Life is (bitter)sweet

Before Dave died I often wondered what the word "bittersweet" really meant. The dictionary definition is "pleasure tinged with sadness and pain" and having now done a year of this widowhood lark I fully understand the meaning of the word as my whole life currently feels "bittersweet". Since New Year I have walked by the river in Henley-on-Thames (one of our special places as a couple), walked in the snow, watched some great movies, had dinner in cosy country pubs, spent wonderful times with family and friends and they have all been bittersweet because Dave has not been there to share them. The minute I catch myself laughing my head off and nearly back to what I would regard as my normal carefree self the missing of Dave almost immediately kicks in and I get a terrible pain in my heart/chest.

One of the most bittersweet experiences recently has been Emma completing a self-portrait of herself for her GCSE Art. The painting is of her in the red dress she wore to Dave's funeral, her body facing forwards but looking back over her shoulder with a sad, regretful face. She has used words from The Prophet as a background and in the bottom right hand corner the words "I miss you". The painting is absolutely fantastic and she hates me saying this but two of her teachers allegedly cried when they saw it and it is so good her Art teacher is going to use it to teach the sixth formers painting techniques. Her dad (who for those of you who did not know him) was a very good painter who was really just getting in to his stride when he died would be so proud of her and her ability to express emotions in painting that she finds it so hard to express in words. That really is bittersweet when he is not around to take pleasure in her success and other landmark moments such as getting in to a pair of size ten jeans after losing weight the other day! The school prom, her 16th birthday and her GCSE results all taking place this year look set to provide us with many more bittersweet moments in the coming months.

In terms of what has been happening emotionally for me, the last few weeks have not been easy. The lead up to the anniversary of Dave's death was extremely tough - reliving those final grim weeks of his life. I purposely did not ask others who had been through similar experiences what the "saddiversary" would be like and I was very glad I had done that as I would not have wanted to know what was ahead of me. During the anniversary week I ended up having to have a few days off work as the horrendous physical symptoms that I experienced at the end of Dave's life last year returned. Heart palpitations, breathlessness, feeling on the edge of a panic attack and being very distressed and tearful. This was combined with the feeling of jelly legs like an adrenaline rush which for a good few hours made me feel like I could not stand up. I talked to both my doctor and homeopath about these symptoms as the loss of control was scary for me and quite disturbing. They were both of the opinion that when you have been through something as traumatic as Dave's illness and death the body and mind has to find a way of coping on a day to day basis. If a person was present to the raw pain of it all for 24 hours a day seven days a week they would simply not be able to cope. Therefore the body and mind "bury" the pain to a level sufficient to be able the person to cope with basic day to day tasks but every now and again a chunk of the pain surfaces as and when the person is ready to deal with it. I do fully support this theory as for three months at least after Dave died I just felt numb and shocked for most of the time and this was what enabled me to get through those first few months without losing the plot completely. During the anniversary week the symptoms eased and with support from some special friends I made it through the week.

On the actual anniversary day it was difficult to know what to do. Emma and I wanted to mark it in some way but it all seemed very strange. In the end we settled for going with friends to the graveside and laying lots of spring flowers - daffodils, hyacinths and snowdrops. For me snowdrops will always be symbolic of the time when Dave died as it seemed to snow a lot of the time when he was in the hospice and the chapel grounds were full of snowdrops on the day of the funeral. Later at Emma's request we went to a place called Sutton Bank which is a spectacular inland cliff near Thirsk where you can see for 50 or 60 miles on a clear day. On our way there the clouds were black and it was snowing and sleeting but as we arrived the horrible weather front moved across to reveal beautiful blue skies, definitely one of Dave's "Wonderful World" moments. We walked across the cliff and Emma and I released two red heartshaped helium balloons in memory of Dave and we watched them travel for miles until our eyesight failed us. No sooner had we got back in the car than the weather moved back in and as we travelled on to Helmsley we witnessed a fantastic display of rainbows. It really felt as if Dave was with us the whole day, putting on a marvellous show for us.

Now that the anniversary is passed I can feel a sense of achievement that I have survived the first year without Dave. Truly and utterly the worst year of my life. I can also see that I have actually accomplished lots of things too. But where to next? I feel quite sad to report to you that I am completely aware that the grieving process is nowhere near done. There is certainly no end in sight as far as I can see. It is almost like peeling the layers of an onion, when one is removed you move on to the next one. I was told at the start of all of this that it takes at least two years to feel anywhere like your "normal" (whatever that is) self. For someone who is naturally impatient that is not easy to sit with.

One or two people I know are trying to encourage me to "move on" to a new job or business or a new relationship but I truly do not feel in my heart that this is the right thing to do. I honestly feel that my job and "purpose" at the moment is to truly mourn the loss of Dave and to look after Emma and provide whatever she needs on a day to day basis. It's not clever and it's not exciting but it just feels like the right thing to do, in fact not just the right thing but the only thing to do. My suspicion is that life will continue to plod for quite a while as I still feel that my capacity for living is still diminished from what it was, but I am okay with what I have come to call "The Trudge".

I do trust the future and believe that good things will come to Emma and I again. My motto is still the Buddhist philosophy that "all things pass" and that is what keeps me going. If I look at what my concerns were 5, 10, 15 and 20 years ago they are all different from my concerns today. 5 years ago I was worried about Dave and him finding work he enjoyed, 10 years ago I was trying to find a job to fit in with my family commitments, 15 years ago I was filled with joy at becoming a mum and 20 years ago I was grieving after an ectopic pregnancy and wondering if we would ever have a family. So things do change. I don't think I will ever "get over" losing Dave and it will always be the greatest sadness of my life that he died so young when he still had so much to offer the world, but I do think that I will get to a point where life will be fun and fulfilling again. And I want to get there which is the key thing. Dave really wanted me to go on and live life to the full after his death and this will draw me forth in to the future to truly honour his memory.

I read a book just after Dave died called "Under the Seabed" by Lindsay Nicholson whose husband and one of her daughters died from leukaemia. She likened grieving to crawling around on the seabed, you can see the daylight over the water you just cannot get to it. That analogy still holds true for me at this time.

And so to the blog. I feel as if I do not have much more to say on here. As I have already said grieving is not exciting or clever and I fear that if I were to continue the blog as a grieving widow it would (if it has not already!)become boring so as Dave said on his last post "I think that's the place to stop". I still plan to write a book about my experiences, a kind of humorous beginner's guide to "widdahood" and that will be my next writing project. I still also have thoughts of getting the blog published but so far have not got any further than thinking about it (!) but that is something for the future. Thanks to all of you who have read the blog and especially to those of you who have encouraged me to begin to have thoughts of becoming a writer and also to those of you who have emailed me on a regular basis with support and kind thoughts. If you want to contact me in the future my email address is still sarah@lefrenchies.wanadoo.co.uk Thanks for all the love and concern you have shown me. It has been really great and kept me going when I didn't think I could.

Keep calm and carry on....we're British after all..

So how was Christmas? Interesting I guess and a mixture of a few highs and some very low lows. My mistake/miscalculation was in only psyching myself up for the main event i.e. Christmas Eve, Christmas Day and Boxing Day. So determined was I for Emma to have the best Christmas she could have in the circumstances that I forgot about the second week of the holidays altogether and it snuck up to bite me on the backside!

Christmas Eve was a weird mixture of a day. Lunch, shopping and a party sandwiched on either side of a trip to lay a wreath on Dave's grave was bizarre to say the least. Thinking of how we were all 3 of us together only a year ago and now all that remained was a gravestone and a lot of memories was very hard for both Emma and I. We went to a friend's party a little later after this experience, knocked on the door and I froze like a rabbit in the headlights at the prospect of so many people I didn't know and no Dave to squeeze my hand or smile at me across the room. I would have shut the front door and get straight back in the car if looking good hadn't got the better of me! Instead I did the respectable thing, brazened it out for an hour and a half before retreating home to the sofa and a cuddle with Emma. Lots of people called to say they were thinking of us on Christmas Eve which was lovely and I basked in the warm glow of other people's concern and kindness.

Christmas Day and Boxing Day were fine. The dreaded present opening in bed with Emma turned out to be lovely and very moving and we were thoroughly spoilt with presents from some very kind people. Later we went out for the day to Trish and Rob's and were well looked after by our friends and managed to enjoy ourselves in a low key way. Boxing Day was also good - a walk followed by a nice meal. It is so lovely to have friends who will take care of you and allow you to be exactly the way you are (and the way you aren't).

And then I think I just ran out of steam - it didn't take much of a straw to break this camel's back. I had forgotten that for us as a family the days between Christmas and New Year were also a special time when Dave and I were both always off work and a time when we met up with friends, went out in town for coffees or went walking on the Moors or by the sea. And suddenly it looked like everyone was off with their families and it really was just me and Emma and the dave-shaped hole suddenly looked an awful lot bigger. Too much time to think seemed to send me on a downward slide and I started to worry that I couldn't do "this" any more....I still socialised and caught up with some friends, but a couple of evenings and afternoons were spent curled up in a foetal state on the sofa under a blanket wondering what my next move should be in this widdahood lark, and indeed, if I could be bothered to make a next move. A lot of tears were shed and the pink and puffy faced look became the order of the day for a little while.

New Year's Eve was an interesting experience. I had previously declared to my friends and Emma that although I would make an effort for Christmas I didn't intend to even try on New Year's Eve and would stay in out of the way so as to not spoil anyone else's party spirit. I have never really liked New Year's Eve anyway. All that pressure to enjoy yourself and all the inauthenticity of "Happy New Year" and stupid New Year's Resolutions, I could go on....... So we stayed in and cooked a nice meal and then went down to the river and lit a sky lantern for Dave. Came home feeling sad and offered Emma the opportunity to watch a movie together, her choice was Ghost! Now that would have made Dave laugh! And we were in bed for 10.30 and asleep before the fireworks! Job done and we survived......

New Year's Day I really wanted to go to the beach for a blast of sea air. It was very much a childish want as well. I always feel better for a blast at the coast but the weather (more heavy snow and severe weather warnings) conspired against us and we had to stay closer to home. I felt very grumpy and wanted to stamp my feet and say it was "soooo unfair" but instead I did the grown up thing. Looked at what was possible and plumped for a walk around the Castle Howard Estate in the snow with Emma. I was glad that I had "got off it" enough to be able to do it as we had a great day messing about in the snow.

The rest of the holiday passed quickly on a similar rollercoaster and I felt so wobbly and unsure of myself I was actually glad to return to work (a first!). I felt like I needed to break the mood as I could feel myself embarking on a downward spiral. I embarked on an extensive personal coaching programme (in other words gave myself a good talking to), got out my diary and started to put some milestones in for the year - things to look forward to and made arrangements to see people. In other words in my "mum's speak" I "pulled myself together" (yet again). And once again the beckoning life of depression, tablets and general misery was averted. Honestly, if you want to test your stamina and resilience and find out who you really are, give yourself a Really Big Problem. None of your trivial whingeing and moaning about everyday stuff like work, relationships, money etc. A Really Big Problem sorts out the men from the boys and the wheat from the chaff....

And so I am back on some sort of track, ready for the next wave that I need to surf which looks like the anniversary of Dave's death on February 9th. Yes there really is no peace for the wicked (still not quite sure what I did to deserve all this - possibly nothing)! Already the memories of this time last year are flooding in. It was today a year ago that we had to concede that nursing Dave at home was just getting too difficult for all of us and a year ago on Wednesday was the shocking and gutwrenching day that Dave left our home for the hospice. However, hard I am trying not to go over these memories, it is as though a film is playing in the background all the time whether I like it or not and sleeplessness has returned with a vengeance.

And now on closing I feel like I should be saying something interesting or meaningful but I can't think of anything. So I will just do what it says at the top and "Keep calm and carry on"....or at least I will try and we'll just have to see what happens next!

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!