Hello blog

Well, here I am again, after a prolonged absence, I return here with sadness in my heart and the weight of the world pressing down on me.

If any occasional reader should stumble across my words, I will explain; my husband of 46years passed away in April. I am finding this hard to come to terms with and grief is making me ill.

I don’t know why I’m writing this, hoping for some sort of cathartic miracle to lift my spirit, but it won’t come. I know I will have to continue to fight the brain fog and the feeling of wading through treacle for some time to come.

“It’s early days” is what people say when I tell them how bad I feel. I know this is true, but his absence is like a deep chasm that I am in danger of falling into.

I don’t want to be the grieving widow who can’t accept that their other half has gone forever and becomes a martyr to his memory. I need to survive and eventually thrive; it is what he would wish and expect of me.

The idea of being “I” instead of “we” is a difficult prospect. Being an only parent to my adult children, whose grief at the loss of their father is painful to me. To fulfill the role of Grandad as well as Grandma, to keep my man alive to the young children who have been deprived of his presence, feels like too big a challenge.

I try not to keep replaying the day that he passed in my mind, or the weeks before, when the simple act of breathing was becoming so difficult for him and the efforts of his diseased lungs inadequate. I realise now that he hid a lot of his discomfort from me. I wasn’t prepared or even aware that his life’s journey was going to come to an end so soon.

The funeral was a memorable day, the church was full to overflowing, my husband was a well loved and well known man to whom so many people wished to pay their respects. I think everyone agreed that we gave him a good send off. My eldest daughter read a poem, my son sang a song and I wrote the eulogy (which the vicar read out for me) so there was plenty of personal input to the farewell service. Some people refer to funerals as a celebration of a person’s life, but I can’t think of it like that. For me it is the day when you have to say the last goodbye to the mortal remains of a loved one and I can’t connect the word “celebrate” with that. Their spirit after all has already gone before. On this occasion, a full four weeks before, this is the time we had to wait.

I think I’ve said enough here for now, maybe I will write more about my thoughts and feelings another day.

Adios for now my old friend, “blog”