On May 14th, 2017, Joan Wilson, my wife of forty-nine years, died of cancer. We were alone, I held her hand, she died peacefully, and I closed her eyes.
The two months of caring for Joan at home were not peaceful, although they did have their moments of beauty and humour. Each day brought an epiphany, a new realisation, a new experience, a new extreme.
If my caring was going to mean anything, I had to be able to function and I fought hard to fully understand what we were living through and feeling. As a result of this and because of what I have done professionally, I ended up expressing this aspect of life through a series of captioned graphic images. Ultimately, i produced fifty of these and then stopped ... I had known Joan for fifty years.
They have been shared with people who teach nurses, a counselling service, and others. I'm uploading them here as a body of work which might help someone else understand or feel less alone with the unbearable. These were my thoughts while caring.
My 'Personal Note' tab now on Joan's website at https://joanwilsonart.weebly.com will explain more.
The two months of caring for Joan at home were not peaceful, although they did have their moments of beauty and humour. Each day brought an epiphany, a new realisation, a new experience, a new extreme.
If my caring was going to mean anything, I had to be able to function and I fought hard to fully understand what we were living through and feeling. As a result of this and because of what I have done professionally, I ended up expressing this aspect of life through a series of captioned graphic images. Ultimately, i produced fifty of these and then stopped ... I had known Joan for fifty years.
They have been shared with people who teach nurses, a counselling service, and others. I'm uploading them here as a body of work which might help someone else understand or feel less alone with the unbearable. These were my thoughts while caring.
My 'Personal Note' tab now on Joan's website at https://joanwilsonart.weebly.com will explain more.
Thoughts
Thoughts and moments - notes on caring, grieving and healing
My wife, Joan Wilson, had severe fevers in childhood, night terrors, periodic eczema and cysts, was self-conscious about her teeth which were damaged by tetracycline and fluoride, eventually had vascular problems with her eyes, pressure problems with her inner ear, and had increasing malocclusion which prevented her from chewing properly or closing her mouth easily, possibly because of over twenty years of rheumatoid arthritis which also affected her spine, hands, legs and feet. The cancer that finally released her from this torture took three painful, frightening, exhausting, and humiliating months to do so.
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The graphics above were done while I was caring for Joan and the transcribed notes that follow are an extension of this personal exploration and deal with the grief that follows when the caring stops. If this body of work or any part of it can help anyone else , then something good has come of it.
The notes are only occasionally dated, but they are in chronological order as written and reflect the slow, erratic progress of grief.
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There are moments of odd and often difficult humour during this part of life and death ...
While working at home immediately following her admission to hospital, but before the diagnosis and prognosis, I was crying and railing, "Don't you fucking die you stupid, bloody woman!" ... because I had to badger her into finally having a home visit which resulted in the doctor arranging for her admission that afternoon on February 23rd, 2017.
People are who they are, cope in whichever way they can, and absolutely want sovereignty as their options run out.
After overly gentle Hospice volunteers showed unwanted interest and then left the room, she said "Oh, great. Today I talked to a dying person and it was so uplifting." Her anger didn't want what she saw as a fawning, uninformed pity.
While talking with doctors the day before her death and feeling the need to have a bowel movement, but being unable to, she said, "I don't want to go through the Pearly Gates with a poo half way out my bum." I said, "My dear, by then you will be too metaphysical for it to matter." We did joke, but her need for at least this dignity, when so much else had been taken away, was very real.
A woman I know talked about how she, like many of us, talks with the person we've lost and notices moments of serendipity .... or resonance. She also talked about how her late husband encouraged anyone visiting him in hospital to drink water. Later on the nurses congratulated him on his intake and compliance. He got away with it. He needed to.
Joan died at 3:48 in the afternoon on Sunday, May 14th 2017 as I held her hand and a lilac scented breeze and birdsong wafted in through the open door to the Hospice garden. She mouthed 'I love you' and I said, "I love you 6." We had a saying, "How much do you love me?", and the answer was always, "I love you 6 ..." The fan next to her bed was set to six. I almost laughed. Her breathing faded and I closed her eyes.
Crying days after her death. "I can't share anything with you. I can't comfort you. I can't hold you, stroke your hair or rub your shoulders ... I can't even piss you off anymore!"
... And again, "I can't stroke or cuddle you anymore. I could sift you through my fingers, but ..."
... And again, "I love you .... Get used to it ....."
Talking to a friend about grief and adjusting to the pain of loss that never leaves ... "You learn to dust around it ..."
Even the graphics relating to the experience of caring have a quirky origin. Early on in Joan's caring I had to answer the door while I was tending her. Long stemmed flowers had been delivered and, in order to keep them upright, I jammed them into the commode seat in the upstairs hall so that i could quickly get back to help her.
Later, I looked at them ... thought, 'maybe' ... and, once Joan was resting, I photographed them from above, vignetted the image, captioned it, 'Eat Well Soon', and sent it to a bowel cancer charity marketing department in case they could use it. Everything else, including these notes, followed from that single, impulsive, moment of pragmatic irreverence. Joan had been home one week and had eight weeks to live.
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"Condolences." A strange, repeated word ... and feeling, with each repetition, more empty of meaning.
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On June 9th, 2017, Joan's ashes were scattered in the park where she wanted to be and in six places. It’s difficult to continue when the reason for forcing yourself forward is finally gone. You're exhausted, but still tense from trying to keep going. You need to sleep, but don't want to. You need to eat, but find it oddly purposeless and perfunctory.
Eventually, I had a realisation ... a way of dealing with the visceral feeling of loss within weeks of her death. Learning to flop. I was sitting and trying to have a meal, but not being relaxed enough to do so ... and I learned to flop ... just let go and flop forward, almost as if someone was giving you a shoulder rub. It seemed to help the cold emptiness in my chest. When you've been trying too hard for too long, it's almost like a cramp. The blood can't flow through and the lactic acid can't get out. So you flop and let life flow through you.
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June 29th 2017
I'm having a coffee in an upstairs cafe and out the window I watch a young mother dance with her toddler as a busker plays. It's sweet, pure and gleeful. It's exactly what they and I need. The child's view, the mother's empathic love, the busker's delight. Yesterday I was going to quit my teaching post because people were off-loading too soon. Even people who had attended Joan's memorial gathering last weekend. Now, it seems they've offered to support me more ... we'll see. Joy and purpose ... being with students, being with young hearts and minds and sharing helps me.
The sense of future expressed in what I see out the cafe window is what I feel when I'm helping a student. So I will stay and teach, even while I think of Joan and the shape of a life. These are the words that I wrote on a small piece of paper in that cafe while drinking coffee at the end of the month in which I scattered and remembered my wife.
We spin.
The music plays.
We spin.
The shadows shift.
We spin.
We spin in joy,
denying tears.
We spin.
We spin and fall
in laughter.
Laughter spun of sighs.
Sighs spun of tears uncried ...
and the wind spins the cries that come
when we can spin no more.
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July 20th 2017
I talk to the candle ...
I talk to your shirt and fleece ...
I talk to the pillow you died on ...
I talk because we did.
The months of caring,
of swearing and straining with sleep loss,
of tender despair and bleak irony
have ended with you ... or so I thought.
The raw immediacy seemed more distant.
Did you die last night, last week, or did you die at all?
Without fading, the rawness seemed unreal ...
outside of me ... or so I thought.
And yet, again, when listening
to the bewildered despair of a grieving mother,
that rawness, cramped throat, and hot, howling tears of my own grief
found me sitting on the stairs and remembering
how I couldn't save you as I had before.
I could only help you die.
Yet, even these tears eventually mute
into a tender wistfulness as I learn to recall and love
and find new ways to share again ... or so I feel.
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Sometimes you walk around it,
knowing that it's there
and feeling the sweet longing and warmth of it.
Sometimes you approach it,
knowing it will burn you raw until you cry.
Sometimes you need to cry
and embrace that burn simply because
you can't embrace the one you've lost.
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The life with and the life without the lost
run in parallel,
not from the moment of death,
but from the moment of grieving,
when the immediate, pressing, rushing details cease to mask
the quiet realisation of loss
and the fact that you have been grieving all along,
even while caring.
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You can leave and seek company,
conversation, and meaning in other lives.
You can laugh, surprise and be surprised.
You can feel alive and almost normal, but
you come home.
Again and again, you come home.
You come back into yourself and finally
have to make peace with that fact.
You have to learn to be alone, but not lonely.
You have to grow in depth and strength
so that, if and when you find love again,
you love wisely, not desperately, and
have something other than need
to give your new love.
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My thoughts after dealing with the exhaustion and irritation of often thankless caring ...
'I would die for you, but not because of you ...'
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Look beneath the surface of your coping,
because the reservoir often empties from the bottom up
and you might only be seeming.
Be honest and careful. You need to know when to back off,
to rest, to not be obsessive about doing, completing, and staying active.
These things do help to pull you forward,
but they also can pull you over the edge.
Be aware and take time.
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An odd feeling.
Soft, yet pulling.
Pity, but more.
Grief, but odd.
A tender longing.
The feeling of love.
Just love.
Only love.
A gentle love.
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January 18th 2018
Fragments. Having digitised and uploaded so much of your artwork to finalise your website so that people could know you better, I arranged your last exhibition. You were exploring a possible theme, 'Fragments', and now that theme has become the theme of the exhibition that you were hoping to be in, but not in this way. Not a retrospective. Not as a memory ... but it's a lovely memory showing your range, colours, and interests ... and on the wall, along with your words, your stream of conscious exploration of the theme of 'Fragments', are my words. "Sinter a future in the heat and pressure of grief with the fragments of a life."
... And this is what I must do ... this is what many of us have had to or will have to do ...
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January 19th
The show is up ... the last exhibition. The planning is over, the hanging is over, and it looks good. Everything has come together. Everything is here. Everything but you ... and you are why we did it. And yet ... it looks good ... it looks good ... we did it ...
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Strange day, strange pen. strange notes. Feet dangling from a too high cinema cafe seat, drinking from a too large cup, feeling like a kid in a world built for someone else.
An hour to the film, an hour to rest after an unexpected encounter, unexpected chat, unexpected cappuccino, an unexpected potato, and now a flat white unexpectedly brought from the other side of the foyer because the bar has no coffee machine ... unexpectedly.
Having done what I should do, having done what I can do, I rest like a kid in an unexpected world and write strange notes with a strange pen on a strange day.
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Still trying to find her. Looking at buildings, places, views we visited or that she photographed ... or where we had coffee ... empty of anything but memory.
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The burning, tight throat ... the rising howl and breathy tears still come, but less often, and what is left feels almost like a hunger ... a wistful hollowness that life must fill.
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Having arranged so much and done so much in your memory, I'm running out of things to do for you ... and it hurts. And the things that I have done for you, I couldn't give to you ... and it hurts. And I have to accept that it will.
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Part of me is fragile. Part of me yearns to hug and share, but can't, and that part is fragile ... but my will is not fragile and it needs to lead me like a wise and loving friend.
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An e-mail is sent to your address which I then forward to me. The 'new mail' and 'reply' commands are very different and feel more so when a message from you lands in my inbox.
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February 14th
Still in the holding pattern. It's not quite a year ... ten months ... since ... and the reflex to chat, share, hug, plan or reminisce is still there. Much is new ... people, events, the decorative throw on the sofa and other things ... much is the same, but ...
It happens to be Valentine's Day, it happens to be Ash Wednesday, but even your birthday on April 9th doesn't seem to signify, though it probably will ... when it comes ... and I've continued sending cards to others.
May 9th, when you went to Hospice ... forty-four years since we landed at Tilbury Docks and started living in England ... that signifies. May 14th, when you left ... that signifies. Christmas ... yes ... but at least it was given a new significance, because friends invited me away. I bought presents and put up decorations when it came, but not the tree just yet.
June 9th, last year, would have been our forty-ninth anniversary but, instead, I was scattering your ashes. June 9th signifies.
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Sometimes you choose to touch the pain. You know it will hurt. You know that you are unlocking it. You know what will happen and ... like a child touching fire ... you do it anyway. But in time, you do it more carefully, more knowingly, prepared to feel, but not be ripped apart. You learn what it is, its nature, and how to bear it.
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I'm watering the plants, as I do, every Saturday and have even managed to get a shed cluster of leaves to sprout roots and become a new, sovereign plant.
And yet, every time I water them, I feel like I'm keeping them for you. But that won't happen ... you will never tend them again. The ivy that we bought at a grocery store in the village in the late 70's will never be watered by you again .... but it will be watered ....
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Odd ... almost funny ... it's just me. Only me here. It seems ridiculous. Why would I matter? The people I care about, what I believe in, what I make an effort to do – yes – but me? That's so small.
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The day, the sky, what and who we see, what we do and who we are, our context, our scale. The sky is like a relationship ... it has its moods, but it's there around us.
The night, the clear night, the sky so full of stars that you can sense the distances and depth and almost fall up into it. You seem to lose your balance, your context, and feel cut loose in a void so vast that you cease to matter. The silence of the night is part of that disconnection. You don't want to go to bed and this means that the sleep loss of caring is more likely to continue.
I spoke with a man on a bus who lost his wife over a year ago. We shared thoughts and compared experiences and then, after a pause, I said to him, "... Leave the radio on at night?", and he said, "Yes ..."
The loss of relationship is, in large part, the loss of context, the loss of meaning, the loss of human scale ... and if we do not pull our minds back from the void, find a new meaning, create a new context, we have nothing.
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At the bus stop, waiting with shopping the day before February 23 ... the anniversary of the house visit and your admission to hospital. Alone, I say what I think and know ... "One year tomorrow." ... and as I am alone, I say it again, and again, and louder, and again with pained anger ... and again, quietly. And the nervous dog on the bus that comes needs comforting ... and comforting it comforts me.
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March 4th
I've delivered more artwork from the exhibition and, as requested, people are giving the donation of their choice to the charity of their choice. Perfect. For the first time in years, we also had proper snow and the brightness of the sky is reflected and doubled. Perfect.
I play Meatloaf in your room. I don't stay, but come back from time to time. I play it for you. I play it to make the room happy, but ... from time to time ... I also listen ... I take the hit ... and miss you.
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Not every piece of orchestral music remains raw and associated with love for the lost. There is love of people, humour, animal life, landscapes, love of the sense of future as children live in the present, love of living and being aware, but so far it has been almost impossible to listen to the usual music. Right now, the chatter of pop radio is still good company.
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So far, just over ten months for me, one year for him. three years for her ... and the rest ... and bedside radios play in the dark and drive the quiet away.
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I saw a film; symbolic, powerful and poetic. A good story, a sweet story, a tender story. All fine, except for the tender. Not the tender .... dear God .... not the tender ....
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March 7th
The holding pattern of compulsion is beginning to let go .... Spring ... the easing of life ... The blindfold of ceaseless, urgent activity seems to be falling away. The restful gaze opening .. calming. To not invent life, but to live at ease. To not seek, but accept. To simply receive an unforced peace. To find and follow the thread of love that weaves through all of this ... and always did.
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Making a meal ... waiting for it to cook ... and it comforts me to say, to finally say, "Would you like a coffee?" Just to hear those familiar words comforts me. ... And again, an art supply catalogue comes with your name on it, and to read your name in the address, and to think about the art supplies ... comforts me. But the comfort hurts ...
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I'm in the kitchen and made a meal, a good meal, and I'm having a coffee, but the room that I look at seems a long way off. I'm looking at it, but I don't feel that I'm in it. I just know it's the kitchen.
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Friendly people in the long-shadowed warmth of afternoon sun outside the cafe ... crisscrossing the park across the road where you are forever.
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I tell myself, remember ... always ... you are not biding your time ... you are living.
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Home from work. Oven on. Wash and slice mushrooms, but not baby plum tomatoes this time, just olives, a bit of cottage cheese, and a quarter can of yesterday's ratatouille to top up half a pizza. Meal ready and in. Now I can stop the rhythmic sniffing. Now I can let the tears fall less silently. Now I can sit on the steps with a moan that rises to a soft howl and cry my words to you while the timer counts down sixteen minutes.
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March 14th
Last year on this day you had exactly two months to live. I looked it up, although I already knew, and the heightened sadness made sense. The fourteenth. I nursed you two months and on the fourteenth, you died.
Having just given friends one of your artworks, I felt the need to go to the chemist across from the clinic and buy one chocolate Fortisip. The girl at the counter tried to find one, came back with the equivalent, and said, "I know who you're missing ... I just remembered. For me it was the smell of Germaline ... with my grandmother ... Pop in anytime you're passing ..." I thanked her for remembering ... and for her gentle kindness ... and then walked home through the woods so that I could cry alone.
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Another potato ... it was good ... I made it last ... took my time ... so the potato would fill both time and me. And now I sit in the cafe and write again. Time passes with potatoes and words ... and both slowly fill the void.
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March 18th
I used to bring you snowballs and so, when the second early spring snow fell and was good packing snow, I did again, and let it slowly melt into the rinsing cup that you used when you painted. Then I watered it into the ivy we bought over forty years ago. Melt water and memories. Playful and gentle.
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March 22nd
The realisation, again ... like a small, peripheral flash that catches your attention when you're doing something else and momentarily lapse. Your attention drifts, your eyes flick to one side and focus inwardly ... not seeing, but recalling ... again ... the realisation. There is no resolution ... only acceptance ...
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Late night and, again, I resent having to go to bed. The grieving is in many ways harder than the caring because the caring pulls you forward, gives you a focus. That need to function, care, and give muscle to your feelings of concern and love .. that sense of immediacy and purpose ... however much you might feel pain, exhaustion and grief while caring ... pulls you forward and forces you to find strength.
When death comes ... when the party is over and everyone leaves and you are left looking at the dishes ... you are alone and have to grieve wisely ... but the bloody minded stupidity that we're all capable of ... gets in the way ...
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Noticing that when it begins to not hurt, then that hurts, because the sense of absence keeps coming back and refreshes your memories of the initial and more acute pain. It doesn't feel right. It doesn't feel normal. And to feel less is saddening ... and that hurts. And yet, the only way to free yourself is to set her free ...
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Back from town. Late afternoon can be worse than the evening ... darkening, but more day to get through. The problem isn't coming back to an empty house ... it's coming back to an emptied house.
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April 6th
Tired, pained ... and tried. Held weakly by despair, but not hugged. A moment ... it's only a moment. The not bright white sky above and the not warm or cool, indifferent air around mimic my mood. I feel like I'm waiting for myself ... and I will come ... in time. If only time would move.
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April 7th
A letter from the bank ... the bereavement service team. Helpful, supportive, well intentioned. And yet, crying, I say, "Even the ... even the ...", and again in a shallow, pained breath, "Even the ...", and finally I manage to say, "words ...", as I read the helpful, supportive, well intentioned phrase in the heading, "The late Joan Johnson."
Too cold. too hard, too final, too objective. I called them and the young woman on the helpline understood perfectly. 'The affairs of ...', 'The estate of ...', even 'The death of Joan Johnson' ... yes ... but 'late' is too abrupt, like the rubber stamping of a life.
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April 9th
It's Joan's first birthday since and I walked a long way looking for something to give her. In town, at a card shop, I found a small, shy, grey-faced lamb on a shelf with other stuffed toys that outsized it many times. It was the only one that was right and it was alone. Perfect ... but life unfolds again ... and we're never alone. The young woman in this shop had lost her brother ...
Others of us ... people I've met ... slowly or suddenly with mind or body going first ... have lost child, grandchild, cousin, brother, sister, twin, wife, husband, mother, father, grandparent, friend, and more.
To love and care opens us to the pain of loss, but to love, to care, to feel, and to function and fight in the name of love and caring is life.
I went to St. James' Priory Church again because when you were in hospital, you asked me to light a candle there because we had so often visited it and photographed it. You said that you loved the place and it is one of the few that remains open as a sanctuary for those who want to quietly pray.
I lit another candle and looked for the perfect place to leave the lamb. It found a home on the font and was there for the next several weeks, possibly as a comfort to those who had lost children.
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April 13th
The mismatch of head and heart. Trying to think through a deep pain, an unresolved despair, anger and loneliness. To be a cuddler with no one to cuddle. To need a hug, though mostly end up hugging a chair back, a blouse, a pillow. Thank God for chance encounters with others who need to and can, simply, hug.
The unexplained sniffing, the passing grimace that flashes across a pained, but bearing face. And the blurting voice that comes ...
"I hurt. I hurt from measuring too much morphine and wondering whether to give you more, knowing that you want to die, but having promised that I wouldn't ... even though I know a full bottle might not release you.
I hurt from helping you painfully defecate six times and cleaning you more than that.
I hurt from tending pressure sores that smelled like dead animals three days before they surfaced. Sores that let me see inside you and sores that were made worse by you because ... quite naturally ... you wanted to feel empowered, sovereign, upright and functioning.
I hurt from sleep loss and I hurt from fighting my anger trying to be patient when you fought me trying to help you when you were frightened and couldn't trust or understand.
I hurt in my strained back, my aching arms, and my numb mind.
I hurt ... but I have loved you while hurting."
... and the voice stops.
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You're part of me ... not all of me ... but part of me.
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April 14th
Roads, shops, people and events seem to be viewed backwards as I move forwards. I see and think and what I see I see is a refection because as I think about what I see, I have already passed it.
The stations of grief and understanding ... where we used to walk when you could walk, where we bought a carpet or a chinese meal for a helping friend, the solicitors office when we were buying our home, cafes visited, seats sat in at concert venues ... All are stations of grief and memory.
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Warmth of colour, warmth of season. warmth of home, warmth of laughter. warmth of empathy, warmth of future memories. Create warmth, seek warmth, recognise and embrace warmth and the life and lives that share it.
... and yet, every night, every letting go, feels like a death. It isn't, of course, and a mismanaged grief will kill you. Eat, exercise, socialise, sleep, make something. The child in you is grieving and the adult in you needs to parent that child.
Once, while planning to prepare a meal, the child in me said, "Why would I care?" and the parent said, "Because you're fucking hungry." True ... I was ...
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April 17th
Happiness is not an illusion. Despair is not more real. Grieving weaves both and, at its best and most healing, feels like a gentle and loving acceptance.
Almost a year ... not even a year. So long and so short. I'm having a meal out ... one we would have shared ... and now ... there are so many new encounters and memories that it seems like I'm passing through life and that the feeling of the word 'home' has altered.
One of these encounters and new, sweet memories was at a concert with the young couple sitting next to me. She was heavily pregnant, almost due, and the child inside her kicked in time to the music. Her husband videoed it on his phone, they danced where they were, and we all laughed affectionate, warm laughter ... and the memory of the little girl who danced at Joan's memorial gathering resonated with this new memory.
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April 28th
I gave your picture of the Thekla to the people who run it in order to bring you into the 'now', even though you are part of the 'once'.
Emotions feel ragged, faceted, tangential, laced with cross currents ... I gave them the picture as a gift for you, but I can't give that gift to you.
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May 1st
Too many toys for the box ... so many thoughts.
Spoke with a woman in the support office about life generally and she knew someone who divided people into two types; drains and taps or sponges and sticks ... those who are bottomlessly needy and those who are sources of life and strong support. It seemed cruelly simplistic because people are more complex and situationally variable than that, but there are some who are consistent examples of the extremes.
Interestingly, there are times when those who chronically offer support are guilty of passive aggression, in that they are always saying, "I am strong and you are weak and I need to see you as weak in order to feel strong."
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One of our students was found dead in the morning by roommates. All the plans, dreams, and sense of future ended. The impact on the family can be imagined. It angered me. Talking with another staff member, I learned that they themselves had lost three key, wise and supportive people in their lives in rapid succession. Loss is universal. Another staff member, torn between having a family or having a career, was told by a grandparent, "You can regret having children or regret not having them." You can't get it right, but give yourself fully to the choice you've made. When you choose to love - mean it, because you'll need that strength.
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I go to town, hoping for a meaning to take home. I go out ... chance meetings, conversation, laughter, shared pain and perceptions, new faces, voices, lives ... but then ... again ... home and the sudden lack of deflection. The vain hope of a distraction as permanent as the sense of being alone. I have been alone before and often enough in childhood, but this is not being alone ... this is being without.
Yet, having met so many people who are without father, mother, siblings, spouses, children and friends and often in cruel circumstances, I am not alone. I am one of the alone and we all share an understanding. The next day, within ten minutes and a short walk, I meet an older woman and then a young woman who have both lost their husbands. One has withdrawn and lost confidence and the other feels anger. They are among the alone.
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Will I ever stop crying? I'm seventy-one. She was in my life for fifty of those years and I had reasons to cry even when she was. Crying is like breathing. Crying is the breath of sorrow.
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May 5th
Hearing the radio playing Max Steiner's 'Tara's Theme' brings back vivid childhood memories and makes me feel like I'm going back to a life before you ... but I had a life with you. I feel like I'm starting life again and that hurts, because you had a life.
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Time. Time to heal, go, grieve, stop, laugh, weep, rest, eat, plan, complete, simplify, find, lose, accept, and time to step out of time and wait. Wait for the moment of the gifted grace of resonance and then to know what time this now is.
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May 14th
Today is the first anniversary of your death and I'm going to Hastings to get something personal for my brother-in-law who had his childhood there. I'm going to Hastings to give this day a larger meaning ... another meaning. I'm going to Hastings to breathe life back into this day.
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June 21st ... the longest day ... the first day of summer ...
People hurt. Scratch the surface, share your thoughts, and you learn how and why.
A five-year-old grandchild from cancer. An older husband or wife, walking the dog and no return ... no goodbye. Alzheimer's, Parkinson's disease, dementia, ... memories lost and a goodbye spoken to an unknown person. Regrets and too late attempts at reconciliation or renewed friendships and family ties. Raised questions without hope of an answer.
People hurt, trapped in fear, trapped in pain, trapped in an unresponsive body ... and while and when they die, other people hurt. And when these people talk and share, the hurt is less each time. We still feel, we still hurt, but we understand and aren't alone ... because ... people hurt.
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June 24th
Today is the first anniversary of your memorial gathering in the park where you wanted to be scattered. Today I collect my boarding passes for the trip to Canada and a long overdue visit to my family ... a visit you could not do ... and so, like the anniversary of your death, I also give this day a deeper meaning and breathe life into it.
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July 29th
The trip to Canada ... the visit with my three younger sisters and very extended family ... was as sweet and as fun as I hoped it would be. I felt deeply happy and connected.
To be surprised at happiness and to be softly surprised that you are not here. To be both ... and to heal.
NOTE ON IMAGES
On Wednesday, August 9th, 2017 I went to Clevedon and took the photograph of the man at the end of a slipway against a dark sky that appears at the beginning of these notes on grieving. He and the landscape felt the way I felt at the time.
On Wednesday, August 8th, 2018 I had just finished transcribing these notes and, as it happens, the sunset that is pictured at the end of this attempt to explore and understand how to deal with my grief is the sun setting on that day.
It just happened that way and is part of the resonance that I occasionally feel.
Wednesday. August 8th, 2018, 9:59 pm.
On Wednesday, August 9th, 2017 I went to Clevedon and took the photograph of the man at the end of a slipway against a dark sky that appears at the beginning of these notes on grieving. He and the landscape felt the way I felt at the time.
On Wednesday, August 8th, 2018 I had just finished transcribing these notes and, as it happens, the sunset that is pictured at the end of this attempt to explore and understand how to deal with my grief is the sun setting on that day.
It just happened that way and is part of the resonance that I occasionally feel.
Wednesday. August 8th, 2018, 9:59 pm.