The Season of Goodwill?

Well it feels like time I should post about Christmas but what to say? I think that during December I have been through every possible emotion with regard to the forthcoming festivities and the absence of Dave.

The first challenge was attending a carol service at York Minster in the early part of the month. The service is organised by Tricia and her friends from the York Branch of FSID (Foundation for the study of Sudden Infant Deaths). For those of you who don't know Tricia and Rob's baby Callum died in March 1994 aged 4 months. The service is an annual event in our family calendar and we have attended every year that it has been held since Callum's death, as do a wide range of our close friends. To even contemplate attending without Dave was a tough call and right up until the last minute I did not know whether I would be able get myself across the threshold of the Minster. Fresh in my mind was Dave standing in the pulpit giving a reading two years ago and him being there last year but in tremendous pain. The whole focus of the service being about babies who have tragically died gives it a heightened sense of emotion and for me, this year, remembering Dave, and the babies that we lost in pregnancy, took me over the edge.

The sermon during the service was very poignant. It was given by the Dean of York Minster and it was about bereavement. He used the poem from the funeral in "Four weddings and a funeral" as a starting point. You know the one that begins "He was my north, my south, my east, my west". He said that it was interesting that this poem started using the language of maps as he said in his experience people who are bereaved become disorientated and often feel lost. Their life looks outwardly the same - they live in the same house, do the same jobs, have the same family and friends but their whole world is different. What makes it further disorientating is that people all around them are carrying on with their lives as before as if nothing has happened. He also said that what further disorientates people is they completely lose their sense of self and who they are and as a result of this can become incredibly lonely. I don't know if I am explaining this very well but it made perfect sense at the time and what he said actually was an accurate description of how I have felt for a lot of this year. I ended up getting a lot of comfort from the service and just being with all my close friends and went on to enjoy a good few glasses of wine in a local bar afterwards.

From that day I felt as if I had been thrown headlong in to Christmas! A constant barrage of food adverts on the telly from companies like Sainsburys and M and S showing how the "perfect" Christmas should look (and that definitely is not a mum and daughter sitting by themselves at a table with a turkey the size of a pigeon). Then there were the endless Christmas songs on the radio and in the shops. Mariah Carey "All I want for Christmas is you!" having a particular poignancy in spite of the fact that I absolutely hate Mariah Carey. Added to this I work in a school with seemingly endless rehearsals of Christmas carols - it was a heady mix. And then there was just the endlessly banal, what I call Christmas Crapola conversations about present buying, festive menus, what people have in their freezer and machinations over which family members people will be saddled with this year. Normally these conversations would just make me laugh that people are so immensely boring, but this year they have at times just irritated the hell out of me! I became worried that I might take a machine gun to some unsuspecting carol singer or plant hand grenades in all the turkeys in Sainsburys. I have said or many years that if anything is not right in your life Christmas amplifies this with all the images of how the perfect Christmas should look, when you are in as difficult position as me it is nearly enough to take you over the edge!

These problems with Christmas did lead to a particularly terrible weekend ten days ago when I was already struggling and Emma got terribly upset over the Christmas Tree. Buying the Christmas Tree and decorating it was something that she always did with her dad and after some friends delivered the tree to our house she completely went to pieces and sobbed her heart out. We seemed to go on a downward slide for a couple of days after that and I spent the next afternoon Christmas shopping in York unable to see anything whatsoever in front of me due the constant tears. The arrival of the snow brought more tears from Emma as her dad was an ace snowball thrower (able to hit distant targets i.e. people with amazing accuracy which helped him to achieve a near hero status with her friends) and there are somethings you just can't try to replicate.

I was reading an article in the Guardian at the weekend by a journalist called Simon van Booy whose wife died a couple of years ago leaving him a single parent to their daughter Madeleine. He called the article "Love and Loss at Christmas" and said (rather poetically) about dealing with Christmas "Grief is a room without doors – but somehow, with its tinsel and clichés, Christmas finds a way in. In the absence of a loved one, all the pageantry, all the carols and parties and bright bustling pubs, are an unbearable silence. For many, the season of goodwill and joy is also the season of loneliness and despair, during which nothing grows except the longing for what can never be". And on that dreadful weekend that is where I was with it all. I could relate to his feeling that "At times it feels as though Christmas is laughing in our face like a drunken bully".

But thankfully as with everything these dreadful feelings pass. I finished work on Friday and have now had some time to catch up on that elusive (for me) commodity sleep and have had more time to relax with friends. I now feel much more calm and peaceful and better able to face the challenge of my first Christmas for 27 years without Dave. I am not going to pretend that it will be plain sailing. Even now as I type this the thought of Emma jumping in to bed with her pillowcase full of presents without Dave there for the first time is enough to make me well up with tears, but I am aware that it is something that we both have to face. As usual our friends have come up trumps and are keeping us busy with invitations from Christmas Eve to the 27th and Emma and I intend to have the best possible Christmas we can in the circumstances. I am sure there will be tears from us both and our hearts will ache for Dave but we fully intend to make the best of a difficult situation. If we have got this far I am sure we can make it through another couple of days!

And finally I feel the need to leave a message for Dave on his blog: Darling, Emma and I miss you more than words can say. We still have a big Dave/Dad shaped hole in our lives that no-one else can fill. I miss being wrapped and cossetted in your love, knowing that you had so much love for me made for a life of grace and ease. I am still so unbearably sad that you died but then we always said life wasn't fair. Somehow Emma and I are getting through this time and will continue to stand for a life full of fun,love and laughter (despite their being quite a bit of evidence to the contrary at the present time!), but we will get there in order to honour your memory. You would be very proud of the amazing young woman that Emma has become. Love you always, Sarahx

"A thing of beauty is a joy forever
Its loveliness increases: it will never
Pass into nothingness"

Plumbing the depths.....

The last few weeks have been a bit of a whirlwind - incredibly 9 months have now passed since Dave died. Having really looked forward to the half term week as a break from work and a time to rest and relax, what actually happened when it came was tears and lots of them. I realise now that I had probably kept going through the last two or three weeks of the half term on adrenaline (due to extreme tiredness) and as soon as I stopped working the tears just flowed. I spent the first 3 days either crying or wanting to cry and totally disillusioned with the human race. I felt at the time that everyone (and in my world it was more or less the whole 65 billion give or take a very small handful of people) had forgotten Emma and I, and I was totally sick of people saying that they had "been thinking about me all the time" without actually doing very much to help or support us. I did actually say at the time that if one more person said that phrase I would physically "punch their lights out". Thankfully the next person to say it was actually Helen calling from Perth in Australia who was forgiven on the basis that a) she lives in Australia which is a very long way to go to be randomly violent b) she had actually taken the time and the trouble to call and c) when she says she is thinking about us all the time she really means it and I can hear the frustration in her voice at being so far away with so little that she can do from a practical point of view to help.

Anyhow as you can probably hear anger was starting to surface a bit(!). I have yet to ever feel angry with Dave for actually dying as I know that he was desperately sad about dying and did everything he could do to stay with us, sadly without success. However, I do from at times feel angry at what has happened to us as a family as we really did not and do not deserve the cruddy hand that life has dealt us, especially as we were one of those very rare commodities nowadays, a genuinely happy family. Anger is an interesting emotion for me as both Dave and I were never very good at expressing anger as an emotion as a result of various experiences in our childhoods. Dave and I both became masters at the art of avoiding confrontation and anger was usually only allowed to surface with both of us in the form of road rage and anger at bad drivers! All of Dave's Buddhist concepts would go out of the window whenever he was behind the wheel.....

So to get back to my original point I found myself very very sad and quite angry at the end of October and wishing that "people" in general would do more to support us. And then I had one of my "lightbulb" moments.....I realised that it was my job to look after Emma but it was absolutely no-ones job to look after me! My mum and dad are both dead and now Dave is dead so I am completely and utterly and officially on my own! The initial realisation of the fact that I am on my own was very painful and sent me further down the downward spiral, as I felt totally on my own and really did feel like I couldn't go on much more as I was so exhausted. And then I did a very bizarre thing......I thought well, if I am on my own I had better get on with the decorating because no other f**kers going to do it. I started painting my newly replastered dining room like a woman possessed! That still strikes me as a strange thing to do, but I can be damned bloody minded sometimes at the point where most people would curl up in a ball and give up!

I eventually went to bed very late and laid there talking to Dave as I do from time to time. I said something along the lines of "look things can't get much worse, if there is a cavalry anywhere I could do with it showing up right now as I have completely and utterly run out of steam". And the weirdest thing happened.....from the next day people started to show up to help me with the decorating and other jobs! And during that week, the phone rang off the hook - at the time it felt like nothing short of a miracle. I stopped hating the human race and got my love for people back. And strangely the feeling of being on my own started to feel like something that was empowering in a way that I find difficult to describe.

So I had what I describe as my "Half Term Meltdown" a feeling of hitting rock bottom. Who knows it may happen again and I may go lower. Every time I feel like I have got to the bottom of this particular pit I seem to go lower again and this is what makes it so difficult to sustain yourself through the grieving process. You've had the stuffing knocked out of you and you simply don't have the stamina to claw your way all the back up. I heard one of my widow friends describe the situation really brilliantly the other day when she said "I've spent all my life worrying about the depth of the paddling pool, now someone's thrown me in to middle of the ocean".

And on a final note, isn't it funny how what can feel like really negative things can have a positive impact on your life? At the end of half term I had a beautiful new dining room and my garden makeover started in the summer was finished (with more than a little help from my friends). And I also had a sense of achievement, that I could do things. And a feeling that although it's nobody's job to look after me and love me a lot of people do anyway - which (as Stuart would say in Caddyshack style-e)is nice.

"How are you?"

That innocent phrase that I have come to realise is merely a form of greeting in our society not usually a genuine enquiry! As a grieving person it is probably something I have come to dislike, because if people don't ask I think they don't care, but if they do ask I feel completely floored as to answer truthfully I would need hours to think about it and would probably feel the need to prepare a 10,000 word dissertation to even get close to a truthful answer! I now have a fairly bog standard answer for people that I don't know so well which is said with a smile and humurous intent "I'm not sure you should really have asked that question as I don't know if you've got time for the answer!" Whether that is the right or wrong thing to say I don't know, but it does usually provide enough humour to diffuse the situation.

What you notice with being so seriously bereaved is how uneasy you make others feel just by existing at times........it's almost as though your husband dying may be contagious and that by talking to you some people feel as though they will be contaminated by the same terribly bad luck. I think one of the things that goes on is that somewhere buried deep in their subconscious people know that one day they too will have to deal with such a terribly tragic situation - maybe their partner will become seriously ill and/or die or one of their children will have a terrible accident and be seriously injured or die, but they don't want to even begin to think about what something like that must be like. One of the completely unintentionally cruellest things said to me by someone after Dave died (by someone who is also very happily married) was "Sarah, I can't even go there and think about what that would be like". At the time I wanted to scream back "You don't want to think about it, how do you think I feel about living it!" but of course I didn't as I knew the person meant nothing by what they said and was actually very upset by Dave's death.

So back to the question "how are you?". One of the other problems with this is that we do not have words or language available that adequately describe the depths of emotion that you go through with this kind of grief. When talking to people about how I am feeling I can't find the vocabulary at times. As an example, I can try to tell people that I feel very lonely both on my own or even when in big crowds of people but I cannot clearly get across the depth of that feeling. So when people say "Oh I know what you mean about being lonely" I am left with the feeling that they don't really, as in my use of language I feel that I have done the equivalent of labelling a hurricane a mild storm! So in trying to use everyday language you can cause unintentional misunderstandings. Social convention also decrees that we do not show the raw depth of emotion most of the time as there are very few people who can really "get it" as to the inexperienced eye revealing your true feelings could look to others as if you were on the verge of crazy! Although I find I find I tend to care less about the opinions of others these days and have decided that 95% of the population are mad anyway!

The lack of inadequate language to describe things also exacerbates the feeling of loneliness and I find that only others who have had a similar experience can fully understand some of the things I am feeling. This is difficult because I know there are a lot of committed friends and family who really want to support Emma and I but your partner dying is, in its very nature (i.e. because it doesn't tend to happen very often to people of my age), a very isolating experience. There is no bridge easily available for people to walk across and reach out to you (as much as they may want to), so all I can see people can do is accept you for the way you are (however that is) and listen and just love you for who you are and who you could become.

For me personally there is a very radical personal transformation going on that I currently appear to have no control over (the phrase "being forced through the eye of a needle" springs to mind). I intend to write about this more fully in a later post (maybe when I understand it a bit better!). I have been very puzzled by what has been happening to me personally, but I have actually began to understand more about this by reading a book that was recommended to me by a fellow "widda" called "Companion through the darkness: Inner dialogues on grief" by Stephanie Ericsson whose husband died suddenly of a heart attack when she was pregnant with their first child. Stephanie refers to something which she labels "Transition" which she defines as "the moments strung out over months where I know I am no longer the woman that I was , but not quite the woman I am becoming". I can relate to being in this kind of state of limbo. I know in my heart that there is no going back to my old naturally contented life with Dave, but I am not yet ready to step in to my new life, because that means letting go of him and I am not ready to do that yet. How this manifests itself at the moment is in a very unsettling feeling of no longer knowing myself any more. I was previously very confident, at ease and happy in my own skin but these days I struggle to recognise my formerly happy self as everything about life is such a struggle. Thankfully as I think I have said before I do trust in the future (my mantra at the moment being the Buddhist "all things pass") and things ultimately working out. So for the moment I have lowered my expectations of life and to survive the next few months is sufficient (if rather uninspiring but hell survival is good!).

Occasionally when I can overcome the absolute desolation of missing Dave, I feel glimmers of excitement about what the future holds for me and for Emma. It feels as though the second half of my life is just starting. I read a quote the other day from EM Forster that I found very appropriate to my current situation "We must be willing to get rid of the life we've planned, so as to have the life that is waiting for us". Inspirational but so far easier said than done for me........

And for a bit more armchair philosophy (sorry if you're bored but as you know Dave and I shared a mutual obsession for cracking the meaning of life) how's this from the Buddhists:

"Master, what is the best way to meet the loss of someone we love?"

The response: "By knowing that when we truly love, it is never lost. It is only after death that the depth of the bond is truly felt and our loved one becomes more of a part of us than was possible in life". This is currently Work In Progress for me...........

Heigh ho heigh ho it's off to work we go.......

Long time no post as us bloggers say. What can I say about September? Well apart from a string of expletives I can only say that I am glad to see the back of it!

This has been Reality Time. Back to work full-time and work being very stressful. A huge workload and far too many new initiatives to implement at the same time and 7 months after your husband died people seem to expect you to be "back to normal". If only I knew what normal was for me these days. Outside of work a complete treadmill of cooking, cleaning, shopping, washing and ironing so that you really get to see what life as a bereaved parent is like ( I prefer the term bereaved parent to single parent as Emma does have two parents it's just that one of them is no longer on the Earthly Plane). This is all on top of extreme tiredness (and at times during the month illness). I have never before experienced anything that makes you as tired as grieving for your partner does and in a bizarre twist of fate, even when you are exhausted, grieving does not allow you to sleep. And with your new financial restrictions you can't afford to eat out or have a takeaway when you are completely knackered. The whole thing becomes like living in the Twilight Zone (60s version not the Stephanie Meyer books for younger readers of the blog).

I am hoping that I will gradually adjust to being back at work as I am unsure how long I can sustain myself on this level of exhaustion. The hardest thing I find is that you have no obvious wound or injury for people to see to make it obvious you will be finding life tough. For me, losing Dave is the equivalent of having my right arm wrenched off. If I was walking around with my right arm wrenched off people (especially people I don't know) might take some notice and be kinder to me! I also have a feeling sometimes of being a "has been" from a tv soap opera. So many people got involved and were caught up in the drama of Dave's illness and death but like anything else people move on quickly in their lives to the next thing. I'm not saying that it is wrong that people move on, it is actually entirely appropriate, but for me I am sometimes left with the feeling that Dave, Emma and I are yesterday's fish and chip paper. And this is at a time when things are really tough. Luckily, fantastically caring friends and family are switched on enough to recognise this and stick by Emma and I and keep an eye on us.

The best way to manage the exhaustion has been to limit activities outside of work so I have stayed relatively hermit like this month, unable to cope with very little on top of work. Although as my friend Carol pointed out last Sunday "your hermit like life is probably my normal" as I am normally a pretty energetic and vital person compared to the average human being.

In amidst The Trudge as I call it there have been some good moments. At the end of August Emma found out that she had got A* for the GCSE Maths that she took a year early and A*s in all the GCSE Science modules for this year which was extraordinary considering all the school she missed and all the upset she has been through. She also did a fortnight's informal work experience with Greg in his art gallery and a fortnight's formal (school) work experience in the Art and Design department at York College. She also went to her first music festival. Last week, I started back at college to learn Indian Head massage and Emma and I have started to go to yoga together on Thursdays. There have also been glimpses of happy times to come on a walk last Sunday at the coast and a meal out last night where I found myself laughing more than I had done for a while.

So for now I will keep on trudging and trusting in the future and things ultimately working out. It just seems to require more patience than I have ever needed for anything ever before in my life. For a recovering Control Freak this is HARD so I have given up trying to control anything and am just taking life on a day to day or week to week basis. Bite sized chunks of life I can just about manage but looking further ahead is impossible right now.

Summertime.........

Summertime and the living is somewhat more difficult than normal......that wouldn't make much of a Gerschwin song would it?

So most of the school summer holidays have gone and Emma and I have just about survived in one piece. We spent two weeks in Brighton for our main holiday courtesy of our friends Nick and Teresa who very kindly lent us their house whilst they were away in Spain. Brighton is a good location for us as we have lots of friends and family in the area, so it presented itself as an easier option than a full blown holiday for just the two of us where we didn't know anybody. That having been said it was still not easy having our first proper holiday without Dave. For those of you who know us well, you will know that Dave and I have always really really loved our holiday times and have been to some amazing places and had some very fun times. Wherever we went even when the accommodation was somewhat basic, or in one or two instances downright grotty, we have always succeeded in having a great time. Trying to create fun in the midst of two people grieving hard for a very special person is not the easiest of tasks and proved to be quite a rollercoaster ride. We did have some very good days and evenings including a day in London, taking in the seaside and some fun meals/visits with family and friends. We also had some difficult grumpy times so the whole thing was very mixed but on the whole a positive experience of learning to manage without Dave. Although learning to live without Dave can also bring up difficult feelings, as it is not something you want to have to even try to do.

The end of the fortnight was marked by the wedding of Hayley (Dave's cousin's daughter) and James and this turned out to be the point where Emma and I reached an emotional "crescendo" if there is such a thing. The day was very significant for me as Hayley was a flower girl at our wedding 23 years ago and it was the first family wedding since Dave died. Going to French family weddings with Dave was always a joy in the past, as he was always so much fun and so entertaining and I have lovely memories of family weddings now going back to the first one I attended as part of my French family "induction" in 1983 (which coincidentally was the first time I met Hayley's mum and dad). I anticipated that the tears might flow so strategically tried to hide myself behind a pillar in the church! The bit of the service that really got to me was the vows particularly "for richer for poorer, in sickness and in health, till death do us part". It really struck me how little I had thought about those words and the promises when I had got married in 1986. I did say them at the time like a really meant them, but being a young and naive 23 at the time had no idea that the promises I was making I would be fully called upon to fulfill one day. But at least no-one can ever look at me and say I didn't deliver! I think that if I had to say something which singled out our marriage as particularly special it would have to be that it worked so phenomenally well when we were really "up against it" and not just in the sugary, easy to deal with, times.

The wedding was lovely and a real credit to everyone involved in organising it but further emotional stuff was to come. At the end of the speeches a toast was raised to "absent friends" and a list of names of people who sadly could not be there was read out. This was a lovely touch on the part of Hayley and James but by this time I was beside myself and the tears flowed. Seeing Terry as Hayley's proud dad all I could think of was the fact that Dave would not be able to be there for Emma should she ever get married, which if and when it happens, will be a very tough call. I was also very present to all the other important milestones in Emma's life that he will miss and felt so sad for him and all that he is missing out on, knowing how much he loved his very precious daughter.

Emma lasted well during the wedding and loved all the girlie aspects of being at a wedding - Hayley's dress, the bridesmaid's outfits, confetti and laughing at some of the wedding guests' "outfits" but her time was to come. As we were about to leave at about ten o'clock we sat in the gardens of the venue looking at the stars and she suddenly started to sob her heart out which continued until we got back to Brighton. Unfotunately when this happens she feels terrible physical sensations (on this occasion a terrible pain in her chest) but is rarely able to verbally express what she is feeling. Seeing her in so much pain always totally upsets me as you would expect and after putting her to bed I eventually cried myself to sleep. But anyway, we got through the day somehow and if we had to go to a wedding at this time, it was a good thing that it was Hayley and James's as they are such a lovely couple together and we were surrounded by a lot of love and people looking out for us on the day. But like everything else, however hard people try to support us, they cannot stop us feeling the pain - it has to come out somehow.

We have now been back in York for a week now and it has not been the easiest of times. Emma and I have both been quite tearful as I think the reality of what has happened bites hard. We cancelled a weekend away at a birthday party this weekend as neither of us felt up to facing large numbers of people for a second time in a fortnight so we have been "hibernating". It feels as though the summer is ending and I return to work full-time on Wednesday. It looks like a very long haul between now and Christmas for me - working full-time, doing everything around the house, still having problems sleeping and still grieving but I guess I will have to go back to my previous way of dealing with this as "one day at a time" and not think too far ahead as when I do the whole thing looks overwhelming.

And as well as looking at the difficult things we are dealing with, on the positive side I can see a lot of accomplishments in the last 6 months. I have personally got through things I would never have thought possible and that is on top of an incredibly difficult 3 years prior to Dave's death. It brings to mind the Churchill quote "When you are in Hell, keep going" which has almost become my motto recently! My spiritually enlightened friends keep telling me to fully immerse myself in the dark and difficult side of life that I am experiencing and that untold riches will come to me out of my experiences. So for now I am trusting them and reflecting on the famous Buddhist quote which says "All things pass" and if I didn't truly believe that I think I would completely and utterly have thrown the towel in by now!

A curious case of the "what ifs"......

In response to my last post regarding whether I should continue with the blog, I had quite a large number of emails from people saying that I shouldn't continue if I didn't want to, but that they did find the blog really interesting and inspirational. The overwhelming feeling seem to be that people appreciate my honesty and the insights about life they can gain from my posts, even if by the nature of the situation it is not always a barrel of laughs. So for now I will continue, although I plan to only post when I feel that I have something useful to say so there may be slightly bigger gaps between posts.

The last few weeks have been really busy. I have managed to get from working part-time to full-time in 4 weeks which I feel is something of an achievement. I have also been busy with visitors and this weekend a camping weekend in Rosedale on the North York Moors with a big group of friends which Emma and I both really enjoyed.

As with the occasional instances of enjoying ourselves that we currently have you sometimes come back down to earth with a bump. Emma is buzzing with teenage hormones and stopping school has given her more time to think about her Dad and feel really sad. I have gone back to seriously sleepless nights and a constantly restless mind. People who are "experts" on grief do talk about a 6 month dip occurring (we will be at our 6 month "sadiversary" on the 9th August)so perhaps this is part of that.

As well as a restless mind, I have also been present to a new phenomenon, a curious case of the "what ifs". This is very unusual for me as I pride myself on having a stand to have no regrets in life in normal circumstances. The only serious regret I have ever experienced up until now has been being far too serious in my early 20s and settling down straight after university in to full-time work. Both Dave and I often wished that we had not been so intense and that we had just bummed around the world for a couple of years after uni and experienced the world a bit more before settling down in to domesticity. But leaving that regret aside which has never been a massive deal for either of us, there have been no others. Even the difficulties we experienced with miscarriages and ectopic pregnancies which meant that we did not have as big a family as we planned, we accepted as fate.

During Dave's illness and his death I have never gone down the route of "it's not fair" as I see that as a complete waste of time conversation. You only have to look around the world to see that life is clearly not fair and anyone who tells their kids that it is, is in my world very misguided and setting up their kids to be very upset later in life! Thinking "it's not fair" to my mind saps your energy and drains you so I don't go there. Life isn't fair but anyone who has the expectation that it will be is, to my mind, a bit deluded, and probably ends up very angry and bitter for most of their life.

What I have been experiencing a lot of though in the last couple of weeks is the "what ifs", those imponderables that will never be answered. What if Dave had not been such a bloke about his illness and gone to the doctors sooner? What if we had tried more of the alternative treatments like the grape juice fast? What if certain drugs like Avastin had been available on the NHS? What if we had been able to travel to Brazil and see the man who is claiming to be the Son of God and healing people? What if I had given up work sooner? What if we have been less generous with the time we gave to visiting family and friends and saved it for us as a family? Did Emma get to see her Dad enough when he went to the hospice? Did we do things "right"? A million and one things have been going round in my head and I wonder if this is part of "processing" what has happened.

The thing about terminal illness in my experience though is this. You make the best decisions you can at every point during the illness according to the information you have available at the time. And, at times, especially towards the end when things are absolutely hairraising you make the decisions in the midst of chaos and total upset and trauma. You basically have to do the best you can.

I remember with my mum's cancer that we were told in February 2003 she would probably live for 12-18 months. I travelled the 450 mile round trip at least every other weekend and sometimes more frequently to spend time with her in her nursing home in Oxfordshire. When it got to July she seemed to be doing relatively okay so I decided to take a holiday with Dave and Emma in Devon as I felt I should have some "quality" time with them if I was going to need to spend a lot of time away from home with my mum in the following few months. What actually happened was that my mum deteriorated rapidly whilst I was away and died approximately a fortnight after I had returned from the holiday. When somebody is terminally ill predictions are often wildly inaccurate and you are always in the situation of not knowing how long you will need to keep going and sustain yourself.

With Dave at the point where the doctors discovered the cancer had returned in November 2007, Dr Last predicted that he would live for between one and three years with chemo, possibly even longer as he was so young to get this form of cancer. In reality, he lived for just short of 15 months after that. During the last 3 months of his life the deterioration was frighteningly fast and we lived in chaos. There are parts of that time which I cannot actually remember as they were so very traumatic, I seem to have blanked them out of my mind for now. We talked and reviewed things constantly involving Emma as much as possible in all our decisions and in my head I really do know that we all did the best we could at the time. But knowing this doesn't seem to stop you thinking about the "what ifs".

The trouble is the more I try to put the lid on the "what ifs" the more they seem to breed and multiply so what can I do? My feeling is that I just need to let them arise and fall and not try to change them or alter them in any way. I know in my heart that we really did do the best we could at the time and without the benefit of hindsight. I also need to remember the acknowledgements we have received in the past from people who know about how we handled the whole adventure of Dave's illness.

Only this week my counsellor at the hospice was commending me on how much I/we have given Emma in the way we jointly approached Dave's illness and how I have subsequently given Emma so many gifts in my approach since Dave's death. Apparently the openness I/we have shown is rare amongst the families she deals with. I can see that some of things I have done like allowing Emma to spend time with her dad after he died, allowing her to help in organising the funeral and letting her choose the plot in the cemetery where the ashes are interred have all helped. I also think that our openness in talking about what has happened and is happening to us both now is a big testament to the relationship that we created as a family together with Dave. However, this does not stop it hurting like hell when she is so very upset. It can also tear you apart as a mother when your natural instinct is to try to "make everything better". Unfortunately, intellectually I do know that I can't solve this one for her but it doesn't stop me wanting to try.

Snakes and Ladders......

Hi there. Not posted for a while. Too damn tired at the moment! Going back to work is taking its toll. Putting on a public face for so many hours a day is totally exhausting and people seem to feel the need to tell me that I look really well and am doing really well. If only they knew what was going on underneath the surface...........

In general, I am more puzzled and bemused by life than at any time in the past. Living my life for me prior to Dave's illness and death was, for the majority of the time, a complete breeze. I never understood why people made so much fuss about life and how tough it was. I just thought it was all about having fun, laughter and love and never realised the stability and grounding you get from being in a happy, loving and secure relationship. My relationship with Dave was totally in my blindspot - it was only in the last few years of his life that I realised how special it was.

Now life looks very much more complicated. If I had marked my ability to live prior to Dave dying I would have said I was near to complete "mastery" of this living thing! To find myself in this situation is something of a shock. I said to a couple of friends yesterday that I feel like I have been in a game of Snakes and Ladders and have got a couple of spaces away from the top only to find the Most Enormous Snake which has taken me right back to the first few squares of the board and the beginning. I now feel like a complete novice in life, feeling almost as if I need to learn to walk and talk and learn all those other basics again. I also feel quite childlike in my emotional state - very vulnerable and with this panicky feeling of being on my own again.

The strange thing is I am noticing that lots of other people in their 40s and 50s seem to be struggling with life in general and are very confused and upset. Divorce seems all too common and if not as far as the divorce stage I am witnessing a lot of relationship "struggles" and unhappiness. Lots of job and career problems and upsets and financial problems seem prevalent and more people seem unhappy with their lot in life and seem to be struggling to find meaning. So at least I am not alone!

So I am now declaring myself to be a Novice. I know that I have quite a few miles on the clock of life and doubtless a bundle full of experience which could come in handy, but I am now beginning a completely new life and I have to admit I am a Novice. No idea where to start or how to create my new life. In fact I don't even think I am ready to create a new life yet until I have been further through the Grief Process. At the moment trying to generate anything feels like putting icing on dog pooh and i don't think it's to be recommended.

Greiving wise I still feel as if I haven't got to the Bottom of the Pit. For those of you who are perhaps thinking I will be on the way up by now as much as I would like that to be the case that doesn't seem to be the way this works. In fact it is really now that the situation is really biting - the reality of the fact that Dave is dead is really hitting home to both myself and Emma and life is tough as we go about our normal day-to-day life with such an important person missing.

At this point am not sure how much longer I will continue with the blog. The blog was a fun thing to do in the adventure of Dave's illness and there was plenty of drama but writing about grief is never going to be a bundle of laughs! I notice quite a large number of people are still reading the but am not currently sure if it is serving a purpose. Certainly doesn't feel inspirational any more! But if you have any thoughts or comments I would love to hear from you. My email is sarah@lefrenchies.wanadoo.co.uk.

What becomes of the broken hearted?

I heard "What becomes of the broken hearted?" by Jimmy Ruffin on the radio the other day and it set me wondering - what does become of the broken hearted? I have a particular interest in this one as I now consider myself to be in this category of people for the first time in my life having lost my best friend and soul mate. Now don't get me wrong, "What becomes of the broken hearted?" is a very good song, but if you look at the lyrics Jimmy poses a question that he never really bothers to answer which doesn't seem very fair. This set me wondering. What does become of the people whose hearts are broken by whatever event be it by bereavement, illness, divorce or just sheer meanness or nastiness on the part of their partner? There must be a lot of people in this category but they either must either adjust to their new state, hide their broken heart, harden themselves (which I think often happens) or just simply disappear under the carpet. Or perhaps they mend their broken heart somehow and go on to another wonderful relationship eventually. I do wonder which category I will be in but I think it is far too early to tell! Dave was very committed to me having another relationship - in fact so much so that he was eyeing up potential suitors for me on visits to the hospital and around our house when innocent tradesmen visited! I think he would have advertised and interviewed suitable candidates if time had been more on his side! But for me, although I recognise that I don't much fancy being on my own for the next 30+ years it is far too early in the process to even contemplate another relationship. I do find myself "window shopping" lonely hearts advertisements though which is extremely bizarre but unfortunately I think Dave would have to acknowledge that he has spoilt me for other men by doing such a good job of being a husband!

A short post this week as to tell you the truth I am completely and utterly knackered. And the awful thing is I am pretty certain I have not bottomed out yet in terms of upset. Nearly five months of grieving on top of looking after Dave for a very long while have nearly done me in. When I read a book a few months ago that contained advice for people whose partner had died, they said that in the first few months the best advice was to get up, get dressed, drink plenty of water, try to eat healthily and breathe. At the time I laughed at this advice and, I think, in retrospect, tried to do too much to prove this theory wrong (God knows why). I soon realised that this was actually very good, simple advice and adopted a new strategy. The new strategy was to do the above and to put "one foot in front of the other" and "one day at a time" (too cheesy for words). If I had a bad day I put it down to experience and made a fresh start the next day. In the last couple of weeks even putting one foot in front of the other has become tricky and, at times, a bridge too far. I feel like a Mini trying to tow a juggernaut. I would never have believed that one human being could get so tired but my homeopath and doctor do think it is just the grieving process combined with the shock of Dave's death on my body. We have agreed though that if it carries on for another couple of weeks the doctor will run some tests to eliminate nasties like thyroid troubles etc. but in the meantime it is time to try to chill out and relax. Easier said than done in the circumstances!

Celebrations

And the news from York is (at the risk of boring you rigid) well it's still very tough!! Many ups and downs over the last couple of weeks.

Last Friday was a very special day as we had half of Dave's ashes interred at York Cemetery (the place where the funeral service was held). The other half of his ashes will be scattered later by Emma and I on a favourite walk in Swaledale. On Friday, a small group of family and friends attended at the cemetery. I created what turned out to be a very simple and quite moving ceremony and for the first time Emma let out a lot of her upset and emotion. Although this was very difficult at the time for her it was something that needed to happen as she has been so brave and strong ever since Dave died. I was also taken by surprise by the emotion and found myself shaking like a leaf in Sainsburys on the morning before the interrment and Emma and I had a terrible few days leading up to the event as well. I think it is something of a reality check to put your husband/father's remains in the ground. However, the love and support of the people who came to the ceremony made me feel like we were being wrapped in a warm blanket and I was very present to the love in our life.

The spot Emma chose for the interrment is beautiful as it is in the old Victorian part of the cemetery where all the graves are wild and overgrown. It is very peaceful and when you are there on your own all you can hear is bird song. In a couple of weeks a headstone will be placed on the plot. We did keep the ceremony very private due to the very public nature (and numbers) of the funeral but if any of you would like to go to visit the spot in the future please let me know.

After the ceremony we went back to the ever accommodating Rob and Tricia's for a barbecue. The weather was fabulous as I had hoped and we had a lovely evening although it has to be said there were a few sore heads the next day as some effort was put in to celebrating the occasion!

Sunday would have been our 23rd wedding anniversary. I found myself in the car thinking how strange it was that I was 23 when I got married and would have been married 23 years. This led me to wonder where I would be in the next 23 years at the age of 69 as so much has happened in the last 23 years. What could have been a very difficult day was averted by Julia taking Emma and I out to a country pub for dinner on a lovely summer's evening.

This week the main event for me has been going back to work on a part-time basis. In the last couple of weeks I have felt myself to be ready for a distraction from this grieving business although going back to work is still hard. I think for myself going back to work is hard because it is another sign of going back to "normal" life when absolutely nothing you have left in your life feels normal. It feels as if I have a huge rock in my chest just as I did in the first few weeks after Dave died and similarly I also have a big lump in my throat. And the sleepless nights are back with a vengeance - think I managed all of two hours last night! Still I hope that work will become a welcome diversion and a bit therapeutic as it was during much of Dave's illness - looks as though I just need to get through the pain barrier first.

A friend sent me an email the other day telling me about a programme on tv that Sheila Hancock did in the series "My life in poetry". I haven't managed to get time to see the actual programme on iplayer yet but I read an associated news article on the web. When referring to the death of her husband John Thaw, Sheila Hancock was saying that she got sick of people sending her cards saying that "he was just in the next room" when in fact she was clear that he was in fact stone dead! She said in the article about grieving something along the lines of the fact that grief doesn't get better, you just get better at dealing with it. From my experience so far this would appear to be the case. What I therefore need now is to work my way towards mastery but I won't be holding my breath, as I think this apparent merry-go-round could bamboozle me for some time yet!

An enquiry in to the usefulness of the male species.....

Before Dave died he wrote an A-Z of how to live your life for Emma and I and I was reading it just the other night. In the manual B is for boyfriends and discusses the male species in general. Dave said in the manual that "the thing about men and boyfriends is this: they can provide you with some of the things that your girl friends can't, and I don't just mean the obvious! Some of them know things about cars and boilers and plumbing, and decorating, and all that other useful stuff I ultimately was too bored to be good at." One of my missions over the last few weeks appears to have been to find out the hard way how true that is.

I have sometimes in the past (I am ashamed to admit)been quite disparaging at times of the male species especially with regard to the ability to multi-task. I have watched many females buzz around doing all number of tasks at the same time whilst observing the male of the household with a fixed gaze on the remote control concentrating on changing channels and at times have seen them struggle to drink a beer at the same time.

But in the last couple of weeks I have been forced to change my opinions and eat my words as I have discovered the problems of not having a ready male on tap!! And my extensive research has revealed that the men do come in very handy at times and as Dave says not just for the obvious. I have discovered that men are very useful when you need to accomplish the following tasks:

Moving furniture - after being nearly crushed to death by a bookcase I can confirm that another pair of hands and some brute strength are useful.

Hanging pictures on the wall. How do you do that when you only have one of hands? - it just doesn't work effectively as a solitary activity.

Using a drill - far too dangerous for most normal women to consider (and I used to be a feminist). If you do manage to drill a hole you can be sure it will be the wrong size and in the wrong place and you will have almost certainly fallen off the ladder.

Loading and unloading the cars for a trip to the dump. The dump is a smelly and unglamorous place and the recycling areas are always in the wrong order and it is ultimately very boring. And now it is very pc so you will be met with a glare any time you try to shove something in the "landfill" bin rather than recycling.

Unblocking the hoover pipe when you have managed to fill it with fluff from the new carpet you have just had laid and completely knackered both of your hoovers. Having to accost a passing Irsihman with the patience of a saint to undo all the damage you have managed to do.

Getting a chair out of the attic conversion knowing that it went in through the doorway when you moved in, but finding that it will now not come out and will definitely get stuck fast in the doorway. Embarrassingly the (male)carpet fitter got it out in 30 seonds flat after you have bemoaned the problem and told him you will have to saw the legs off.

Getting the lid off off a jar of jam. Are the French people at Bonne Maman sadistic?

Barbecuing - assembling the barbecue, cooking the food and cleaning the barbecue afterwards - all more suited to the hunter gatherer and the female of the species should just be tasked with drinking the Pimms.

Loading a holiday's worth of luggage in to a very small car boot. Much better to watch the male grapple with this one whilst standing by the car and offering advice. Also preferable for the male to herd all the luggage through the airport and off the baggage carousel whilst you complain how hot you are and drink your Evian.

Collapsing a table tennis table in Provence in order to put the cover on. This may just be me and Claire but it took half an hour and every ounce of our initiative when a random male could almost certainly have completed the task in two minutes flat.

So I feel I must apologise to all you lads out there - there are definitely times when you are very very useful! And your strategies for doing these types of things are far more effective then mine which tends to involve a lack of patience, ranting my bad temper and, if all else fails, crying and looking helpless. So is there anyone out there who wants to adopt a helpless female in York?

Going underground

Well, what a week. This one was always going to be tricky as it involved Emma and I being separated for 5 days as she went off on a school trip to Berlin. I really really wanted her to go and have some much needed fun but at the same time it was difficult as we had not been apart since Dave died. As those of you who have been reading the blog for a long time know we used to call ourselves The Three Musketeers when Dave was alive. Sadly now we can only manage to be the Dynamic Duo but we are so close after all our experiences that you can't put a credit card between us. We function as each other's best friends looking out for each other as much as we can. I dropped Emma off at school on Friday morning and did a very embarrassing thing that should definitely not be done when your daughter is 15 and you are standing outside her school - I cried my eyes out. I had no plans to do that but biting my lip failed miserably and the tears rolled. With my wobble came a wobble from Emma - started with a chin quiver and then a few tears so we stopped worrying about who would see us and gave each other a monumental hug! And then off she went......

Once she was gone on the coach I was okay. Yet again my wonderful friends were there with plans to keep me busy and occupied for the duration and that plan would have worked but for a severe case of PMT and a couple of other things that happened unexpectedly that completely knocked me off balance. It is not appropriate to say what the incidents were on the blog but in my current fragile state they were enough to sideswipe me. This is the thing about this grieving business. You can take so much and look to others as if you are doing well, but you don't have the normal levels of resilience and can crumple like a house of cards and once you start to crumble you feel a bit out of control. The only way I can describe the feeling is by saying that you feel like you have lost your "groundedness" (if that's a word and if it isn't it is now). On one of the widow's websites I have looked at some of the people there describe it as entering the Goblin Pit - a place of misery and despair where the goblins are after you and you have to try to drag yourself out of the pit to escape them. Well this time I think the goblins had me pinned down for a good couple of days! I can tell you that there were lots of tears and a feeling of helplessness that I am only just coming out of in the last 48 hours or so. If you saw me during that time you wouldn't necessarily have known what was going on as I was using every ounce of my resolve to try to function normally only to collapse again when I returned home and was on my own.

When you go downwards like this there is only sheer grit and determination that can get you out. Sometimes I wonder how much sheer grit and determination one person can possibly have and whether my sheer grit and determination quota/ration will run out and I will be stuck down there in the Pit for the rest of eternity!

So I have had another blip and live to fight another day. I do feel a bit like I am running out of steam again after the last few months but who knows. Only time will tell. But before I go another story to finish.......

The only night free in my hectic "schedule" over the weekend was Saturday and I made my own plan for that. I decided to have a truly indulgent/therapeutic night and watch a weepie movie and have pizza and ice cream (not normally allowed on the Weightwatchers Plan I am currently following!). I tried to think of the saddest film I had ever seen and I thought it was a film from the 80s called Beaches. The film stars Bette Middler and Barbara Hershey who are two lifelong best friends and one dies of a heart problem called cardiomyopathy. I can clearly remember Dave and I watching the video in our house in Crowthorne and both Dave and I crying our eyes out as it was so sad (although Dave said in typical fashion that he only had something in his eye). I managed to get a copy of the film and gleefully shoved it in the machine with my box of tissues at the ready. Watched the film whilst stuffing my face but I was soooooo disappointed. Grand total of only 4 tears. It really wasn't even on my new Sadness Scale. My conclusion? If that's the saddest film ever I now need to write a film as well as a book because my story with Dave is far far sadder than that and it's actually true! Now the next question is - who to cast in the leading roles.......?

Joining the 'Hood

In recent weeks, one of the words on my mind has (for obvious reasons) been "widow". Prior to joining the 'Hood (Widowhood that is) I had not really thought about it but as I have had to start filling in forms and put myself in the "widow" category rather than "married" I have started to find the word more and more unattractive. The immediate image that comes to mind is of a rather old and crumpled woman wearing full length black Victorian mourning attire and despite the Scottish Widows advertising campaign showing a very attractive younger woman in the aforementioned attire, little has been done in the way of "rebranding" in recent years.

Having ventured in to a relatively large group of widows and widowers a few weeks ago at a gathering run by the WAY Foundation (Widowed and Young)in Leeds I can tell you the familiar images of a widow are very outdated! The WAY Foundation supports widows and widowers under 50 and they really don't look any different to any other human beings. I walked in to the restaurant where we were meeting with another widow from York and we were looking for a group of people with obvious "signs" of widowhood but no there was nothing obvious! Just a group of people getting together and sharing their experiences and trying to support each other through a truly horrendous experience whilst knocking back a few bevvies. And it has to be said that because this (widowhood)is such a truly horrendous experience there is very much something in the unsaid between a group of people who have all been unlucky enough to have the love of their life die unexpectedly at the prime of their life. I think this is because the emotions you go through are so hard to explain to anyone who has not experienced such a monumental event. But these people just KNOW.

So back to the word "widow". I notice myself wishing to avoid being labelled as a widow at all costs and I prefer to refer to myself as "a person whose partner has died". I have tried to analyse what it is about this word apart from its inherent unsexiness that I don't like, but I think it is because I don't want to be defined in life just by this word. The problem is that at this moment it is the thing that is most on my own mind and the thing that most people think about as soon as they see me! But when I was married to Dave people didn't just think of me as a married person and they didn't call me a "married" - my relationship with Dave was just one of the many facets of my life (although obviously a very important one!). So I guess that I hope in time, being a widow will become less predominant and that I can go back to just being Sarah again.

The PEP Tree......

A few people have enquired about the tree that PEP planted (with the help of Emma and I) in memory of Dave so here is a photo courtesy of Jane (thanks Jane).

Emma and I will shortly be sponsoring a little copse of a dozen saplings just outside Leyburn in Wensleydale one of Dave's favourite places for walking. It will be nice to watch them grow.....

Try a little patience.....

Well it's a couple of weeks since I last blogged. Seems like longer as Emma and I have jumped through lots of hoops and been riding the rollercoaster of emotions at an even more terrifying speed! Somehow when I was in the early days immediately after Dave died the predominant emotions were ones of numbness and shock (even though I had known he was going to die, it was still a shock when he actually did). The brain seems to be very clever and somehow protects you to a degree from feeling the terrible pain when you are on your knees and waits till you have recovered a little and then on a regular basis allows very painful emotions to surface at times when you are better equipped to deal with them. The predominant emotion for me currently is just an overwhelming feeling of sadness and loss and an almost constant feeling of missing Dave. As a consequence of this, there have been a lot more tears. Emma has also been very sad and this has resulted in a feeling of powerlessness for me as as a parent all I want to do is make things all right for and this is one I cannot solve. Her "journey" through this will be her own as will mine and there is little that I can do other than be open and available to listen.

I have still been keeping myself busy and fighting any hermit-like tendencies. There are still quite a lot of things to sort out with regards to Dave's affairs and I have also been de-cluttering the house, although at this stage I still cannot bear to throw out any of Dave's clothes and personal things as it just doesn't feel right yet. I have also been sorting out the interrment of Dave's ashes which is taking place in June ( our wedding anniversary). If you ever want a sobering experience, go and put yourself eye to eye with your husband and best friend's ashes when they have been cremated. I did this the other day at the undertakers. Viewing the most important person to have ever been in my life so far as a pile of ashes in a brown plastic jar really brings home the fragility of life. I would love to be able to show them to anyone who thinks they are oh so important or significant or takes themselves far too seriously!

I have also been reading a lot to try to make some sense of what has happened although I am not sure whether that will ever be possible! This week I have been reading an excellent book called "Life lessons: how our mortality can teach us about life and living" by Elisabeth Kubler-Ross and David Kessler. The authors have worked with people who are dying in hospitals and hospices all their lives and have written some very interesting books on the dying process and the grieving process. This book, however, is different as it is all about the lessons they have learnt about living life from working with people who are dying. One of the most interesting things I found in the book is a part where they talk about how there is a tendency for people to only want the "rosy" side of life, for only good things to happen. Yet if you reflect back on your life it is sometimes the saddest and most difficult things in your life that have taught you the most and shaped you as a person. The message being that not all lessons in life are enjoyable to learn, but they do enrich the texture of life. Most people are just thrown to avoiding the difficult stuff and playing safe, but it is only in facing huge challenges that we grow. I know this to be true and have a feeling all this difficult stuff I am facing is leading to a life I would never have imagined before, although what that life is currently eludes me!

Related to this future, one of my biggest challenges at the moment is in facing what David Kessler and Elisabeth Kubker-Ross call the lesson of patience. I have never been a particularly patient person. I have always been pretty smart and got annoyed with people who were not as quick on the uptake as me. One of the things that has happened to me since Dave died is that a lot of negative feelings have been surfacing: sadness, pain, loneliness, anger, frustration, annoyance at other people etc etc. This is very hard to be with for someone who is normally relentlessly cheerful and upbeat, who cannot stand people who moan all the time and for someone who normally breezes through the things in life that others find difficult. I am also well known for being (as my friend Helen always puts it) "totally irreverent" and unserious about life. I know that both Dave and I have, in the past, probably really annoyed certain people on a number of occasions by simply not taking them seriously enough or attaching the right amount of "gravitas" in dealing with them. So now I find myself having to, as I put it, "wade through treacle", life most of the time is very significant and it really isn't much fun! I find myself wanting to breeze through this "grieving thing" but it does not seem to be something that you can just breeze through (not without causing yourself some permanent long term damage anyway). So, here I am being taught my particular lesson of patience. There is nowhere to get to, nothing that can be done to fix the situation and so I have to sit in amongst all these negative emotions and just dwell there in my very significant life! Waiting and wondering what course or path life is going to take next. So, as a discipline, I am inventing "the possibility of being curious" about all of these difficult emotions which are surfacing and enquiring in to what the universe is trying to teach me.

And in doing all of this, I will bear in mind another quote from the book from someone called Ronnie Kaye, a two time breast cancer survivor who said "In life when one door closes, another door always opens.......but the hallways are a BITCH!"

Two steps forward, one step back.....

So we did it. Emma and I survived the Easter Break and her birthday. Emma's birthday worked out okay although it was tough when we first got up as in the past she always came and jumped in to bed between Dave and I to open her presents. She still came in to bed this year, but I have to confess it was me who couldn't hold back the tears as she was being so brave. The afternoon was more enjoyable when she had 5 of her friends around to hang out with movies, popcorn and takeaway pizza. My brother arrived from Worthing and we abandoned the house for a few hours so that the girls could really let off steam which they did. Fortunately the house was still standing when we got back.

After Emma's birthday, the plan for Easter weekend was to head off on Saturday morning to Dave's mum's house in Croydon for a couple of days to include a visit to Uncle Ronnie's 80th birthday party. This plan went sadly awry when Emma had a tummy upset on Friday night which kept us both awake for most of the night. We're still not sure if it was a tummy bug or anxiety related to leaving home after all that has happened, but whatever it was is really irrelevant as it was very painful. On Saturday morning, we attempted to load the car with Uncle Steve and get ready to set off, but one look at Emma's complexion told me that setting off then was a very bad idea! As we had no idea whether we would be able to set off at all that day, I despatched my brother to the train station so that he could start making his way to the south coast. I felt quite despondent that our plans were not running smoothly as the thought of the trip and the drive was challenging enough without having any spanners in the works.

Anyway, after a sleep that refreshed her, Emma did feel better and felt able to undertake the journey so we set off late in the afternoon and arrived in Croydon around 8pm. Dave's mum was very glad that we had made it and was very pleased to see us. I had, however, not anticipated how hard it would be to stay in her house without Dave. There are so many memories associated with the house over the last 27 years of knowing Dave and as a result another sleepless night ensued! Running over and over in my head was a conversation we had had the very last time we had stayed there together as we had stayed awake chatting until the early hours.

We made it to Uncle Ronnie's party on the Sunday afternoon and it was nice to see so many members of the family for the first time since Dave's funeral. I managed to get through the afternoon relatively unscathed although I did disappear for a few tears at one point. Unfortunately Sunday night was sleepless again despite my best efforts so by Monday morning I was feeling quite ill - headachy and sick and tired from putting on a brave face for such a big audience. I still managed a visit to Stuart and his mum and dad at Biggin Hill and had a very brief foray in to my niece Kelly's birthday barbecue, but I was beginning to wonder if I had bitten off more than I could chew mentally. I started to feel a bit disconnected from myself and the visits were a bit like out of body experiences as I felt not quite myself and very emotional and tearful. After another drive on the M25 to Bracknell, I arrived at Dave's Auntie Sheila and Uncle Tony's house. After popping some more painkillers, a walk with Auntie Sheila through the grounds of Wellington College and a bit of time to relax, I started to feel a bit better. Later Auntie Barbara and Uncle Norman and cousin Jane called in and I felt as if I had well and truly done the rounds of the French family! It was lovely to see them all.

I went to bed late and actually slept and Tuesday saw me feeling something like human! Another trip on the motorway and we were at PEP in Melksham (Dave's old employer) and Emma and I helped to plant a beautiful blossom tree in Dave's memory. PEP have also invested in two lovely benches and a table to go by the tree so at least as they eat their packed lunches in the summer they will be able to remember Dave.

After a giggle over a very nice lunch with the PEP crowd we moved on to Bath where Emma and I stayed in a very posh hotel. It was good to relax and have some time on our own after the hurly burly of the previous few days. We enjoyed the hotel spa and a meal out in Bath. And then on Wednesday after a bit of sightseeing we set off back to York. We were both extremely glad to get back home. Somehow leaving York feels like leaving Dave behind, which is a bit silly in many ways, but it is how we both currently feel.

My conclusions on the visit? Had it not been for the opportunity the party presented to see a lot of people, it was probably a bit too soon to go down and be with Dave's family as it felt like a Herculean effort to hold things together and put on my "mask" for everyone. In normal circumstances I pride myself on being very at ease with myself and my emotions and very self-expressed, but when your emotions are so predominantly sad it doesn't feel right to let them all out in the presence of others all the time. For one thing, it would be very monotonous to have someone crying all the time! People want to see that you are making progress and that you can cope as it makes them feel a bit better. Although self-created and all in my mind, the stress and strain of the visit did feel like it set back some of the progress I had already made in terms of getting back to (the new) normal and dealing with all my emotions.

However, on the upside, the difficult first visit is now out of the way so doesn't need to take up any head space (wondering when is the "right" time to go) and it was nice to see everyone and, as they say, "feel the love". I have also got back to driving long distances again confidently and a few other firsts have been knocked off like seeing PEP without Dave and Emma and I staying in a hotel on our own. There were also many tears shed by me on numerous motorways - the M1, M25, M3, M4, M5and M42 creating much "surface water" but since there has been a notable absence of tears on my part since Dave died (unusual for me as I am normally an A grade blubber) perhaps this was something that needed to happen and it could be all part of the so caled "process". Who knows? - I for one have no idea what is happening with all of this most of the time, you really are just forced to "go with the flow" - which is murder for a control freak like me......

Hollow

The theme of this week has been people telling me I am doing very well. This is largely because I appear to be a fully functioning human being to the world at large. I am now able to dress myself (believe me in the first couple of weeks after Dave's death even this was a challenge), I am thankfully washing myself (and my clothes), I am managing to keep the house reasonably clean and I am feeding and looking after myself and my daughter. I am also getting myself out of the house and socialising with other people which means fighting, on a daily basis, the desire to be a fully fledged recluse. I dream of staying in my pyjamas all day with a pile of books and magazines, chocolate, wine and daytime tv, snivelling my way through a whole box of Kleenex and plumbing unknown depths of self indulgence. I didn't however count on the strength of character instilled in to me by my feisty mother (also widowed in her case at age 43) and the predominant message that the "show must go on" no matter what. The show of life that is. We Lewendons have standards and don't we know it! We are certainly made of very stern stuff, not like these other people who seem to keel over in a strong wind!

So what happens is every day I don the "mask" of a fully functioning human being. Put on a bit of make up and lippy and hope that one day I will actually start to feel like a fully functioning human being on the inside. Meanwhile, people (with the best of intentions) keep telling me I am doing very well, but this has a very hollow ring to me as I know in my heart that it is really a facade. The sadness is still overwhelming at times but I do my best to look as normal as possible for most of the time as it seems to make other people feel better! When Dave was alive and people told me I was inspirational and amazing, I could really take the compliment but now in this situation when people are saying the same things and marvelling at my ability to get on with life, it just doesn't ring true to me as I feel very empty inside. Hopefully over time this feeling will change.

The other thing that is strange is that occasionally people feel the need to tell me I will need to "adapt" to my new way of life. The word "adapt" suggests a gradual process that takes place over time. Becoming a widow is not really like that - you don't get any time to "adapt". I always used to say that childbirth was the most transformational experience because when having your first child you have lots of ideas about the kind of parent you will be, but the minute the child is born you just are a mother or a father. Something just happens to you in an instant. Becoming a widow is similar. From the moment that Dave drew his last breath I was a widow. My roles and responsibilities changed instantly. I became both a mother and a father to Emma, the breadwinner, the funeral organiser, the house maintainer, executor of the will etc etc. It was like being hit by a lightning bolt when you are already on your knees. So if you know any widows please give them credit for the fact that they take on all these changes overnight and adapt immediately at a time when they feel least able to do anything. I think there is later a process of adapting to a new life over time, but it is more perhaps about designing something for yourself in a situation that you wouldn't have chosen if you had been given a choice in the matter. You can take time over that but most of the other stuff has to be handled immediately with little time to prepare!

Recently, I was looking at a widows website (yes they do exist) and someone had reproduced the passage below. It is a suggested way of helping people who have been widowed. I sent this passage to a few friends who had asked how they could help and got a lot of positive feedback, many people found it very moving so thought I would publish it on the blog to give some food for thought. I can really relate to many of the points raised. I cannot acknowledge the author as no-one seems to know who wrote it!

HOW YOU CAN HELP ME

Please talk about my loved one, even though he is gone. It is more
comforting to cry than to pretend that he never existed. I need to talk
about him, and I need to do it over and over.

Be patient with my agitation. Nothing feels secure in my world. Get
comfortable with my crying. Sadness hits me in waves, and I never know
when my tears may flow. Just sit with me in silence and hold my hand.

Don't abandon me with the excuse that you don't want to upset me. You
can't catch my grief. My world is painful, and when you are too afraid
to call me or visit or say anything, you isolate me at a time when I
most need to be cared about. If you don't know what to say, just come
over, give me a hug or touch my arm, and gently say, "I'm sorry." You
can even say, "I just don't know what to say, but I care, and want you
to know that."

Just because I look good does not mean that I feel good. Ask me how I
feel only if you really have time to find out.

I am not strong. I'm just numb. When you tell me I am strong, I feel
that you don't see me.

I will not recover. This is not a cold or the flu. I'm not sick. I'm
grieving and that's different. My grieving may only begin 6 months after
my loved one's death. Don't think that I will be over it in a year. For
I am not only grieving his death, but also the person I was when I was
with him, the life that we shared, the plans we had for watching our
children and grandchildren grow, the places we will never get to go together, and the hopes and dreams that will never come true. My whole world has crumbled
and I will never be the same.

I will not always be grieving as intensely, but I will never forget my
loved one and rather than recover, I want to incorporate his life and
love into the rest of my life. He is a part of me and always will be,
and sometimes I will remember him with joy and other times with a tear.
Both are okay.

I don't have to accept the death. Yes, I have to understand that it has
happened and it is real, but there are some things in life that are just
not acceptable.

When you tell me what I should be doing, then I feel even more lost and
alone. I feel badly enough that my loved one is dead, so please don't
make it worse by telling me I'm not doing this right.

Please don't tell me I can find someone else or that I need to start
dating again. I'm not ready. And maybe I don't want to. And besides,
what makes you think people are replaceable? They aren't. Whoever comes
after will always be someone different.

I don't even understand what you mean when you say, "You've got to get
on with your life." My life is going on, I've been forced to take on
many new responsibilities and roles. It may not look the way you think
it should. This will take time and I will never be my old self again. So
please, just love me as I am today, and know that with your love and
support, the joy will slowly return to my life. But I will never forget
and there will always be times that I cry.

I need to know that you care about me. I need to feel your touch, your
hugs. I need you just to be with me, and I need to be with you. I need
to know you believe in me and in my ability to get through my grief in
my own way, and in my own time.

Please don't say, "Call me if you need anything." I'll never call you
because I have no idea what I need. Trying to figure out what you could
do for me takes more energy than I have. So, in advance, let me give you
some ideas.
(a) Bring food or a movie over to watch together.
(b) Send me a card on special holidays, his birthday, and the
anniversary of his death, and be sure to mention his name. You can't
make me cry. The tears are here and I will love you for giving me the
opportunity to shed them because someone cared enough about me to reach
out on this difficult day.
(c) Ask me more than once to join you at a movie or lunch or dinner. I
may so no at first or even for a while, but please don't give up on me
because somewhere down the line, I may be ready, and if you've given up
then I really will be alone.
(d) Understand how difficult it is for me to be surrounded by couples,
to walk into events alone, to go home alone, to feel out of place in the same situations where I used to feel so comfortable.

Please don't judge me now - or think that I'm behaving strangely.
Remember I'm grieving. I may even be in shock. I am afraid. I may feel
deep rage. I may even feel guilty. But above all, I hurt. I'm
experiencing a pain unlike any I've ever felt before and one that can't
be imagined by anyone who has not walked in my shoes.

Don't worry if you think I'm getting better and then suddenly I seem to
slip backward. Grief makes me behave this way at times. And please don't
tell me you know how I feel, or that it's time for me to get on with my
life. What I need now is time to grieve.

Most of all thank you for being my friend. Thank you for your patience.
Thank you for caring. Thank you for helping, for understanding. Thank
you for praying for me.

And remember in the days or years ahead, after your loss - when you need
me as I have needed you - I will understand. And then I will come and be
with you.

Grappling

Well here I am again. I've been waiting for a "good day" to feel like posting and those seem to be very few and far between so I think I will just need to say what's so at the moment.

The last ten days or so have been very tough. Emma has been very upset at times and is missing her dad terribly. I think any child who loses a parent would be devastated but Dave was such a particularly outstanding dad and her best friend as well, that the impact is tremendous. I want to protect Emma's privacy on the blog so don't want to say too much about what has been happening, but I can only say that from my point of view as her Mum it is heartbreaking to watch your child go through something like this when there is not a thing that you can do to make anything better for them. The sense of powerlessness is overwhelming at times and if there was anything I could do to stop this happening I would, but there is nothing I can do to bring Dave back which is the only thing that would make this better for her. In the meantime, we just spend time cuddling and talking, and as she said the other day we are each others best friends now.

Dave has still only been dead for 7 weeks which I find amazing as life already seems to have changed so much. I do feel that we have already been whacked several times by "sadiversaries" as I now call them. In 7 weeks we have encountered my birthday, Dave's birthday and Mother's Day and we probably have one of the saddest to come on the 8th of April when it is Emma's birthday. Mother's Day was difficult. It started with a good few tears as I opened a lovely card from Emma and later we went up to Farndale (where thousands of wild daffodils spectacularly grow) with a big group of friends This walk was often a favourite Easter walk with our friends. When the kids were little we would take a big picnic and all the kids would bring along their Easter eggs and stuff their faces. It is also the site of the famous "Piglets house" - an old dead tree with a hollowed out trunk where they would all go looking for Piglet out of Winnie the Pooh when they were too little to know any better! Although being out in the fresh air with friends was good, we both missed Dave terribly especially Emma when she got some blisters, as it was always her dad who was always the first to provide first aid and sympathy on such occasions. By the end of the walk I could see Emma had had enough and was drained (especially after an escapade where she lost her ipod in a very large muddy field which required a search party to find it), so we elected to go straight home rather than join the others in a pub meal as planned. It is hard to go back to places where we have so many memories of Dave, but it is impossible to avoid completely. I am starting to plan things in for Emma and I to do which are new so that we begin the process of adjustment to our new life together. Definitely not the life we would have chosen but the life that fate has dealt us.

Monday saw the first major expedition in to DIY without Dave present as supervisor! Julia has been moving house this week and had given me her old sideboard and dining room table which required some furniture removal and a little bit of drilling. I had to move some very heavy furniture to make room for the new stuff and ended up nearly pinned down on the floor by the weight of a toppling bookcase that I was trying to move from the dining room to the sitting room. Despite my training in the use of the drill from Dave a few months ago I still managed to get myself in a silly situation where I could not change the drill bit that I wanted for a larger one having forgotten the technical aspects of using something called the "chuck key" (I think). Much copious swearing followed and then the rawlplug I was putting in to the wall broke and wedged itself determinedly in to the wall, resisting all attempts to remove it. I was furious as I pride myself on being willing to have a go at anything and although I accomplished most of what I needed to do, a couple of tasks remained that required the DIY skills of the long suffering Rob this weekend.

Tuesday saw me at the hospice as a follow up to the meeting with Claire Ruddock and Anne Garry who had asked me to address some concerns I had about the hospice with the Director of Clinical Services there. It was once again very hard to get through the door of the hospice (I had to call on Tricia at the last minute to metaphorically hold my hand), but the meeting was very productive. The hospice was definitely the right place for Dave to be at the end of his life and there were many very good experiences there and also many wonderfully committed staff. However, I think that what we had to acknowledge during the meeting was that we had also suffered some more negative experiences to a degree, as a result of the major building works going on there at the time. At that point in the building work only 6of the normal 20 beds were open and many staff were having to take leave which led to a lack of continuity of care and a couple of other significant problems. As I said at the meeting the shame is that they only get one bite of the cherry as far as we are concerned, but hopefully the feedback I have given will improve things for future patients. I was encouraged by the meeting in the fact that some of the things I explained to the two staff present were clearly not acceptable to them in terms of the standards and commitments they have in running the place and I went away reassured that they are actively seeking to address the issues raised. The meeting gave me an increased faith in the hospice as an organisation.

In the midst of all of this activity grieving for Dave continues. I am discovering that the brain is a very clever machine in this respect. Talking to the psychoncologist at the hospital on Friday ( I have been referred there to discuss some of the extremely distressing aspects of Dave's illness) she said that the brain makes the person feel numb for most of the time as a protective mechanism. The brain then lets the painful aspects out in short bursts at times as and when people are able to deal with them, as it would be impossible for the people affected to deal with the terrible pain all the time. This fits with my experience of grief coming in what I have been calling "waves". Triggers (sometimes the most unexpected things) set things off. This week it has been the frustration of incompetence around DIY, a lovely letter from Uncle Ronnie, a song on the radio, seeing Jaffa cakes on special offer in the supermarket and not needing to buy them because Emma and I can't stand them (they were only Dave's passion!) and general flashbacks which keep occurring to when Dave was really very poorly.

The hardest thing I am finding to cope with is feeling like a part of me died when Dave died. I find it hard to admit to this as I really do not want this to be the case . I have always prided myself on being a very happy person with a gung ho approach to life, but if I am talking truthfully and honestly, I really do feel like this is what has happened. I have been looking at some old photos and really yearn for the times when nothing was wrong and we were living what I now realise was a carefree existence. I am also feeling an indescribable loneliness, despite being surrounded by a lot of people who care about me, but adjusting to life as a single person is proving very challenging.

But on a more positive note, I was talking on the phone the other day to my friend Kay who lives in New Zealand. Her background is in social work and family therapy. We talked for quite a while and she said that she was inspired by me in that although she can see I am experiencing a huge amount of pain, I am not suffering. In other words I am not being a victim of what is happening to me. I can see that this is true in that I am not adding unnecessary drama (to an already very dramatic and soap opera like situation) and I am still out there in life. I am talking to people about lots of different things, making plans for the future, sharing my feelings and looking at adjusting to my new circumstances, so I am fully engaged with life. And, I suppose, I can see that in one sense that is pretty remarkable only 7 weeks since Dave died.

Ups and Downs

A bit of a delay since my last post. Haven't written as haven't felt moved to put fingertips to keyboard (doesn't have quite the same ring as pen to paper!).

Another interesting and up and down week. The breakthrough this week was to go away for a weekend for the first time since Dave had died. Howard and Tina had rented a cottage in Goathland on the Moors for ten days and kindly invited us to stay for the weekend. As usual, they were the perfect hosts and thoroughly spoilt us both. Emma read in front of the log fire for most of the weekend (Goathland is not known for its racy nightlife) and I went out walking either on my own or with Howard and Tina. The weather was fabulous all weekend and the break and the clear air of the Moors did me the power of good. I actually had two good nights of sleep which was exceptional as I continue to have problems with sleeping. Howard and Tina also listened powerfully to me as I discussed my feelings and the plans I had for our new life. Their listening for me as a person and their love for me is so great that I actually started to feel a little excitement about my radically altered future.

The breakdown came on Sunday night when I returned home. A window of opportunity and excitement had opened for me briefly only to slam shut in my face as I returned home. The journey home was very bad due to day tripper traffic jams on the A64 such that we didn't get home until 8.30 p.m. Arriving home to an empty house was horrible, as was unloading the car with Emma and without Dave to give us a hand and put the kettle on for a cup of tea. As someone who now has no mother, no father and now no husband I felt as if had we been in an accident and not got home no-one would have noticed for quite a while. It is a funny feeling for me to have Emma to look after but to have no-one these days to officially look after or look out for me.

Monday is also "bin day" so Sunday night also involved a trip out in to the very dark alley to put the bin bags out. This was also a practical reminder that Dave was missing. It was a "condition of satisfaction" for our marriage that he always put the bin bags out and organised the recycling. I always told him that it was the most important factor in making our marriage work! And, bless his heart, he continued to do that job far longer than any other domestic task, despite his illness. So, as I grappled with the back gate and the bin bags, I really missed him even more. The combination of all these factors managed to eradicate the good karma of the weekend and led to a sleepless tearful Sunday night and an overwhelming feeling of being alone in the world.

Monday morning on the other hand provided some light relief! Julia and I had arranged to meet for a coffee Monday morning. She texted me about 7 a.m. to say that she had to go for an appointment in town just after 9 and asked if I wanted picking up early or should she come round after her appointment. I thought I had replied to say pop round afterwards, but as we later found out that my phone had run out of credit and the message had not been sent. As a result of this she called round at 9.00 a.m. to see what I wanted to do. I was blissfully unaware of her ringing on the doorbell as I was having a lovely shower. Her failure to get an answer on the doorbell combined with the fact that I was not answering my mobile, led her to a panicky state in which she imagined that (as the curtains were also closed) I must have made an attempt to take my own life. On wandering downstairs from my shower I found a message on my mobile to say that if I did not respond quickly, she was going to come over the back fence to break in to the house! By this time she had also rung Claire in a panic, so then Claire was on the phone panicking as to whether I was okay. All unintentionally hilarious. So I have now clarified with Julia the fact that although things are very bleak at times, I currently have no intention of trying to do away with myself! I say "currently" as my trusty guide on "How to cope with the death of your partner" does say reassuringly that "at some point you will consider taking your own life" so I guess never say never! However, I have got to the age of 46 without ever feeling suicidal and have no plans to feel that way in the future, especially with the gorgeous Emma needing me around so much and the fact that I promised Dave that I would enjoy the rest of my life as fully as possible after a "suitable" period of mourning (whatever a suitable period of mourning is). Dave wanted me to start enjoying things straightaway in typical "daveness" fashion but I said that that was probably not possible and even if it was possible many people would consider it terribly bad taste.....

Monday afternoon saw my first Parents Evening at school since Dave's death. I had to steel myself to attend this as there are over 200 pupils in Emma's year so there are many many people who I know from the local area at the Parents Evening. The teachers were lovely with me and praised Emma for continuing to do so well in spite of everything that she has been dealing with. The other parents who I know either really well or pretty well were also very nice and many acknowledged how difficult it must be for me to walk in on my own in the circumstances. There were a few people at the "acquaintance" level however who I saw whispering about me and even one person pointing me out rather indiscretely! I know we have had publicity in the local paper but really! I felt like shouting out "Listen I didn't kill my husband you know, he died of cancer and coming here is hard enough without you a**holes staring at me". I tried to push down my "leper like" feelings but have to say these things did have an impact on me and I probably did the teacher circuit in a new World Record time.

Tuesday saw me revisit the Orange Tree, an alternative health retreat and relaxation centre that Dave and I thought of buying as a business eighteen months ago before his illness intervened and fate dictated otherwise (in retrospect a blessing). We spent a fantastic weekend together there in September 2007. We had told Howard and Tina all about the place and they wanted to go and see what it was like. I drove there to Rosedale on my own to meet them. As usual, unexpected triggers set me off. Rosedale is a place where we have spent many happy hours as there is a fantastic campsite there where we have been with our close friends and their kids many, many times and a good few tears started to flow in the car at the happy memories. On arriving at the door of the Orange Tree, Sue the owner was waiting for me with arms outstretched. Sue is such a loving and lovely person that the tears I was already crying turned in to my own miniature tsunami at the combination of her, Rosedale, remembering the weekend Dave and I had spent together at the Orange Tree and our excitement at the time at the thought that we might create a new life in Rosedale with a long dreamt of "retreat". As is the case at the moment, the tears did not last too long and we spent a lovely day together in the beautiful sunshine.

So, as you can see, the rollercoaster continues and I'm sure will continue for some time.