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Have you ever been doing something mundane, boring even, part of your daily routine and then some small thought has completely thrown you off track?

Did it take you by surprise? Did you wonder where on earth that thought came from?

It’s weird isn’t it, how our brain works (or doesn’t work)?

Caught by surprise

I made my (our) bed as usual today, bent over to fold back the covers, then as I straightened up and looked down at the bed, I noticed it.

The sheets are only creased on one side, where I had slept. For the tiniest fraction of a second, my brain puzzled over where J could be. Why wasn’t her side slept in?

I’m sorry if that sounds daft after 20 months, it is hard to explain the impact of that thought, of the almost instantaneous realisation, but the falling sensation I had in my chest and the shock when I was jolted into reality.

Inception

So much went through my tiny brain in such a small snippet of time. Like the movie Inception (if you haven’t seen it, why not?!), it was like time had slowed down and stretched out inside of what, to the observer, would have appeared a fractional moment.

I ran the whole gamut of emotions from confusion/puzzlement, through grim realisation, anger and injustice, to a dull numbness and immobility, all within that minuscule moment.

Even the sheets on our bed deliver a constant reminder that she’s not here any more. 

Until that moment it hadn’t hit me so far that day – she has gone!

Duvet Day?

It is difficult to explain, to really convince someone who hasn’t lost what you have, how much these fleeting, almost immeasurable, moments stop you in your tracks. 

All of a sudden that background ache, the subtle but constant gnawing inside your chest, is dragged flaming and painful, into the forefront of your mind.

And it brings everything back. 

It is a fight, a real battle, to not allow yourself to crawl back into bed and hide under the covers claiming a ‘Duvet Day’. 

The real struggle is to then go about your day, rubbing shoulders with people who have no idea what you have been through already just to be there at work, in the supermarket, at school or just to exist without that special person in your life. 

There is no predictability about this horrible journey that no one wants to be on. 

That’s what makes living through grief so draining. 

Like the song says, a day, 24 little hours, can make all the difference.

Even one second to the next. It is something we all know, but that we rarely acknowledge until we are forced to.

I feel this makes us take things for granted, until they are taken away from us.

Sliding Doors

There is a version of me that existed in blissful ignorance of the pain and torment every day now starts and ends with.

A version of me that had no idea what loneliness and sorrow really means.

A version of me that knew constant love, although not expressed daily, but felt in thousands of shared moments and the satisfaction of living life with the one person you were meant to share it with.

That version of me died when my wife did.

Shifting Perspectives

Since that moment, the importance of everything else has been minimised in my mind.

Some things I no longer find of any interest, such as the hamster wheel of work until we are allowed to retire with a pittance to support us at 67 (probably 69 by the time I get there).

It is important for me to provide, for myself and my children and that will continue, but the rest of it I just don’t care for at the moment.

Projections for the next 5 years, fiscal overspends, project deliverables, customer satisfaction trends, redundancies, Janet’s missing lunch, meetings to discuss what we’re going to say in another meeting, emails expecting an immediate response, and the thousand other minutia of daily office working, fill me with such indifference that I hate to even list them!

I just want to stand up and scream, “NONE OF THIS MATTERS!!!!”.

But, of course, it does matter, sometimes very much. Just not to me.

Am I Crazy?

The other people in the room don’t understand what is going on in my head. The intrusive thoughts I am fighting off. The way that every morning begins with a re-run of that day in hospital because, as I have already posted, my grief brain hates me.

And all of this before even getting out of bed! I am exhausted by the time I even start to think about work.

The thoughts don’t stop as I leave the house either. I drive past the salon where J had her hair done and I remember that day she came home but I didn’t notice because I was too wrapped up in a management crisis at work. This starts me, quite rightly, on a guilt trip about how she must have felt and how I didn’t make her feel like the beautiful woman that she was.

And then my brain helpfully reminds me of all the other times I probably didn’t respond correctly and failed to make my beautiful wife feel loved. How she didn’t deserve to feel like this because she was the most fun, caring and fiercely protective wife and mother I could have hoped for – and I took her for granted.

I might be fortunate and drive past a place with a happy memory, for example her old family home where she lived when we dated. I smile and revel in the memory of those exciting, heady times when you grow to love the one you know, without a shadow of a doubt, you will spend the rest of your life with.

That wonderful memory then stabs you through the chest with the knife of loss and a denied future together. It weirdly, ruins your day with its happiness. Because you are not allowed to be happy. She is not here to enjoy it with you.

This is just part of what ‘Grief’ means to me.

When you look back on a period in your life, you often see so much more than you could at the time.

Sometimes with regret, sometimes with gratitude, or maybe even both.

I know this is an old cliché, but if it wasn’t for some very dear and genuinely concerned friends who I know love me, my family and my late wife, I probably wouldn’t be here now.

Perspectives

I sometimes try and imagine what they saw when they looked at me in the moments, hours, days and months after my wife died.

I am sure it was at times like looking at a wild animal trapped in a cage, eyes wide and darting around, trying desperately to make sense of what was happening to it.

Sometimes a seething mass of rage, anger, disappointment.

At other times a comatose mess of non-activity, a wall of sadness, or an abject lack of humanness.

I know what they saw would have constantly changed and how they dealt with it would needed to have changed accordingly.

Gratitude

That they did continue to deal with me/it and have NOT given up so far, is something for which I will forever be grateful, more than they could ever know.

I know too, that I am very fortunate to be surrounded by friends like this, because some going through similar experiences are not and I don’t know how they carry on.

It is not at all British to do so, but if any of my friends ever read this, I would want them to know just how much I love them, more than words can express!

Often in grief, you don’t say or do the things you really feel. In fact, many times what you put out there to the world is the opposite of what you want or intend to. By this, you can sometimes hurt the ones you love or who love you.

And I did not have the capacity to change or filter what I said or did, because I was/am simply using every atom I possess to survive the moment, to the exclusion of all else.

If friends still love and support you after that, they are real friends, tried and true, to be cherished more than fine gold!

As Polonius said to his son Laertes before he went off abroad on his own in Shakespeare’s ‘Hamlet’;

“Those friends thou hast, and their adoption tried,
Grapple them to thy soul with hoops of steel.”

They all seem to be like this now, my nights.

It is 3 a.m. and I am lying awake, staring at the ceiling again. I am self-talking, doing breathing and relaxing exercises and honestly, praying that I can get some rest for once.

But my ‘grief brain’ hates me and instead says to me:

“Oh good, you’re awake! At the hospital on the day your wife died, do you remember wiping the dribbled traces of blood running from the corner of her mouth with a tissue before anyone else came in?”

“Do you remember how angry you were with the nurses for not cleaning her up before you were allowed in to see her?”

“Oh yeah, do you remember how cold her hand felt when you kissed it and cried for her to wake up?”

etc., etc.

And with that, the last hope of sleep I had for the rest of the night evaporates.

Instead, I am left with a high definition, step-by-step replay of that morning, in my head. One that is on a loop – along with a visceral replay of all the emotions I was assaulted with on that day.

Like I said, my grief brain hates me – this may be a theme!

(aka – How I Became A Widower)

It is 29 June 2023 09:18 a.m.:

I am at work and about to go into a meeting. I was in a hurry, I wanted to get as much done as quickly as possible today because I am planning to visit my Wife of 25 years, who is seriously ill in hospital.

The hospital is 60 miles away and she has been there, in and out of ICU and isolation wards, for the last 3 months. It has been 4 months in total since she left our home in an ambulance, blue-lighted into the ER with chronic stomach pain, so intense she was finding it difficult to breathe.

She has not been home since.

My mobile rings, the number displayed is the hospital. I expect it to be about visiting later (my wife needing to be in isolation rooms to avoid infection risk often restricted how long and when we could visit), so I hesitate to answer as I am already late for the meeting.

The caller persists, leaving it to ring for a long time. Eventually I answer hastily, hoping to make this a quick call and get to my meeting.

The voice of the woman on the other end sounds nervous, halting, she stumbles over her words.

After confirming who I am she tells me she is part of the Consultant team looking after my wife, and then she says:

“Oh, this is a difficult conversation…”

My heart stops, I catch my breath, I know what this means.

I don’t remember the exact words she says next, but I remember not understanding what she was trying to say and then the Consultant, her boss, takes the phone. Oddly, I relax a little when he speaks. I have had quite a few lengthy and frank conversations with him over the last few months, so I trust his understanding of the situation.

The Consultant starts to explain what procedures they have tried to carry out due to my Wife’s emergency situation this morning. He says something about stemming the bleeding, cauterising something, it being very difficult and challenging with the speed of blood loss and the amount of it in her abdomen.

I ask if she is ok though, and he says:

“We can talk about it more when you get here, don’t do anything silly, but you should try and get here as soon as you can!”

My head spins. It must show on my face as a colleague looks very concerned and asks me if I’m ok. I just stare at them. My brain is racing, contemplating joining the meeting and letting them know I have to go.

She snaps me out of it and urgently says:

“Just go! I’ll let everyone know, just grab your daughter and go.”

My daughter! She is working as a temp in the same building as me. I am going to have to tell her what’s happening and her boss that we need to go. I don’t care what they say, we are leaving them to it because right now nothing else in the world matters more than me getting to my beloved wife who desperately needs me, as fast as possible.

She is 60 miles away in another County and the rural roads and holiday traffic where I live do not ever make for a speedy journey. I grab my daughter and my car keys and rush out of the building to my car.

I get there in 50 minutes.

But it was too late.

She had already gone when they phoned me…