Going underground

Well, what a week. This one was always going to be tricky as it involved Emma and I being separated for 5 days as she went off on a school trip to Berlin. I really really wanted her to go and have some much needed fun but at the same time it was difficult as we had not been apart since Dave died. As those of you who have been reading the blog for a long time know we used to call ourselves The Three Musketeers when Dave was alive. Sadly now we can only manage to be the Dynamic Duo but we are so close after all our experiences that you can't put a credit card between us. We function as each other's best friends looking out for each other as much as we can. I dropped Emma off at school on Friday morning and did a very embarrassing thing that should definitely not be done when your daughter is 15 and you are standing outside her school - I cried my eyes out. I had no plans to do that but biting my lip failed miserably and the tears rolled. With my wobble came a wobble from Emma - started with a chin quiver and then a few tears so we stopped worrying about who would see us and gave each other a monumental hug! And then off she went......

Once she was gone on the coach I was okay. Yet again my wonderful friends were there with plans to keep me busy and occupied for the duration and that plan would have worked but for a severe case of PMT and a couple of other things that happened unexpectedly that completely knocked me off balance. It is not appropriate to say what the incidents were on the blog but in my current fragile state they were enough to sideswipe me. This is the thing about this grieving business. You can take so much and look to others as if you are doing well, but you don't have the normal levels of resilience and can crumple like a house of cards and once you start to crumble you feel a bit out of control. The only way I can describe the feeling is by saying that you feel like you have lost your "groundedness" (if that's a word and if it isn't it is now). On one of the widow's websites I have looked at some of the people there describe it as entering the Goblin Pit - a place of misery and despair where the goblins are after you and you have to try to drag yourself out of the pit to escape them. Well this time I think the goblins had me pinned down for a good couple of days! I can tell you that there were lots of tears and a feeling of helplessness that I am only just coming out of in the last 48 hours or so. If you saw me during that time you wouldn't necessarily have known what was going on as I was using every ounce of my resolve to try to function normally only to collapse again when I returned home and was on my own.

When you go downwards like this there is only sheer grit and determination that can get you out. Sometimes I wonder how much sheer grit and determination one person can possibly have and whether my sheer grit and determination quota/ration will run out and I will be stuck down there in the Pit for the rest of eternity!

So I have had another blip and live to fight another day. I do feel a bit like I am running out of steam again after the last few months but who knows. Only time will tell. But before I go another story to finish.......

The only night free in my hectic "schedule" over the weekend was Saturday and I made my own plan for that. I decided to have a truly indulgent/therapeutic night and watch a weepie movie and have pizza and ice cream (not normally allowed on the Weightwatchers Plan I am currently following!). I tried to think of the saddest film I had ever seen and I thought it was a film from the 80s called Beaches. The film stars Bette Middler and Barbara Hershey who are two lifelong best friends and one dies of a heart problem called cardiomyopathy. I can clearly remember Dave and I watching the video in our house in Crowthorne and both Dave and I crying our eyes out as it was so sad (although Dave said in typical fashion that he only had something in his eye). I managed to get a copy of the film and gleefully shoved it in the machine with my box of tissues at the ready. Watched the film whilst stuffing my face but I was soooooo disappointed. Grand total of only 4 tears. It really wasn't even on my new Sadness Scale. My conclusion? If that's the saddest film ever I now need to write a film as well as a book because my story with Dave is far far sadder than that and it's actually true! Now the next question is - who to cast in the leading roles.......?

Joining the 'Hood

In recent weeks, one of the words on my mind has (for obvious reasons) been "widow". Prior to joining the 'Hood (Widowhood that is) I had not really thought about it but as I have had to start filling in forms and put myself in the "widow" category rather than "married" I have started to find the word more and more unattractive. The immediate image that comes to mind is of a rather old and crumpled woman wearing full length black Victorian mourning attire and despite the Scottish Widows advertising campaign showing a very attractive younger woman in the aforementioned attire, little has been done in the way of "rebranding" in recent years.

Having ventured in to a relatively large group of widows and widowers a few weeks ago at a gathering run by the WAY Foundation (Widowed and Young)in Leeds I can tell you the familiar images of a widow are very outdated! The WAY Foundation supports widows and widowers under 50 and they really don't look any different to any other human beings. I walked in to the restaurant where we were meeting with another widow from York and we were looking for a group of people with obvious "signs" of widowhood but no there was nothing obvious! Just a group of people getting together and sharing their experiences and trying to support each other through a truly horrendous experience whilst knocking back a few bevvies. And it has to be said that because this (widowhood)is such a truly horrendous experience there is very much something in the unsaid between a group of people who have all been unlucky enough to have the love of their life die unexpectedly at the prime of their life. I think this is because the emotions you go through are so hard to explain to anyone who has not experienced such a monumental event. But these people just KNOW.

So back to the word "widow". I notice myself wishing to avoid being labelled as a widow at all costs and I prefer to refer to myself as "a person whose partner has died". I have tried to analyse what it is about this word apart from its inherent unsexiness that I don't like, but I think it is because I don't want to be defined in life just by this word. The problem is that at this moment it is the thing that is most on my own mind and the thing that most people think about as soon as they see me! But when I was married to Dave people didn't just think of me as a married person and they didn't call me a "married" - my relationship with Dave was just one of the many facets of my life (although obviously a very important one!). So I guess that I hope in time, being a widow will become less predominant and that I can go back to just being Sarah again.

The PEP Tree......

A few people have enquired about the tree that PEP planted (with the help of Emma and I) in memory of Dave so here is a photo courtesy of Jane (thanks Jane).

Emma and I will shortly be sponsoring a little copse of a dozen saplings just outside Leyburn in Wensleydale one of Dave's favourite places for walking. It will be nice to watch them grow.....

Try a little patience.....

Well it's a couple of weeks since I last blogged. Seems like longer as Emma and I have jumped through lots of hoops and been riding the rollercoaster of emotions at an even more terrifying speed! Somehow when I was in the early days immediately after Dave died the predominant emotions were ones of numbness and shock (even though I had known he was going to die, it was still a shock when he actually did). The brain seems to be very clever and somehow protects you to a degree from feeling the terrible pain when you are on your knees and waits till you have recovered a little and then on a regular basis allows very painful emotions to surface at times when you are better equipped to deal with them. The predominant emotion for me currently is just an overwhelming feeling of sadness and loss and an almost constant feeling of missing Dave. As a consequence of this, there have been a lot more tears. Emma has also been very sad and this has resulted in a feeling of powerlessness for me as as a parent all I want to do is make things all right for and this is one I cannot solve. Her "journey" through this will be her own as will mine and there is little that I can do other than be open and available to listen.

I have still been keeping myself busy and fighting any hermit-like tendencies. There are still quite a lot of things to sort out with regards to Dave's affairs and I have also been de-cluttering the house, although at this stage I still cannot bear to throw out any of Dave's clothes and personal things as it just doesn't feel right yet. I have also been sorting out the interrment of Dave's ashes which is taking place in June ( our wedding anniversary). If you ever want a sobering experience, go and put yourself eye to eye with your husband and best friend's ashes when they have been cremated. I did this the other day at the undertakers. Viewing the most important person to have ever been in my life so far as a pile of ashes in a brown plastic jar really brings home the fragility of life. I would love to be able to show them to anyone who thinks they are oh so important or significant or takes themselves far too seriously!

I have also been reading a lot to try to make some sense of what has happened although I am not sure whether that will ever be possible! This week I have been reading an excellent book called "Life lessons: how our mortality can teach us about life and living" by Elisabeth Kubler-Ross and David Kessler. The authors have worked with people who are dying in hospitals and hospices all their lives and have written some very interesting books on the dying process and the grieving process. This book, however, is different as it is all about the lessons they have learnt about living life from working with people who are dying. One of the most interesting things I found in the book is a part where they talk about how there is a tendency for people to only want the "rosy" side of life, for only good things to happen. Yet if you reflect back on your life it is sometimes the saddest and most difficult things in your life that have taught you the most and shaped you as a person. The message being that not all lessons in life are enjoyable to learn, but they do enrich the texture of life. Most people are just thrown to avoiding the difficult stuff and playing safe, but it is only in facing huge challenges that we grow. I know this to be true and have a feeling all this difficult stuff I am facing is leading to a life I would never have imagined before, although what that life is currently eludes me!

Related to this future, one of my biggest challenges at the moment is in facing what David Kessler and Elisabeth Kubker-Ross call the lesson of patience. I have never been a particularly patient person. I have always been pretty smart and got annoyed with people who were not as quick on the uptake as me. One of the things that has happened to me since Dave died is that a lot of negative feelings have been surfacing: sadness, pain, loneliness, anger, frustration, annoyance at other people etc etc. This is very hard to be with for someone who is normally relentlessly cheerful and upbeat, who cannot stand people who moan all the time and for someone who normally breezes through the things in life that others find difficult. I am also well known for being (as my friend Helen always puts it) "totally irreverent" and unserious about life. I know that both Dave and I have, in the past, probably really annoyed certain people on a number of occasions by simply not taking them seriously enough or attaching the right amount of "gravitas" in dealing with them. So now I find myself having to, as I put it, "wade through treacle", life most of the time is very significant and it really isn't much fun! I find myself wanting to breeze through this "grieving thing" but it does not seem to be something that you can just breeze through (not without causing yourself some permanent long term damage anyway). So, here I am being taught my particular lesson of patience. There is nowhere to get to, nothing that can be done to fix the situation and so I have to sit in amongst all these negative emotions and just dwell there in my very significant life! Waiting and wondering what course or path life is going to take next. So, as a discipline, I am inventing "the possibility of being curious" about all of these difficult emotions which are surfacing and enquiring in to what the universe is trying to teach me.

And in doing all of this, I will bear in mind another quote from the book from someone called Ronnie Kaye, a two time breast cancer survivor who said "In life when one door closes, another door always opens.......but the hallways are a BITCH!"