Maybe this is the title of the latest Jilly Cooper novel - I don't think she's tackled cancer bereavement - has she? Doesn't she do horsy thigh-slapping and riding crop waving? How would she write about the Widows' Club?
I'm finding some of my worthy fellow bereavement group members just a tad irritating at the moment. One lady just has to dive in there and disagree with everything I might have to say. This evening the counsellor had to intervene and stop her attack, because she had misunderstood what i was saying anyway. Confused? you will be! Strewth! Easy it is not!
It' s a bit like a Slimming World group meeting too - the amount of discussion about cream cakes and sweets has to be heard to be believed. How many points does your average biscuit carry and how might this contribute to the grief recovery process Mrs So and So? And after we've had input about the weather, the traffic, the time it took to get here, there's somewhat less time for pertinent discussion of how the bereavement process has affected us this fortnight. I half expected someone to get out a packet of ginger snaps as part of the therapy.
One of them even addresses the group as "Now Ladies, I don't know about you but I think ...." Obviously not feeling the need to pay lip service at least to the possibility that there might be some men listening at some point. Remote though that possibility might be at the moment. It changes every six weeks (crikey will I last that long?) so there may be some gentlemen in the circle at some stage. Their input would balance the atmosphere out nicely. I'm getting to know the husbands who have passed on, quite well at the moment though. One of them didn't like his wife going out, one of them didn't like his wife staying in. One of them didn't seem to like his wife at all. One of them told his wife to stop twiddling her thumbs, another one's son tells her to stop tapping her fingers because it is driving the whole family mad. Nervous tics as a response to shock featured quite animatedly in the discussion. Yes we're getting really deep here! Well you can't really talk about all that stuff in the bus queue can you?
I mentioned how it takes me ages to do anything, like produce a document on Microsoft Word, like a CV, and the general consensus was, do it a bit at a time. You can't expect to function exactly as you did before the bereavement. I was quite relieved to tell the truth. I had thought I had suddenly developed learning disabilities overnight, but apparently it isn't, it's the mind's response to what has happened. Well, worse things happen on the streets of Cairo at the moment.
Here's to the next one ...
