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.