself halfway down the street, caped and with half a haircut and repeatedly asking "is everyone OK?  Is anyone hurt?"

I checked them all, feeling like I needed to stay and help SOMEONE even though it was apparent that the worst that had happened was that one lady (the one who pulled out in front of someone) was stuck in her car, her door wouldn't budge.  She was fine, a little shaken and feeling foolish, but not hurt.

Eventually, a man (whose utility she had run in to) told me that there was nothing I could do and he was waiting with the woman until they could figure out how to get her out of the car.

So I returned to the salon, shocked, but I felt OK. 
My friend finished cutting my hair, I paid and I left the shop.

Then, just as I was hopping into my car, having looked across at the lady, still stuck in her car, I heard it.

The siren.

The sound which always makes me panic just a little bit.
It got louder and louder and then a fire engine appeared.

It was about then that I lost it. 

Logically, I *knew* they had come to help cut the door open just as I knew the lady was OK inside the car.
But my thoughts went to wondering if the fire engine was the first on the scene of Greg's accident, or was it the police? the ambulance? the coroner's van?

...and I sobbed my way down the hill, into the open air of the park where I could breathe deeply before driving back to my Mum's to pick up the kids.

I guess this is all part and parcel of PTSD. ......

Collision

source

I was driving down the road in my neighborhood when I felt and heard a collision on the right side of my car. I immediately knew I'd clipped someone's car door which was parked along the side of the road and nearly left my car running to race out and make sure I hadn't hurt anyone.

I apologized profusely, even though I hadn't seen her open the door. I felt that since mine was the moving vehicle, I was to blame. Also, this apologizing mode is very automatic for me. Not to blame my childhood for everything, but it has child of an alcoholic all over it, I think.

It wasn't until I was driving away later that I realized that she was the one who'd opened her door into moving traffic and that it wasn't necessarily all my fault. I also realized that while I wish I weren't so quick to blame myself for everything, I'm glad I'm me. I'm glad I reacted the way I did instead of the opposite. I'm glad I got out of that car ready to take responsibility instead of ready to assign all the blame on others. I'm glad my first concern was for everyone's safety, NOT the state of my vehicle or how expensive repairs would be or why that woman opened her car door into traffic. I'm glad I was my true self, instead of hiding my vulnerability under a cloak of anger or righteousness.

So, whether my reaction was because of childhood programming, or my own neuroses, or the alignment of the planets, what I realized was that I'm ok. Seems like such a simple awareness to have. That all of me, faults, weaknesses, vulnerabilities and broken bits included, is good and worthy of love. This is something I've struggled with since I can remember being able to think. The fact that it took maybe 5 minutes for this to sink in is a victory. There was a time when this would NEVER have sunk in. I would have spent a lot of time thinking about how I was faulty and therefore it was my fault. I was a bad driver, a bad person, simply unworthy in every way. My hitting her car was my fault and my blaming myself was a symptom of how screwed up I was, and I was hopeless.

But not now. Now, I'm directing my thoughts elsewhere long enough to see a different perspective. Long enough to find value in myself as I am. I don't need to change to be worthy. I don't need to be better, smarter, prettier, nicer. I need to be me. The real me. And that's all I need to do.

Easier said than done, of course, but I'm getting there and I can see the progress.

What does this have to do with being widowed? Everything. In that moment of collision ALL I cared about was human life. I prayed a million prayers in the 5 seconds it took to run back to her car that no one's precious family member had been injured.

I'm not sure that would have been my reaction before I lost Dave. Now, a day is considered a success when no one dies, my loved ones are all safe in their beds and I can have a moment of peace and tranquility to balance out the little hardships of a day in the life of a human.

And somehow, through all the pain of the past two years, my heart has been broken open and somehow softened. Not dramatically, and not suddenly, but over time and so slowly that I can't always tell until I look back and compare the before and after.

I'm proud of who I am and I'm stronger than I ever thought possible, even when I feel as weak and as scared as ever. Realizing that is a victory in itself. 

Gutted

Grief (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Gutted is how I feel.
I literally feel as though I have a blunt knife slowly eviscerating me.
I mentally feel like I've been knocked down again to a new level in this horrible death-march month.
I physically feel sick with that low, visceral pain that you feel when you first hear those words "I'm sorry, but he did not survive".

You see, just after I wrote last week's post, I found out that the "fatal car accident" that I kept hearing about on the radio news was my friend's husband.

Another husband and father cut down, smashed, taken in the prime of his life.

Another wife and mother who has to feel like I feel.

Another woman who will lie awake at night and rail at how this could have possibly happened to her family.

Two more children who will ask what Daddy sounded like or how his skin felt or what he smelled like.

Mutual friends have phoned me to ask what they can do.
I don't have a lot of advice.  ... as we all know, there is no quick fix.  There is no book that can adequately explain to a 6-year-old that Daddy is dead and won't ever come back.  There is no grief potion that will alleviate the symptoms in 24-48 hours.

So I say what I always say - just keep talking to her.  Don't run away from the pain.  Be there.  Talk. Hug.

.....and that there are an army of other widows and widowers here who are always ready to talk and to listen.
Who know  what it feels like.
Who help by talking about the pain.
Who hope when all hope seems lost.
....even at 2 am.  

So I will point her here, and I will talk with her, and I will sit with her, and I will share my tiny sliver of hope with her until she can find her own glistening shard to cling to.

Hope matters.

Father's Day

It was Father's Day last Sunday.

Why is it that the days before every celebration day are worse than the actual day itself?

For the past 2.5 years, I've worked myself into a state of despondency in the days before birthdays, Easter, Christmas,  mother's day or father's day, and of course, the sadiversary, only to be OK-ish on the day itself.  Good even.

...and so it was this time.

Of course, there were some annoyances - I was annoyed that H's teacher had made things that clearly stated "Dad" on them and H insisted on filling it in because "that's what everyone else was doing".  ...except of course for the other child in his class whose father died in 2010. (Meanwhile, I was mindful that I have a first-timer for a fatherless father's day in my classroom and we chatted about what *she* wanted to do over what I'd had organised for the rest of the class.)

But  this time, THIS father's day,  I had a bit of a plan to get through the day.....

When I discovered that the kitchy solar light the kids had put on the grave back in March had been removed (by whom, we don't know), I had plans to replace it with another (named) one.  .....and as father's day drew near, it seemed be a fitting activity for a day that would be sad anyway.

So out we trotted to the cemetery ... only to have a middle-aged man splash a beer onto the ground right next to us as we were hammering the little lamp-stands into the ground, so we got to sit with stinky beer annoying the ants two graves over...... shortly followed by a middle-aged woman who Went Out Of Her Way to Step On Greg's Grave because apparently the entire 5 acre lawn plot was so small she had no other way to walk to her family's grave.O.o
(People are RUDE..... add that to the "annoyances"list ...... but then again, I realise that while I can't choose who occupies the neighbouring graves, I can choose who to put a curse on ..... so WIN!  That's my black sense of humour btw - I don't actually go around cursing people).

Anyway, after that, we went out for pancakes and milkshakes which made everything OK .... almost celebratory.  ...and then dinner at Mum and Dad's which was both delicious and accompanied by good humour.

....only to have to drive past a very recent car accident on the way home.
We sat at the traffic lights for a full 3 minutes, waiting for the  light to change, while the children stared, wide-eyed, at the fire engine, tow trucks, ambulances and wondered aloud whether anybody had been killed; debating whether the doors of the T-boned car were destroyed so badly that the occupant would have died on impact.


Meanwhile silent tears slipped down my cheeks and prayers to that God I don't believe in, left my lips. I fervently hoped that the person driving the car was able to go home to their father ... or that the father driving the car was able to go home to his children.

I really hope he did: Happy Father's Day.

Processing

The dark mark on the fence marks The Spot.

For a while now, I have been able to get through every day with only missing Greg and not get caught up in HOW he died.

But then up until recently, I avoided most of  the details on the HOW and limited myself to knowing the barest facts of the accident: Greg was the passenger; neither speed nor reckless driving was a factor; and he died instantly.

But.....

On Sunday, through a cruel twist of fate and an unholy bridge closure which meant I had find an alternative way home.

But while "following my nose" along half-remembered routes from a former job and a former abode, I was more intent on avoiding the aforementioned unholy traffic nightmare on the "closed for maintenance"  freeway and so the fact that I was fast approaching The Bad Place snuck up on me. 
As I stopped at the lights at the top of the hill (just around the bend at the top of the picture), I looked ahead and realised what lay 250m in front of me.
Thankfully the traffic was light and I turned down a side street and avoided it.

I have successfully managed to avoid being anywhere near The Bad Place ever since the accident.  Its not hard - it is half-way across town and on a road that I rarely ever used anyway.

But coming so close has really shaken me to the core ....  but it is done: I've now driven along the the road that Greg and J drove along seconds before they died.
Another first out of the way.

....and so I now process this next bit if grief that has been far too hard to even think about up until now. 

 I will be stronger for it.

Little steps.

I've seen better days

Things aren't awful.

We have everything we need.

Despite weeks of illness of one kind or another, we are basically healthy.

But the longing for my soulmate is as strong as ever.

I think part of my problem is that I never got to say goodbye.

In fact, we'd had a tiff the Friday before as he went to the farm to work for yet another weekend and I was starting a new job on Monday morning and would have really appreciated the moral support / family time / him taking the kids so I could prepare lessons etc. 
I was so upset that went as far as not getting out of bed to welcome him home at 11:30pm Sunday night when I finally heard his car pull into the driveway.

I know.

I am thankful that our tiffs were never big or long-lasting...... I could have remained pissed off at him on the Monday morning, but his tired little face melted me and we held each other for for a few minutes before we went on with the rush of the day.

Then we were making breakfasts and lunches and having our ritual morning family cuddle before Greg drove off to work.

I didn't realise that would be the last time I ever saw him.  

At all.

Unsurvivable head injuries meant that I took the advice of police, chaplains, morticians, relatives and friends that I shouldn't see him.  At the time, I took their advice.

But one thing I wish I had been able to do was to spend time alone with him (even if he was inside the sealed coffin) before the funeral. 
Nobody watching me in my grief.

I was so self-conscious of the 300+ eyes on me during the service that instead of kissing his coffin like I wanted to, I laid my head briefly on it.  I could feel 300 pairs of eyes boring into the back of my head.  ....and being an introvert, I couldn't breathe with all those eyes watching me, leave alone watching me at my worst.

I wish I could have spoken to him without those eyes watching me .

If I had a re-run, I would have insisted upon it.

But then again, if I got a re-run, I wouldn't have let him go to work that day.....

So yeah, right now, I've surely seen better days..... but I have also seen much, much worse ones.

...and so I keep plodding on in the hope that the days are better.

Tears

They leak out of my eyes and run down my face in small rivers.
I am now used to their comings and goings;
they are unbidden at times,
whilst at other times they are triggered by a memory.
... by a song.

Sometimes they fall from my face in a gushing waterfall to wet my blouse
or fall to the floor at my feet,
while other times they dry on my cheeks leaving their faint trace of salt.

They are like a nosy neighbour -
if you don't let them in every so often, they catch you off guard when you'd rather they left you alone....
I know them too well. 

They have haunted me lately, often waking me from sleep,

or unleashing in the shower, late at night when I am finally alone.
.... but not wanting to be alone... 

wanting...

 needing him to be HERE with me.

Where I can rest my head on his chest and finally exhale.

Lost

Photo from here

There are days when I am still astounded that he hasn't come home.

6:30 pm rolls around and I find myself listening for the distinctive note of his car pulling into the driveway.

I find myself looking for him in the shed, expecting to see him fixing something on his workbench.

My brain hasn't worked out that he is gone.

I am like Red Dog, searching high and low for the one he loves. Searching faces and seeming to ask "have you seen him?" Going from place to place, determined to find the person who he loved above all others. Never stopping.

On the day Greg died, I looked for him in the faces of the policemen, expecting them to tell me where he was ... when they had already told me where he wasn't.

I searched the faces of his friends.

I search for him every night in my dreams .... and sometimes I find him.

I found him in my dreams last week and I asked him WHY he had to go. (That question that we all wonder: WHY did they die, WHY are we left here without them, WHY they were taken long before their time???)
In the dream, he just carried on making a sandwich and explained (as though repeating himself for the umpteenth time) that "there was a car accident".

....and even though that is the truth of it, it doesn't seem to stop my subconscious mind from searching for him every day and every night.

Because I have lost him, and I still have this desperate need to find him.


.
.
.
.
.
.
... I know the word "loss / lost" annoys a lot of widows and I want to assure you that I do know exactly where his body is, but "lost" is a word I often use because it describes how *I* feel as well.

Wake me up when December ends

It’s December 1, 2011.

I bought a new car today.

My very first new car ever.

The very first car I have bought all by myself.

Something bright and shiny and new to replace the old and falling apart, frustrating and faded.

I should feel happy.

But I don’t.

I am gripped by the worst grief I have felt in months.

“A new car – you are so lucky” she said.

“I am not lucky” I wanted to shout. “The only reason I have to buy this is because Greg is dead. If he were alive, he would have fixed the old car.”

“...and all that bright, shiny money I paid for the new car wouldn’t have been available because it would have still been sitting in his superannuation account.”

This conversation never took place though.

The second half of it ... my half of it... took place in the shower as I washed off the dirt of the day like so much armour surrounding my heart.

...and I broke.

By the time I dragged myself from under the hot water, big, fat, salty tears were plopping onto the bath mat at my feet.

I gripped the door frame for support as drop after drop fell from my eyelashes to puddle onto the floor.

My whole body was heaving with silent sobs as I crawled into our (my) cold bed, and as I lay down the tears ran in a steady rivulet down my face to soak the pillow behind my head.

...and I wonder if I am feeling this way because today marks 21 months since Greg’s head and chest were destroyed so badly by the bulbar of a truck, that I never saw him again.

... or am I feeling this way because I am having to face my second Christmas alone.
....my second Christmas as a sole parent.
...trying to put some sparkle into the children’s lives to make a semblance of a happy childhood.
...trying to fake a joy that I don’t feel and trying to summon a belief in God and goodness that has long since gone.

I don’t know.

Right now, all I want to do is to sleep through this horrible season and wake up when there is some light back in my world.

Just wake me up when December ends....

Holidays...

....are not the same without Greg there with us.


Two weeks ago, the kids and I holidayed at a little island just to the north of where we live. It's a cheap and cheerful sort of place and only an hour away from home.

We've always holidayed at this island.
Greg taught the kids to ride bikes along its many bike paths, and he showed them how to use a shovel to make enormous sand castles.
I taught the kids to boogie board on the little waves on the surf-side of the island.
We stayed in the same house every year and made more and more memories.

This year, we holidayed in a different house. My parents came with us - Dad brought the fishing gear and Mum just made things happy.
We went fishing: the kids both caught lots of fish.
We went walking along the trails and the kids rode their scooters to new parks.
We examined strange animals washed up on the beach and we spent an entire morning at the new island museum.

But it wasn't the same.

It wasn't completely awful though ... we just made new memories and reminded ourselves that it is OK to relax even if it isn't the same as before.....

Today would have been our 14th wedding anniversary.

Written on September 27, 2011

Fourteen years ago, I awoke in my childhood bedroom … well got up anyway … I was too excited to sleep much.
My bridesmaid, my Mum and I quickly ate breakfast and took ourselves down to the salon for 'hair and makeup'.
We emerged hours later, coiffed and painted, but still recognisable.
Everyone ate lunch … not me … I couldn’t eat for the excitement.
Then I put on my beautiful dress, remade from the Guipure lace from my mother’s gown.
I looked beautiful.
More than that.
I glowed.
Lit from the inside.
The flowers arrived.
The photographer arrived.

Then we left for the church in a pair of 1970s vintage Holdens.
Dad walked me up the aisle.
Greg was crying: I avoided looking at him so I wouldn’t cry too.
We promised to love each other until death parted us, (never thinking that death would part us after only 12 and a half years).
I felt so loved and lucky that my face ached from the smiling.
and the kissing.
and the loving gazes into his beautiful blue eyes.
I glided through the reception – everything was perfect.
and we left our friends and family at the party to have our own celebration of our first night as man and wife.
~~~~~
Today would have been our 14th anniversary.
and it’s been just over 18 months since Greg died.
I awoke to the screeching of the car alarm of the bogan who lives across the street.
...well, not so much "awoke as "got up anyway". Sleep isn’t so easy for me these days…
I couldn’t open my eyes.
Literally.
It seems I have conjunctivitis to add to my already long list of symptoms typical of my “holiday illness” (I never get sick during work time, just holiday time).
It seems appropriate that my eyes are already red and puffy.
I had a shower and prised open my red, oogy eyes.
I put on track pants and one of Greg’s old shirts: nobody was going to see me today.
I didn’t bother to do my hair.
but I did brush my teeth.
I look like crap.
I ate breakfast so I could swallow some cold and flu tablets.
…and I sent my mother out to buy my eye drops to fix my oogy eyes.
Somehow, this seems an appropriate way to mark this day.
….the second of many lonely wedding anniversaries….

Nine years ago today.....

(post written on August 15, 2011)

…. I became a mother.
I had finally achieved my life’s ambition – to be a wife and mother and have my very own perfect family.
Seriously.
That’s always what I wanted to be, despite my prizes and academic awards and the push from every direction to focus on my career and climb that fickle beast known as “the ladder”.
…and I achieved a lot before I became a mother. …. before I became a wife.
I got myself a science degree and backed it up with first class honours the following year and a PhD shortly thereafter…. courtesy of a cushy scholarship which some bigwigs saw fit to give me .
I travelled the world and spent a few months living and working in Africa.
I ran a research station and worked as a scientist managing huge budgets, staff and still trying to do actual science in the middle somewhere….
But all I ever really wanted was to be a wife and mother.
…and on this day nine years ago, my beautiful girl was born and Greg and I were so proud of ourselves we thought we wold burst with happiness.
I had Done It. My own nirvana, right there in the form of a tiny baby girl and my husband’s loving embrace.
I never had post-natal depression … I had post-natal elation.
…and we were lucky enough to repeat the performance two years later when I gave birth to our son.
My wonderful husband AND my pigeon pair: my perfect family. Nirvana.
…but I only got to have it all for seven and a half years.
Not long enough. not long enough at all.
On this day last year, all I could think about was what I’d lost.
But this year, I am choosing to remember what I have … two very wonderful children and to have known the love of a husband and father who was perfectly imperfect.
So Happy 9th birthday, darling K. I am so lucky to be your Mum.
XXXX

The screaming

It started when the policeman told me he was dead.

I was still sitting in my car in my parent’s driveway at the time.

It was loud.

It was hysterical.

It was guttural.

It was primal.

It continued as I was led inside the house, up the stairs.

It went on for a long time before I wore myself out.

It stopped long enough to listen to the police and the chaplain and my parents as I tried to think what to do next.

To search their faces for the next sentence “Oh sorry, we made a mistake. He’s not dead. He’s in the hospital waiting for you”.

It stopped long enough for me to leave a message on the answering machine of my best friend because I could not get a hold of a single other family member or friend to tell them.

To sob this news to them.

But that’s when the screaming started inside my head.

I spoke calmly to people on the phone. They swore at me with shock when they heard the news: I was the calm one.

Outwardly.

But inwardly, I was screaming “He’s Dead. DEAD. DEAD......”.

It didn’t stop while I was talking to those other people.
It didn’t stop when I sipped water to sooth my ruined throat.
It didn’t stop when I showered.
It didn’t stop when I stared at the food people kept putting in front of me, only to take it away again hours later after it was cold.

And it didn’t stop while I slept.

I screamed aloud in my sleep.

It rang in my ears for most of the first 6 months.

It screeched in the background to all my thoughts; sometimes loud, sometimes whispered.

That desperate, aching cry “he’s DEAD!"

Now, it lurks inside, waiting for my brain to think too hard about it, just for a minute.

For the most part, I’m learning to ignore it, but sometimes it screeches into the forefront of my mind with alarming speed.

And once more I crumple under the weight of the screaming.

The endless internal screaming in my head.

My name is Amanda and this is my story...

I met my soul-mate on February 6, 1993: it was love at first sight. Greg was the fun-loving, farm-boy to my shy, inquisitive city-girl. He was an engineer who loved all things mechanical and I was in the midst of my PhD in eco-botany. We just clicked straight away and seemed always to know what the other was thinking.

We married in 1997 and after living and working in the tropical paradise that is Australia’s north for a few years, we eventually settled down to married life, buying a house and having our precious daughter in 2002 and wonderful son in 2004.

I was so happy and lucky and loved and I took it all for granted.

Now I am someone different: I am a widow. The man I love beyond breath was killed in a car accident whilst carrying out his normal duties at work on March 1, 2010 – the same day I began my new career as a teacher. He was 47 years and 5 days old; I turned 40 a month later. If it wasn’t for my sheer determination to keep going in the weeks and months that followed, the mawing pit of grief would have swallowed me whole. But I have stubbornly refused to give in to despair, instead pouring my grief into my personal blog.

Today, most of me remains... I am still a Mum to two beautiful children. I am still a teacher. I still am a botanist. I still love Australian native plants and gardens. I still have fantastic friends. My brain still functions on a reasonably good level (short-term memory is a bit wonky though). I still love Holden cars and meat pies and good people everywhere. I still love the beach and the bush and I still love a good laugh.

But I find myself turning into someone new ... I find myself showing more kindness as I have been shown kindness. I find myself seeking out the hearts of others and hearing their story. …and I know one important truth: true love never dies.

~~~~~~~~~~
Widow’s Voice was one of the first blogs I found in the months after being widowed in 2010 and I am honoured to be taking part in this wonderful project. I know I have such big shoes to fill as the wonderful Matt moves on to bigger and better things, and I join with some truly amazing men and women who are also walking this horrible road of widowhood. I hope that I have something useful to say, something worthwhile, something that resonates with other people here and helps us all to feel that little bit less alone. Thank you Michele for inviting me and thank you all for welcoming me here.