JAX WORLD: BLOG 268

"I wonder if that’s just how it feels to miss someone so bad – like being stabbed in the gut a little bit, each time you think of them.” - Kate Ellison [Notes from Ghost Town]

I think it took me over two weeks to stop feeling that MY life was over.

I woke up this morning and realised it is not.

The trouble with bereavement is that it is so focused on what you have lost, you completely lose the ability to see what you have.

I know I've been a ruddy nightmare... all mood swings and lack of housework (My son has taken over the laundry as a clean shirt was becoming hard to find). But I have demonstrated through all of this my uncanny ability to go on.

Over the past 15 days, I have managed to carry on being a mother, a daughter, a sister and a friend. I have even managed to rock up at the most toxic workplace in Britain and write stuff (including a blog on toxic workplaces...holla!). I have managed to pay bills, put up Christmas decorations, deal with a poorly pet and look for more work.

I've gone on.

I've not had to do so alone, the roll call of supportive friends would take a couple of blogs so I won't do the list. However, my amazing big sister and my gay best friend delivered for me a birthday that I will be able to look back on with affection and my favourite couple in the entire world kidnapped me for a night of old skool music, eastern food and international wine to remind me what I still have. My friends have been awesome - they don't hide from my loss, they let me talk about him - cry if I have to but keep me connected. The outreach from friends old, new, close and distant has been amazing.

But I was fooling myself if I thought that by going on I was living in any real sense of the word.

However...I think I am now beginning to look outside myself and my loss. This morning I looked at my hair and thought - holy crap how the hell did that happen! I was surprised to find that birds had not nested there. I looked at the house and thought...eeek, infestation is possibly a day away. I think I am now able to start to do something about these things.

I am also aware of the fact that my bereavement was in putting me in danger of making my boyfriend into some kind of saint. Suddenly he has become the patron saint of Steadfastness and Strength. Which anyone who knew him knows he was not.

Something bad happened. He died. And yes dying at this juncture in his life was hugely unfair, dying at this juncture in our relationship was just crap, but that didn't exempt him from his faults nor make him perfect by default.

He always had a problem with focusing on the task in hand and would start zillions of things with gusto only to wander off to the next shiny bauble. I only have to go into any room of my house to find the evidence; the oven door he was going to fix or the toilet seat he was going to replace or the wireless connection to the laptops he was rebuilding to recall he was not steadfast and strong all the time.

Sometimes he'd just sit and say nothing at the worst possible times. It was infuriating, how could someone so articulate get so dumbstruck! We'd be in situation when the crowd would turn to him for contribution and he'd quite literally have nothing to say. I never knew how someone could do that....surely he must have had an opinion. But he'd turn to me and shrug. Literally he had nothing to add. It was so infuriating because I would have really liked to have known what he really thought.

It is this trait that led me to start doing something really ghoulish over the last couple of days. I started emailing him. Yes I know dead people don't receive or reply to emails - but hey! sometimes he'd get so dumbstruck in life that getting no answer to my posthumous emails didn't seem to make a difference anyway. It was a weird thing I know yet those couple of emails got the unfinished conversations out of my head. I missed chattering at him. I wanted to pose all those unasked questions, but I also wanted to tell him about my day/pass on the gossip - let him know how people were saying nice things about him about us. But most off all - I wanted the contact.

It was just the two emails but they were cathartic.

I suddenly realised I'd got all the answers I need before the night of December 5th. Every day that we were together he was able to tell me he loved me and he did - (Truly Madly Deeply he'd say ) - TMD.. Every day. Even on the morning of the day he died. Maybe steadfast and strong when it counted will have to be enough.

Some people never know what that is like. They have an entire lifetime, 80, 90, 100+ years and no one has ever been truly, madly , deeply in love with them. Ever. And it's not as if I am one of those unfortunate souls who have found that; only to watch love turn to disappointment or bitterness, to see the one they love leave and go on and find that someone else.

I have to stop thinking of me being left behind, of death as some kind of betrayal to the future we'd hoped for. Face facts - it's not as if he meant or planned or wanted to leave me two days before my birthday and 20 days before Christmas with the oven door , toilet seat and wireless connection not fixed yet! He may not be the patron saint of Steadfastness and Strength but he sure was no monster. My heart is broken but it wasn't his fault. He just got sick, then he died. And he did all that while still loving me as I him.

So today I got up, and the sky was this amazing winter blue and it was really really sunny. And then I noticed that I do not live in a Disney movie. Unlike Cinderella the birds in the trees are not gonna fly in and dress my hair and that unlike Snow White I doubt if the animals in the nearby woods are gonna come in and do the housework. I'm gonna have to do a little bit better than just go on, I am gonna have to restart the terribly time consuming business of living.

For the past 15 days my hands have been full. They have done nothing other than carry the deep and tragic burden of bereavement for me.

I've had support to get through these last 15 days but it has been my hands carrying this heavy heavy load while I've been walking slowly towards something, somewhere.

I now think I've been walking to here. I believe I am slowly arriving at that place where I will have to find a place in me for the loss. This doesn't meaning burying it deep within me - no way , I cannot do that, I do not know if I ever could. I think it means finding a way to carry it while leaving my hands free to do all the stuff that life demands has to be done.

It will be good to use my hands in that way again.