"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...........