Another Birthday ......

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...... remembered, but not celebrated.

Jim would've been 54 today (as I write this it's Tuesday night).
Instead, he's forever 47.
And that sucks.
In more ways than one.

I hate that his birthday is so close to Christmas ...... which is so close to the day he died.
This time of the year can be one onslaught after another.
And yes, it still brings tears.

But it also brings warm memories.
Memories of baking spice cake for him every January 7th.
Memories of surprising him with a limo filled with friends ...... and a restaurant filled with more friends when he turned 40.
Memories of sitting around the table with the kids, having his favorite dinner of roast beef and mashed potatoes.
More memories than I can list.
Which is a pretty wonderful thing.

Yes, I could sit here and write about all of the things he's/I've/we've missed out on.
But that would only serve to make me feel depressed and worse than I want to feel at the end of this day.
So instead I'm going to focus on doing more than I thought I would do today.
I'm going to do more than remember him.

I am going to celebrate him.
I'm going to celebrate who he was, and who he still is.
I'm going to celebrate the time we had, for as long as we had it.

I'm going to celebrate love.
Because it never ends.

Long live love.

Bridget Jones

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I'm on my annual extended-family vacation this week and the Australian summer vacation period is a big time for relaxing with a book (or ten).  So I've opted to publish a review of the third Bridget Jones instalment that I wrote on my personal blog in October.  It was written for a non-widow audience, so is preaching to the converted in parts.  

Spoiler alert if you haven't read the new Bridget Jones' Diary yet (and want to).

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Having seen the spoilers, out of curiosity I read the new Bridget Jones' Diary instalment. 

My curiosity was how would someone who may not know the widow experience*, write about the widow experience?  Honestly, pretty well, taking into account it is Bridget Jones we're talking about, and she is 5 years into the journey & I'm 18 months.  At least in part, her experience is familiar to me.  Particularly being left on your own to raise young children. 

The widowhood experience is something that is very, very difficult to comprehend until you've been there.  I had no concept before it happened, and the reviews I've read seem to support that; I don't feel there is a widow amongst the critics I've read.  So the book is generally being panned.

Firstly, it was never going to be a contender for the Man Booker - it's chick-lit people.  Take it as such.

One comment that crops up is she's again a singleton/cougar, therefore reverting to type.

Firstly, she's still Bridget. And the singleton/dating scenario is the premise of her character - it's what the first two books were about, why wouldn't the third? 

And I hate to break the 'happy happy joy joy' view that spouses don't up and die on you until you've reached a ripe old age, but we widows are out there. In large numbers. You'll be surprised how many younger widows (and widowers) there are from accidents, suicide, cancer and other medical conditions and illnesses.  And some do want to re-partner down the track, so the fact Bridget's looking (and frankly, only starts at the 5 year mark, with the pressure of her friends - without that she may not have), is also a reality.  This doesn't even cover those divorcees who also find themselves single again in their 30's, 40's and 50's (one reviewer seemed to have the opinion that there are no single people at all in these decades of life - no matter how it happens, hence this comment).

Another critique is that she's still a social klutz.  Again, she's still Bridget.  Mark's influence may well have reduced some of those tendencies through her marriage, but the stress and trauma of widowhood may well have brought them out in force again. Widowhood does change your world view and may change your personality in part, but it's not necessarily a complete personality transplant, which one critic I read seemed to expect.  In fact, that she was a social klutz to start with, it's not surprising she remains one. "Widow brain" (that I've heard a lot of long-timers talk about still experiencing, and may be a PTSD manifestation), is likely to amplify rather than dull this trait of Bridget's. The descriptor of 'foundering' by another character actually describes the experience pretty well; floundering is also apt.

Some raise a timing issue of Bridget being 51, with her youngest child a 5 year old.  This rankled with me initially too, but on reflection, we don't know if both kids were the result of a long effort of assisted reproduction (ART), or even egg donor.  It's possible for the 5 year old to be from a Frozen Embryo Transfer.  And it's her contemporaneous diary, there's no real reason for her to mention it (except for back-story, and Fielding chose not to cover it in back story).  That it's automatically assumed that both are natural pregnancies also shouts to the lack of familiarity in the broader world with the infertility experience. Heck, I did it and I HAVE the IF experience!

Some may argue that Bridget talks about Mark's death, why not any (potential) ART?  Having also been through both, you tend to focus on and re-visit the loss of your husband, not what it took to have your child(ren).  And the loss of a spouse is something that hums away in the background and then intensifies to crippling clarity at the drop of a hat.  It's something I've learned to expect to be life-long.

Early in the book it's mentioned that Mark left her a wealthy woman - this is another of the criticisms; that she's rich so it's not reality. First, they were wealthy to start with, and rich people die, too.  Plus he had made sure everything was in place, just in case - as is stated in the book.

Although really just a passing comment, this is the biggest lesson I see to the general readership of the book.  Mark had made sure that his family would be secure.  Ian and I had not gotten around to getting things in place even though we'd planned to, but our superannuation system meant I've at least been left with a secure roof over John and I's head.   I've encountered a number of widows both on and off line that are not so secure. There was no insurance, or no ability to get insurance, or limited superannuation. They have no choice but to work, and/or they loose their homes when they're still in the depths of grief.  Making sure both partners are adequately insured to keep the family secure is a great lesson from the book.

The upshot is there were moments that cut close to the bone, but it was an overall enjoyable, easy chick-lit read giving an insight into the widow experience through the lens of Bridget Jones.


*in checking, no Helen Fielding has not experienced widowhood. In my opinion, she's obviously done some good research in writing this book. 

Terrible Relief

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Kelley's post got me thinking. My knee jerk reaction was: what's wrong with me that I parted with my wedding ring months after Dave died? What's wrong with me that I don't long to wear it? How did I let go of that ring? I measured the devotion I had by the way I dealt with my grief. Never helpful.

 Everyone grieves differently. For a moment I forget it long enough to just begin to do a little inner critic stuff and then I remind myself that we're all doing this the way it works for us. No right or wrong.

A few months in I couldn't bear to look at my ring. It made me helplessly furious and frustrated to see it on my finger. A lie, I thought. It was a lie. If someone saw the ring and asked me about my husband, I'd simply keel over and die. I couldn't bear to hear someone ask about him. I couldn't bear to tell that story more than I already had to. That ring was a sign of our love, yes, and of course my love continued, but it was also a sign of our marriage and to me, our marriage had ended. I knew my life had to move on. I didn't like it. I raged against it. But I knew it had to happen. The ring was just delaying the inevitable for me. It was like trying to resurrect a stage of my life I had to say goodbye to. It was hanging on to something that was being ripped from me. Letting go brought me terrible relief.

After three or four months, I took the ring off and felt nauseous. So I waited a few weeks and tried it again. One day I took it off and forgot it was off until the end of the day. I never wore it again. I'd never get rid of it, and one day I'm guessing I'll turn it into something else, or wear it again on my right hand, but for now it stays in storage. It still hurts a little to look at it, though not at ALL like it did in the beginning. It seemed to burn my skin with pain and loss when I wore it. When I looked at it.

From the beginning I had a really hard time with continuing the way I'd been traveling through life with Dave. It was easier to NOT have reminders of the life I had to part with. It was easier when my outside matched my reality. He was gone. Seeing his shoes in the hallway as if he wasn't gone forever was too much to withstand. Seeing my ring on my finger was too discordant. I had to escape it all. Or face it, I'm not sure which. Both.

Who was I kidding, I thought. We all know he's gone. I can't pretend he's not. I can't pretend he's coming home. If anything, that made my grief even worse. It made it more like a drawn-out form of torture.

Once I was in a new apartment with all new furniture and only my things around me (except for a few precious Dave items I couldn't part with) I felt less tortured. I felt my outside reality match my inner reality. Inside, I knew I had to learn to live without him and I knew I had to begin. Outside, I could no longer fool myself into thinking what happened hadn't happened. The ring just helped me fool myself.

It's odd how I can understand with every molecule in my body how horrible it would be for Kelley to lose her ring and at the very same time have parted with mine (with terribly bittersweet, gut-wrenching relief). It's weird how I can fully grasp how others have clung to their old life by staying in the house, keeping all the clothes, furniture, momentos and wearing their rings for years and years and yet I needed nearly the opposite to survive my loss.

Don't get me wrong. I'm not parting with my ring (or his) or his wallet, his watch or his ashes with ease. I'd very nearly go back into a burning building for them. But looking at them? They used to stab me right in my heart with an aching pain. They would rip me into shreds. I still only take them out once in a great while. The watch still ticks away. The wallet still smells the same. How can that be?

We go about this terrible trial so differently, just as we do everything differently. The similarity, I believe, is that we do what we have to to survive and we go largely on instinct. Our bodies and minds seem to know what it is we have to do.

God, I hope you find your ring, Kelley. I hope it's back on your finger, where it belongs and that you can rub your thumb against it once more. I hope I can look at my ring one day and smile big with the memories of the love it represented. I'm getting there.

Turning Pain to Love

In 2012, when his death was so fresh, I needed to talk. About the pain, the fear, the agony, the anger, the loss, the accident, the future we will not have, the children we won't raise, the wedding we won't share… all of it. I wanted to crawl out of my skin with all the pain. I talked and cried almost every single day to someone about my pain. I talked to everyone. Even inappropriately so.

No literally… I have told my story - complete with shameless tears - to perfect strangers. Including customers at the gallery I worked at, a seamstress I had hemming a pair of pants for me, and my masseuse. Really anyone was prey to my grief attacks for about a year there. Sometimes it ended up weird or awkward, but most of the time, it didn't.

Most of the time, it would allow them to share something really vulnerable in their life (the seamstress it turns out was a widow herself many years back, and has since remarried to a wonderful man), or help them simply feel honored that I would trust them enough to share. Almost every time, we both ended up in tears and hugging each other. It turns out, it doesn't really matter if we know each other - we can all give that exchange to one another just by listening and honoring one another where we are.

Looking back, I can begin to understand it this way:
Sharing pain transforms it back into love. I stretch out my arms - with a piece of my pain held in my hands - to someone, to anyone who will have it. It is always a risk that they will not reach back, always, but I know I need to try if my heart is to survive this without becoming hardened. So I reach and I show them my pain. And my hope is that they reach back. And usually, they do. They take that small piece of my pain in their hands. They see it, touch it, come to know it. They turn it over in their hands and take it to their hearts and feel it for a moment. And then they give it back to me, but when it is returned to my hands… miraculously, every time, I find that it is no longer pain at all, but love. They have completely transformed that one small piece - with nothing more than a simple act of acknowledging it, and therefore acknowledging me.

Because our pain, you see, is really just the part of ourselves that has loved fully and deeply and come to be broken. When we give a piece of it to someone, and they receive it with compassion, they can return it back to us as love - as it once was. To me, this has been what healing is about. Taking the chance to be vulnerable and share my pain, bit by bit, day by day… reaching my hands out again and again and again… each time holding a single grain of sand from the desert of pain that resides in my heart. And each time receiving back a single grain of love.

It is a lifelong process, grain by grain. And no, we never do turn all those grains back into love. There will always be some pain amidst our hearts, but looking at it this way helps me to see how every person who has touched my life - and everyone who will - helps me to transform my pain back into love. He did this for me too, well before I was aware. Our vulnerability with each other helped us to turn each other's pain from the days before we met back to love. And now, by the force of his death, I am having to learn a new way to do this. It is time to let others be part of that journey… let them turn my pain back to love, and give the same back to them. I am hoping that by sharing this, it does a little of that for both you and me.

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Hope

Hope is the feeling we have that the feeling we have is not permanent.  

~Mignon McLaughlin

It's a new year and, with that, I'd like to rewind to the beginning years of Michael's death.

I dreaded a new year.

One in which he hadn't lived.

He hadn't existed.

A year in which I couldn't even refer to the year before of him being alive.

They stacked up like the worst deck of cards I could fathom.

A reminder of what no longer was.

What no longer could be.

It tore me down the studs of my being.

So as we enter 2014, nearly 7 years later, I'd like to leave you with my experience.

The experience of seeing that hope is not something you must seek after your spouse's death.

Some beacon of light you wait day and night to shine your way.

It's there waiting for you, when the time is right.

That time will be different for each of us.

For me, it unveiled itself after times of wanting to throw in the towel.

It did not come in my worst hours, but when I had nearly become complacent with just existing.

It showed me that the only permanence is impermanence.

That the aching even had its expiration.

So I urge you to be open to hope this year.

Don't turn it away when it knocks on your door.

It's not there to sell you some horrific life.

It's there to remind you of what once was, what is, what can be.

Take a deep breath. It's all going to be ok.

It's Gone

The following was written in my personal blog  just a few days ago, so those of you who may follow my writing over there, may have already read this. Really wanted to post a shorter version here too, though - because I know that so many of you can relate to the devastation and feelings that this brings up. Nothing has changed. Nothing has been found yet. I keep hoping ..... 


I am in a silent state of panic.
I am staying at my parent's house in Massachusetts,
for about 10 days, over the Christmas break.
While here, something awful happened.
Something so sad and so horrible and so awful,
only other widowed people could possibly understand,
just how awful it is.

I have been walking around like a zombie,
in a silent state of panic,
not telling anyone of the horrible thing,
that happened.
Because maybe,
just maybe,
if I refrain from saying it out loud,
than maybe it didnt actually happen at all.
Right?

I cannot find my wedding ring.
My husband is dead, and gone forever,
and I cannot find my wedding ring.
My hands are shaking as I type this.
My fingers feel like someone else's fingers,
without my ring on.
My skin is so naked and wrong,
without my ring on.
I have nothing to latch onto,
nothing to cling to desperately,
in the unbearable moments of missing him,
without my ring on.

It fell off my finger.
It must have fallen off,
because I never take it off.
Never.
I have looked all over the place.
Like a detective,
or an investigator,
I have searched every crevice,
and nook,
and corner,
of this house.
My ring is gone.
Just like my husband.
There.
Then gone.

I feel like I cannot breathe,
yet I am holding it inside,
silently wailing,
and screaming,
and begging.
Please just let me have my ring back.
Please, universe.
Please ...

When your husband is dead,
the way that my husband is dead,
you cling to things
that symbolize other things
like your life together
your marriage
your vows
your world
your time
your heart.
You cling to them,
because the person,
the physical being,
is no longer here,
to kiss or to smell,
to hold or to talk.
So instead,
in the still of the night,
you stare into space,
and you run your thumbnail,
again and again,
over your wedding ring,
petting it,
feeding yourself with love,
comfort,
something,
ANYTHING,
that feels like proof
of the life you had.
Some sort of evidence,
that we really happened.

I feel scared,
panicked,
invalid,
like I somehow failed him,
for losing the very thing,
that sat on my hand,
and said: "We were love.
We ARE love."

I already knew
that I was no longer married,
when he died.
But I could pretend.
I could keep my ring on,
and pretend,
inside my universe,
I am still married.

I needed to pretend.
I still need to pretend.
I am nowhere near finished pretending.
But I cannot pretend,
because the ring that let me do so,
is now replaced by nothing.
And if I cannot pretend,
in my own little corner,
the world around me feels
Impossible.

Losing this ring,
is like losing my voice
my being
my lifeline.
It comes with such a deep sadness,
that I cannot even cry.
Instead,
I sit,
waiting,
waiting for something to happen
or not happen,
and I roll my thumb,
again and again,
over the nothingness,
where my marriage used to be.

(Pictured: the ring, on our wedding day in 2006. It is not worth more than a couple hundred dollars, as we were broke and I still am, but emotionally, it is worth everything to me. )

Hello 2014

A new year.
Bringing hopes and dreams for a year brighter than the last.

I remember the first new year after Greg died. 
I did not want it to happen.
I hated the passage of time.
I did not want to welcome a year in which Greg had never lived.


Back in Ye Olden Days (ie - before we had children), we had a tradition of going up to a house near a lake just outside the city to celebrate the new year with our dearest friends.
The house was owned by my friend's parents and was used solely as a holiday house.
A party house.
A place where we would gather.
With plentiful food and booze and motorbikes and books .... and the boys would ride off into the hills and my girlfriends and I would chat and read and chat and drink and chat and play pool and chat and dance and welcome the boys home and light firecrackers and roman candles and generally yahoo the night away.

Since the people who owned the house were (are) amongst our best friends, we were always lucky enough to score the second bedroom with its comfy (private) bed and en-suite whilst the others all crowded together in the large downstairs area.  ...and we kept celebrating the new year once inside our romantic room IYKWIM.

Then we all seemed to have children within a few months of each other and our New Years celebrations morphed into family gatherings during daylight hours.  But still we gathered and celebrated together.

But that first year without him was spent alone.
Through choice.
I know my friends just wanted to support me, but I had to spend that time alone.
(with our children).
Sad.

That was four years ago.

While I still didn't get excited about New Year's celebrations like I used to, I felt a change in my attitude this year.

For a start, some really good things happened in 2013.
My job finally became permanent.
My friends and family remain loving and kind, as always.
I have formed new friendships which have become an important part of my life.
For the first time since Greg died, I actually  feel positive about this new year. 

In fact, I welcome it.

Hello 2014

May you bring us all Hope, Peace and Love.