Widowhood Begins With a Vengeance

Well, to blog or not to blog, that is the question! People keep asking me to continue with the blog as they think it could be a great contribution to others in the same situaton and they like my writing style, but I am confused. The main quandary I am in is that Dave and I always intended that the blog should be an upbeat, funny sometimes poignant account of our life together and now I have hit widowhood and have yet to find much that is funny in the situation!! Poignant, sad, downright miserable at times to be sure but not much that is humorous. So far anyway, but with my wicked sense of humour who knows.

I started last week still in shock and reeling from Dave's death. Emma bravely returned to school and I began the Herculean task of sorting out all of Dave's affairs. I decided to do 2/3 things per day from the long list that I had created and to intersperse those tasks with copious cups of coffee with friends to keep me sane.

Some tasks went better than others. Lloyds Bank showed themselves to be very professional and empathetic, although just by chance, I ended up in the same room and with the same woman that I dealt with when I sorted out my mum's death only 5 years ago. The Abbey National surpassed themselves in terms of insensitivity such that at the first opportunity I will be removing all my cash (sadly not that much to make an impact or bring about the downfall of their parent company Santander). They refused to allow me to make an appointment with an advisor, although as I pointed out, if I had shown any interest in buying a mortgage or a financial product they would have had me pinned down under an appointment diary before you could say knife. Registering the death of your husband in their books counts for nothing and you have to wait in a queue for the next available "advisor". After an abortive first attempt where I discovered having waited half an hour that I needed a passport (nobody else needed one but they did due to "money laundering" legislation), I went back again. Knowing I was already not happy with the system the receptionist promised me I would be no more than 15 minutes. After half an hour I stood up and looking totally mad (which I was) I shouted "Does anybody in this f**king place give a s**t about customer service?" which did actually get rather a fast response. Although I looked absolutely barking it did feel like a small victory for the ordinary person.

The experience in the Abbey National was made all the more bittersweet by the fact that it was one of the last places in York that I ever took Dave. He sat there in his wheelchair in the snaking long queue, feeling very poorly and in a lot of pain and not one of their "Customer Service Advisors" came to help us. And when we got to the front of the queue the disabled till was not open so he could not even talk properly to the cashier. So the flashback to a sadder time compounded by the lousy service left me reeling.

Another corking example of total insensitivity was Barclaycard. For more than twenty years I have had a second card on Dave's account which has been settled at the end of every month. All I wanted was to let them know that Dave had died and ask to keep my card. This is a bridge too far to a company so bound up in red tape. I had to first be passed to the "closing down account" department in some sad Scottish place, who were only concerned with when I would pay the outstanding balance and then passed across to a poor oppressed sod in Delhi to open a whole new account. This process taking at least twenty minutes up to the point where their phone system failed and they lost my call before my application had been processed. Needless to say I will be contacting another credit card company to get a card after that fiasco.

And then with the help of Tricia I moved on to benefits which will be much needed to top up my rather mediocre salary. According to Tricia's research I should be able to claim a lump sum "bereavement benefit" and a weekly "Widowed Parents Allowance". That sounds great until you see the 30 page claim form and the list of documents required - death certificate, marriage certificate, Emma's birth certificate along with the requirement to tell the DSS their own reference numbers e.g. child benefit claim number - surely available on their own systems? I got to the point where I was turning the page expecting them to ask for my Cycling Proficiency Certificate and membership number for the Tufty Club! With Tricia's help it was all completed eventually but I have to say the whole system must have been designed with a commitment to stop people claiming in the first place.

And to the emotional stuff. I finally cracked and the tears flowed on Wednesday morning. I was going for a walk with to Castle Howard with Claire and her dog. I needed to find my walking boots, but it was so long since I had actually been anywhere I had no recollection of where they were. The frustration of not being able to find them brought me to tears and was made worse by finding all three pairs of our walking boots in one bag - a sad reminder that Dave will never walk through Swaledale with me again. It was something of a relief to cry and I have cried quite a bit on and off ever since. On Saturday morning it was because I received a beautiful bouquet of flowers from a teacher that I work with which set me off.

Another challenge this weekend was Dave's birthday which would have been on Sunday. I had asked Emma what she wanted to do and she had asked to go to Whitby for fish and chips and a walk on the beach. Quite a number of friends wanted to join us and we were all raring to go. However, at 2.00 a.m. on Sunday morning Emma woke up with a temperature and diorrhoea and vomiting. She was poorly most of the night. We did try to set off for Whitby with the friends but after ten minutes on the road Emma felt really ill again, so we headed for home whilst the others continued onwards at our insistence . Emma went to bed for the best part of three hours. I snuggled up on the sofa with a blanket and read a book highly recommended but cheerily entitled "How to survive the death of your partner". This was useful as it made me realise a lot of my feelings were normal, but it contained pearls of wisdom such as "if you think the first few weeks are bad, wait till you hit the six month mark when everyone has gone back to normal life and thinks you are okay - that is really the low point". Somthing to look forward to I guess (not)!

So Dave's birthday turned out to be very difficult with Emma so poorly. Emma really really missed her dad when she was being ill. Although I am a perfectly adequate mum in terms of looking after poorly children, Dave was such a softie that he would stay awake all night next to her to make sure she was okay when she was ill even at the point when he became really poorly himself.

In terms of Emma, our joint theory is that she is still in shock. Going back to school and being busy has stopped her thinking about things too much and she is actually quite upset that she feels numb and hasn't cried too much so far.

We tried to be brave and go out to the cinema together on Saturday night. I felt like an escaped convict that could be caught by the police at any moment, as it was so long since I had been to the cinema. We took what we thought was the safe option and went for a Rom Com "He's not that in to you". Frothy and light we thought. Apart from it being full of lovey dovey couples (now intensely irritating to me as I don't have anyone to cuddle), Jennifer Anniston's character's dad had to go and have a heart attack and collapse right in the middle of the film. Emma nearly broke my hand, she gripped it so tightly whispering to me "please don't let him die!"

So a very mixed week interspersed with nice moments. Leslie bringing over lunch on Saturday and giving me the wisdom of her Advanced Widowhood, Kath and Tricia coming over in the evenings and helping with the ironing, lunch with Julia and a lovely walk with Claire at Castle Howard. So, it's not all bad. But it could be better......