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.