Buzzie

The Widow Vibe: Pink Platforms and resisting the ‘Three Year Wall.’

2011-04-17T22:18:38Z

A long silence from Cold Comfort Cottage, I know, but I have been slowly working up to saying a farewell to my Mac friends who have helped me through the very worst.

It was – literally - a life ago that I began this blog. I was tentatively reaching out to the Mac world. Blogs? What were blogs? I didn’t really know and got into all sorts of trouble because I questioned the motives of those who felt the desire to let in all spill out into the cyberspace. (Do any of you remember?) But there you were – so patient – so understanding. I thank you, most sincerely.

Here is the last installment:

About eight weeks ago The Hounds were off for a ‘trial’ night with some people who take dogs as boarders in their house – a very humane alternative to the dreaded kennels about which we always had moral objections. (Well – those high standards have come back to ‘bite’ me!)

Unsurprisingly, I was delaying going home to a completely empty house and found myself lurking, in a depressed sort of way, amidst the clothes rails in one of the only shops in this area frequented by women who like to keep vaguely ‘on trend.’

I was looking, halfheartedly, for something to boost the tired wardrobe (what is suitable for work, dog walking, doing the ancient Aga, etc, etc … ?) and I was delaying, delaying going back to what now passes for home.

There was a smart, middle-aged woman purchasing something at the checkout. She was about a decade or so older than me. I glimpsed a glimmer of pink platforms with extreme heels being carefully swaddled in tissue paper before being slipped into a carrier bag.

Part of her conversation drifted over to the rails.

“After the cruise … Couldn’t do the dancing … Not since my husband … I have got to reinvent myself.”

My newly acquired widow antennae were on alert and, before I knew what I was doing, I found myself wandering over to her. I have to say that this is completely uncharacteristic behaviour for me – but not much about me seems familiar, even to me.

“I know what you mean about reinventing yourself,” I said, recognizing a sister in widowhood.

And then she began unleashing her torrent of advice, so glad to find someone who was in a similar situation. And we do want to talk, us widows, don’t we? And why wouldn’t we? We have only the walls to talk to at home – we have lost our best listener.

“If you suddenly feel like crying – in the middle of a shop - just do it,” she said. “I found myself doing this more than once. Who cares what others think?”

My upper lip was stiffening at the thought – no crying in the middle of shops for me – just wailing and banging my head in the privacy of my own four walls (the bathroom basin is a favourite spot – I think it has now been loosened from the wall).

“It does get better,” she continued. But she was crying by this point.

And then she uttered the words that chilled:

“Beware the three year ‘wall.’ ”

If she had punctuated this with a pointy, witchy finger I would not have been surprised.

The ‘three year wall’? As I understand it, you can be coping quite well, busily re-inventing yourself, spending the life insurance on Carribean cruises (HA! HA!) but, after three years, the reality really sinks in; they are not coming back. Ever.

She had been told about the ‘three year wall’ by her widowed ‘friends.’ I don’t know about you, but I feel that her friends were not being very friendly.

So here are some of my last lessons in widowhood for you: there are a lot of others out there who will welcome you to this growing ‘club.’ And I do know, only too well, it is a kind of bereavement that only those who go through it can understand. However, I have been learning that there is also lot of unhelpful nonsense out there as well as a degree of schadenfruede.

I have done a little homework on ‘grief.’ Why wouldn’t I? I know all about those neat ‘five stages’ which are so readily rattled out to the bereaved. But I know that grief does not fit any easy template. Stages? We can go through all of them in about half an hour. And again. And again. And more.

I also know there has been great deal of reinterpretation and ‘debunking’ going on since Elisabeth Kubler-Ross first made her seminal study on which the ‘five stages’ are based. (For the keen students amongst you, you will find that she did her initial study on the terminally ill – I am glad I did not know that two years ago).

So I have searched and searched for some understanding of what I have been going through but in all that I have read I have not yet come across anything about a ‘three year wall’ - not even the most bogus new-age psychologist gives it a mention.

What you need to remember is the completely obvious - you are unique, your relationship was and is unique, and so your grief is also unique. We can go some way to understanding the experience of others and you will find that those who have lost a long-term partner will understand much better than most. But don’t let the bad advice of others make things worse – there are always those who will wish to weave you into their patterns of despair.

I am resolved I will resist any ‘three year wall,' try to ignore any of the other unhelpful psychobabble that I might hear and, if I am to learn new patterns of living, I will resist the temptation to talk to strangers buying pink platforms.

However, I will be here for you should you need me.

Lots of love to you all, my very brave friends and thank you.

Xxx

PS The case to the Ombudsman progresses. That is something I will let you know about, as appropriate.

PPS Dog hotel was a huge success. Happy dogs.

The Widow Vibe: Not life as I knew it … and some helpful tips for friends and relations of the recently widowed.

2011-01-25T23:47:41Z

If going out to work, managing to feed and walk The Hounds, feed myself (just), deal with the Ancient Aga and its filthy flues, dig myself out of snow, bring in the logs, deal with the mousetraps …and so on, and so forth …. if doing all this means that I am ‘doing well, I am ‘doing well.’

Despite snow shoveler’s elbow (the very unsporting cousin of tennis elbow), and the fact that I am thinner than I have ever been, I am ‘dealing’ with things. This is not living – not yet – but it is existing. To a great extent, I have stepped back from death’s door where I was for so many months.

The world is grey, but it is still the world.

Now for what I have learned:

The recently widowed are experiencing a bereavement that is not like any other. Gone is the one who knew them best; who probably knew them and loved them when they were at their most beautiful; who (if they were lucky) loved them despite all their faults, and who was there when they needed support through life’s crises.

They have lost all those joint plans for the future and, since couples often work socially as a ‘double act,’ they have lost their social ‘alter ego.’

And then there is the ‘couple’ language – the words and phrases that mean nothing to anyone else, but are mutually understood.

And the shorthand you develop which means you do not have to explain anything …

And the rest.

All this is gone.

At seven months the reality of this is only just beginning to sink in. It feels like Year Zero. In some ways, I find myself back where I was for that brief time between leaving home and marriage, but with a restless and grimly vivid awareness of my own mortality, and the fact that I am not nineteen any more.

Losing your ‘other’ half – and that indeed is what it feels like – a violent amputation - leaves you feeling totally exposed and alone, setting off into a future which seems irredeemably bleak with a starting point over which you have had no control. The only certainty is that the worst thing that could possibly happen has happened.

Nothing and nobody can be expected to fill the void.

However, friends and relations can help, so I tentatively, and in no particular order, offer you some useful tips for how to 'deal' with the recently widowed:

1 Do not compare this sort of loss to divorce – an understandable mistake, but not at all helpful.

2 Do not assume that everything is going to be ‘all right’ after six months or, I fear, for many months to come.

3 Be prepared for what might appear irrational anger – the recently widowed are often in the grip of violent emotions over which they have no control. If you are in the firing line, don’t take it personally.

4 Do, frequently, arrive with food, a bottle of wine and other basics which we won’t have remembered to buy. This is much more to the point than saying ‘You must look after yourself’! When you are grieving deeply, you don’t really care much about life. Eating ‘five a day’ is not a priority.

5 Don’t assume because you have not heard from us, we don’t want to talk to you or, indeed, see you. However, remember we are unlikely to have anything to eat and will have run out of coffee.

6 Do not suggest that we should take up golf, or knitting, or learn another language. We are only too aware of how empty our days and, particularly, the long, long evenings are going to be. We don’t need to be reminded of the yawning gap in our lives.

7 Do not grumble about the rapid passage of time and your lost opportunities – to someone who has just lost the great love of their life such grumbles must seem almost laughable.

8 Do not attempt to give advice about what should be done with the deceased partner’s things - if we want your advice, we will ask for it. We might decide to leave things exactly as they are – or we might not.

9 Do come and help with the practical stuff like raking leaves and clearing snow, and do explain how to do those jobs which the other partner has always done.

10 If you spot any ‘gold-diggers,’ do send them packing – our once razor-sharp instinct for spotting predators is probably rusty with disuse.

11 Be patient with us – most of the time we haven’t a clue what we are doing. If we manage to get through the day, this is a triumph.

12 Expect some uncharacteristic behaviour – we are having to re-learn who we are. And we will be different. How could we not be?

I think that will do just now …

A lot of ‘don’ts’ aren’t there?

Best wishes to you all, my Mac friends.

The Widow Vibe: Going 'Spare'

2010-12-27T09:46:36Z

What with digging myself out of the snow to get to work, worrying about the quickly depleting supplies of fuel to keep the various antiquated heating systems fired up, slithering back over the icy roads at lunch time to let The Hounds out, I hadn’t had much time to think about Christmas.

Not that Christmas could be completely forgotten – that would be impossible with all those relentlessly insistent jingle-bells and sparkly intrusions on our consciousness.

I had, however, been resolutely avoiding the shops: there are all those things there that might have been bought if it had been other than it is. The Christmas cards were neatly stacked behind an empty vase to be dealt with later - perhaps next year. Several invitations for ‘the day’ had been fended off with ‘I’ll- let-you-know-nearer-the-time.’

Christmas could be survived if it was firmly ignored.

But on one of the ‘snow days’ when I couldn’t get to work, I was struck with the grim reality of what Christmas might be like from now on.

It was the woman on the radio who was responsible.

I don’t know where they get them from, these women who they wheel out every year at Christmas time, but you know the type; the ones who make their own decorations, who bake the sodding/brandy-sodden cake in March, who probably even knit the stockings in which to lovingly place the little darlings’ teensy (expensive) gifts.

While I was staggering in with the last of the un-Yule logs, there she was, on the radio, Christmas Super Woman enthusing about her fabulous festivities.

Everyone, she crowed, was involved. The youngsters peeled the potatoes and set the perfectly themed table. Even the first of her three husbands had been known to help with the Brussels sprouts.

I exaggerate – a little - but you get the picture.

She really got my attention, however, when she mentioned the fact that every year they always had a ‘spare’ to join the Yule bash.

She sighed a slightly martyred sigh as she said it, clearly thinking herself very noble and generous for inviting such sorry creatures as society’s ‘spares’ (the recently divorced, the terminally unmarriageable and, I assume, the recently widowed) to participate in her family Christmas.

So there was the miserable truth - from the mouth of Christmas Super Woman - I have become a ‘spare.’ I am now one of those who are invited for Christmas because they are unattached, floating disconsolately in the world of happy couples and families. I have, it seems, the potential to be someone’s good deed in the season of ‘good will.’

“Bah! Humbug!” to that I say.

Having survived this Christmas – just – with two other ‘spares,’ next year I intend to simply disappear somewhere, even if it means that my newly sprung snow-shovelling muscles are required to clear a runway at Heathrow.

Suggestions for destinations anyone?

Best wishes to you all, my dear Maclanders.

Xxx

PS Christmas marked six months to the day.

The Widow Vibe: Black Widow?

2010-11-13T00:21:05Z

Sorry – this is a long one – again. Stick with me.

I was up on the ladders a few days ago: there were gutters to mend – intractable cast iron ones, the joints of which have terminally rusted.

The rain has been pouring down the outside of the walls of Cold Comfort Cottage for nearly two years – cancer rather eclipsed the minor matter of household maintenance.

Of course, in order to mend gutters, I had to enter the portals of a ‘man’ shop – an empire of screws and bolts and tools and all those tubes of sticky stuff which are designed to defeat those nasty leaks and oozing failings of the fabric of the ‘home’.

Trying hard to look confident as I negotiated the testosterone loaded atmosphere of the ‘man’ shop, I scooped up what I thought was required for gutter mending and left triumphantly, waving on several white vans before making my exit from the car park.

I then had to spend several frustrating hours, during which the sun had well and truly set, loading the required tube of black gunk into the skeleton/silicone/caulking gun. (I have been learning that there is a complex nomenclature involved here.)

It was therefore not until the following day that I wobbled up the ladder with my loaded ‘gun’ to fire the black gunk at the leaking joints.

What confidence I had - gloves on, gun in hand, the right stuff for the job – I would blast those dratted leaks into submission.

Hah!

The black stuff had other ideas. It oozed out with alarming speed and no amount of gentle persuasion with the palate knife would convince it into the joints.

I ended up with an extremely sticky black web between my gloves and little where it was needed.

The rain came. The leaks were not mended.

But as I scrubbed the black sticky gunk from my wrists, and from my jacket, I felt a mounting sense of irritation – an irritation with all those people who live near to us and who claimed that they ‘adored’ my husband – those people who were so conspicuously absent until the funeral, and who are, again, conspicuously absent.

Where were those people when we were digging ourselves out of the snow in order to get out for vital treatment? Some of them live not very far away and employ people with tractors; most of them have 4x4s.

Where were they when we were struggling to get out to the shops to try and find something else, anything else, that Jonathan might have been able to eat?

Did they even pick up the phone to ask how we were doing?

Did they offer to take The Hounds off our hands so that we could have a day on our own?

Did they ask whether they might have done anything to help around the house (like mend those blasted gutters)?

It is an old, old cliché, but you do learn a great deal about the people you ‘know’ at times like these. What you really need are people who offer practical help and just get on with it – not those who wish to put themselves at the centre of a ‘drama’ in which they are very minor players.

And you learn even more about the people you ‘know’ when you become widowed.

If life were a pack of cards, then our pack has suffered a change ‘rich and strange.’

Some of the ‘court cards’ – some of the couples particularly - have disappeared.

All has been reshuffled.

But new patterns are emerging – new configurations of the cards.

I now find that the husband of a colleague will come and mend the gutters. Another has fitted a new back door. And ex-colleague has spent a day clipping the gigantic hedges. A client of my husband’s drops by with bottles of wine and has offered a man with a digger to solve the plumbing problems, should such radical action be needed. There are friends who ring nearly every day.

Next weekend, weather permitting, I go to the island in the Hebrides where we met to plant a tree in Jonathan's memory. I will carry his ashes with me. There I will see friends who knew us both before we were married – who knew us before we became a ‘couple' and, therefore, make few judgements.

The pack has been reshuffled and I am learning that I will have to re-evaluate its configuration whilst I negotiate my way in this different life.

So although my widow’s hands still have stains of black, and the 'pack' has changed, I am not entirely despairing - not entirely.

The Widow Vibe - And the Question of Time

2010-10-29T23:41:45Z

It was eighteen weeks today.

And it is nearly a year since I started the blog on this site. I don’t know how many of my original readers are still here … ‘Stuff’, as they say, ‘happens’. And there is some ‘stuff’ that none of us want to think about happening because it is just too hard …

I want to know where some of you have gone, how you are, but dare not ask.

So, it was eighteen weeks today.

The world has been hurrying on, but I still feel that time has stopped for me. The wailing, alien creature, my grief, is quieter – still there, still ready to take me by surprise and put all reason to rest, but I am beginning to function again. When someone complains of a sore knee, or an aching hip, I am able to look reasonably sympathetic and say the right things, but all the time with the knowledge that they have no idea about suffering at all.

Oh yes, I am beginning to function again – after a fashion - because that is what ‘the world’ expects me to do.

We don’t ‘do’ grief as a society, do we? That is why grief is treated like a mental illness – shuffled off to the ‘bereavement’ counselors (in the past, we might have gone to our priests – perhaps some of us still do). No – society wants us to keep ‘busy’ because us grieving ones, and those who are terminally ill, are awkward reminders about love and loss and illness and death; reminders too that no amount of keeping fit in the gym, no amount of going out there and getting and spending, or making our ‘mark’ on the world in other ways, will prevent the inevitable. (People keep on suggesting that I take up various ‘hobbies’ – do they think taking up knitting will fill the yawning gap in my life?)

Bah (or fill in with the expletive of your choice) to the shallow ‘world,’ I say! I am older and, I hope, wiser than I was a year ago when I first found myself here. You all know one of the lessons I have learned – live for the moment, and love.

But the relentless demands of time have been felt and I have been busy. The formal complaint has gone in and I sincerely hope that I will have a little part to play in raising awareness about oesophageal cancer, about the abysmal survival rates, and the very patchy treatment in the UK. Perhaps. However, I think that three MPs have read the letter now … We will see, in time.

Finally, for those very faithful readers: Cold Comfort Cottage is just about wind and weather proof for the winter; the two remaining hounds are going to have to adjust to a new regime when their mistress returns to work; lawyers are going to be involved about the plumbing situation and the Ancient Aga is still being difficult.

Best wishes to you all.

The Widow Vibe: Some questions about an apple tree - and looking for ‘signs’.

2010-09-22T00:47:23Z

I should be writing my formal letter of complaint to the PCT. I will get there, but it is going to be a long missive, copies of which will be going to at least one interested MP and to my lawyer.

At the moment I am stuck on the second paragraph. Oh, there is so much to write and every word is very difficult.

So I thought I would tell you a little story instead. It is a happy story and should bring you some cheer.

In the spring, a very late spring for us, I insisted that Jonathan come out to the garden and look at the blossom on the old apple tree. It was so covered in bloom that it seemed to generate its own light: white and pure; incandescent with life and with promise for the future.

It had never looked so beautiful.

Jonathan dutifully admired the blossom – he had a keen awareness of the beautiful.

(He did add that it would probably save us a few pounds a week when we harvested the apples – but let’s not lower the tone.)

Now the branches of the tree are nearly snapping with the weight of the fruit – they are literally bowed down with the brilliant red apples.

And so we get to the heart of this little story.

You will understand that after a loss like this, even the most skeptical amongst us might be forgiven for looking for ‘signs’ – any indication that ‘it’ is not the end.

I am very skeptical, but this has not prevented me from looking for ‘signs’ – frantically - any tiny, tiny sign would do.

Last weekend a friend of Jonathan’s, a fellow artist/craftsman, came over to tie up some loose ends concerning an unfinished commission. He brought with him his Slovakian girlfriend.

In my new role as the Mourning Widow, I have not been socializing much. When I have, as you know, it has been fraught with problems.

So, of course, I was all in a dither when they arrived.

There was nothing to eat.

The remaining hounds are quite embarrassingly excitable.

I hoped, so fervently, that my guests would go as soon as business had been washed down by a swift cup of coffee.

But they didn’t go.

Several hours later, after we had all exchanged edited highlights of our rich and varied pasts, my new Slovakian friend asked to see round the garden.

Completely ignoring a part of the garden of which I am rather proud, she homed in on the apple tree.

“What do you do with the apples?” she asked, giving me a look that might have come from a time prior to the Velvet Revolution – a look gently loaded with criticism of the wasteful West.

Of course, in the circumstances, I had not given the enormous crop of apples any thought at all.

As I shuffled my feet guiltily in the neglected grass, trying to think of an appropriate reply, we all started munching the apples.

‘What is the variety of these apples?’ my new Slovakian friend inquired.

I hadn’t a clue.

“In Slovakia they are called ‘Jonathan,’ ” she said, taking another bite from the pink flesh. (Except, of course, it is the Slovak for Jonathan which she translates.)

Well, as you can imagine, skeptic that I am, I was almost choking on my apple in surprise.

The business with the apples was strange enough. What was even more strange is that The Hounds, despite the fact that they bounced and woofed and licked and generally were their very boisterous and completely out of control selves, have found some potential dog-sitters.

Next weekend these new friends and I are going to harvest the ‘Jonathan’ apples and I am going to work on some serious hound bonding.

Looking for ‘signs’?

I think Jonathan might have bequeathed me some angels.

Now to bed: tomorrow the letter …

Lots of love.

The Widow Vibe: And the question of mourning clothes …

2010-09-11T22:33:20Z

Just over thirteen weeks, and I wish I could bring you some cheer. Not yet, I am afraid.

How am I feeling?

It feels like I have been carrying around with me, scrabbling in the pit of my stomach, some wild, hungry creature that threatens, all the time, to tear through, emitting a scream which is beyond language and reason. It is a demanding and unpredictable creature, this thing that is my grief.

Oh, I am so very good at whipping it into heel, this creature (which is more than can be said for the orphaned Hounds!). After all, the world does not want to glimpse this raw and real human emotion, particularly so long (ha ha!) after the funeral.

I do think it is a pity we have abandoned the idea of a formal mourning period – the Victorian variety with lots of black and veils, worn for at least a year. I could do, just now, with some visible signs that I am still not really, not even nearly, ‘myself’ – whatever ‘myself’ might turn out to be without my love who has been the warp and weft of all my adult life.

Such visible signals would perhaps help prevent the tactlessness and insensitivity with which I have had to contend in this world that is so bad at dealing with illness and grief.

Shall I give a sampler of some of this insensitivity?

There was the woman who came into Jonathan’s studio while I was trying, ineffectually, to make some decisions about what is to be done with everything – worrying about what can be sold and what must find a home in the garage.

“I hear that the nice chappy who was here is dead. Such a shame, ” she drawls.

Of course, she is horrified when I say that the ‘nice chappie’ was my husband.

And then there is some of the strangeness from my women ‘friends.’

How is this for a corker?

To avoid being on my own for yet another long evening, I am walking with two friends, one single, one divorced. (Yes – the two remaining Hounds are there.) Surprise, surprise they are soon talking about ‘relationships.’ They are walking a little ahead of me as they chatter.

“You’ll learn that all the best men are married, or you might catch one who is going through a divorce,” chirps one of these friends, turning round to me with a grin.

I am still feeling queasy about that one, as you can imagine.

And another:

A good friend seems to be claiming some sort of ‘psychic’ connection with Jonathan because they once had a chat about that sort of thing in the car and, she tells me in an email, ‘You wouldn’t understand …’ What exactly I wouldn’t understand, I am not sure. Her uncanny closeness to my husband? Hmm – maybe not the time to bring it up, when I am longing for any paranormal sign which might tell me that he is still with me.

As one or two male friends have pointed out, because of my new single status, my relationships with women friends is going to change. One, a biologist, puts it all down to women needing to protect the nest. I think he sees all women as very unevolved – completely biologically determined. But I think there might be a point here about these women friends and it has come as complete shock to me.

One final thing: if anyone else tells me that they know how I feel because they have ‘lost’ an aunt, a mother, a father, a second cousin once removed, I think I will hit them.

I have experienced the death of both my parents, who I adored.

This is nothing, nothing like that.

Of course, I had Jonathan to help me through those deaths.

This brings me back to the idea of mourning clothes: if we lived in a society that expected a formal mourning period, with heavy veils, I would be wearing the deepest black. I very much feel the need of some protection.

Oh yes – and a black band round the car would be a good idea – I think other drivers need to be warned that I am really not safe behind the wheel …

Lots of love to you all.

The Widow Vibe: And the first lessons in how to accept help.

2010-08-21T00:27:15Z

This one is for my Mac friends - who have been a huge support throughout.

Eight weeks today.

I have been learning so much.

I have been learning about jack points in cars and that chivalry is alive and well on road-sides of the UK.

I have learned that alternators can sometimes overcharge and can set the engine on fire. (Did you know that?)

I have been learning that somehow the dusting used to get done in the places I didn’t notice.

But most of all, I have been learning that I will have to let others into my life.

There is a problem with very self-contained couples – they depend on each other for emotional support, and support in every other area of life.

What happens if one of them goes?

Is there anyone close enough to support them?

How do they manage to let others in?

Perhaps it is particularly difficult for childless couples.

I don’t know.

But I do know that it has been hard for me to ask for help when I have needed it. And it is perhaps particularly hard because I am seen as someone who usually ‘copes.’ I don’t often do histrionics. I haven’t needed to. Grief, and the times we have needed help, we have dealt with ourselves, privately. For thirty years.

But there is no ‘we’ any more.

One of The Hounds died the day before yesterday. She was the best of dogs and Jonathan’s favourite – so beautiful and so very good from the very first days she came into our life. It was cancer of the spleen – difficult and deadly in dogs.

We loved her very much.

Of course, the whole episode felt like a miniature of what I had just gone through – nightmare on nightmare. I was devastated – it felt like another part of Jonathan had been taken from me.

And there was no-one there to give comfort.

There was no-one there to help me dig her grave, which had to be done because that is what we have always done. We have always respected our companions as a matter of principle.

I managed very well until I got to the point when I couldn’t physically lift her out of the car – or couldn’t without doing a disservice to her. After a few desperate attempts, I knew I had to ask for help.

Pride: what a burden it is. And what a relief when you can let it go.

In the pouring rain, some neighbours finished the job that I had started, and our lovely hound was buried.

I am beginning to learn to accept the kindness of those strangers who can drive you to the nearest point of help when your car breaks down. I am beginning to accept that friends and neighbours may really want to help.

I am beginning to let others in.

But it is all so very hard and nothing can even begin to fill the void.

The Widow Vibe: why you might want to tidy more than the sock drawer; and the trouble with Monica.

2010-07-29T23:43:58Z

One of the universal truths about human beings – and we are not shy of universal truths here - is that some people are very much better at ‘tidying’ things than others.

When faced with a major change in life (like a terminal diagnosis) some of us will immediately reach for sock drawer and begin the long task of corralling those maverick socks and reuniting them with their long lost partners. We might then discretely burn the odd embarrassing letter and delete some numbers from our mobile phones. We might do this, not because we have anything very much to hide, but just in case it might cause distress and confusion later – very, very much later, we hope.

(There are probably extremely tidy people who have lots to hide who never have this problem with socks and the other loose ends in life. They, presumably, cover their tracks and sort their socks as they go about their duplicitous way. If there are such people, I don’t know them.)

And then there are the others who don’t tidy at all. They don’t because they think that those in the medical profession are all lying sods and they are going to live forever – or at least for another thirty years.

Our Hero was in the latter category, as you will have guessed.

This has left the grieving ‘widow’ with some problems on her hands, both practical and emotional.

While I ricochet about in what might pass for life, trying to hide from the world this howling, maimed creature that is my grief, I am having to ‘tidy’ things up.

And what tidying there is to do.

I think that the old bank statements and ‘final demands’ date back to about 1997. There are sacks of the stuff lurking, mouse-nibbled in the garage. However, clearing the garage has to be done because the studio also has to be cleared, and where else is everything to go? The lease on the studio will have to be given up and there are more stacks of papers there that will need to find a home in the garage, where they, in their turn, will be mouse-nibbled. (I will not even mention all the paints and brushes … and so forth.)

But, as I blunder through all the bags and boxes, I find old birthday cards, anniversary cards, and letters, written to each other very long ago.

And then there are the forgotten photographs – the ones taken, so casually, at a Christmas a decade ago, or at the launch of a new business. As I unearth these things, I find that my memories are being telescoped, compressed, and the very young man I first met, and all the men he became, are being collapsed into one. And all these images feed my grief. I miss all those men.

However, there are other things that have been unearthed. There is the photograph of him with his arms around another woman. There are the unknown numbers on the mobile phone. And there is the scrap of paper that has, very carefully written upon it, Monica’s number.

Who the hell is Monica?

There is whirl of activity as I really start tearing the garage apart, and the bedroom, and the cupboard under the stairs, and every other possible nook and cranny. I search for evidence of some husband I didn’t know I had. There is a terrible feeling of vertigo as I seem to be swaying about on the teetering edifice of what had seemed a marriage build on the firmest of foundations.

Part of me knows that this is all nonsense – that really there is nothing to fear, but I look nonetheless. It is almost as if I want to find something which will prove that he really wasn’t such a wonderful husband, that he really didn’t love me as much, and then, perhaps, I won’t miss him quite so terribly.

However, I find nothing else incriminating and, when I have calmed, and the flurries of paper have settled, I realise that the photograph is not so compromising after all.

Finally, I have the courage to phone Monica.

Monica, it transpires, is a client who has patiently been waiting for Our Hero to do a job for her for months. She sounds rather kind and elderly.

Part of the problem, of course, is that Jonathan is not here to answer those questions that have arisen as I have been going through his things.

Part of the problem is that grief is a sort of madness.

There is a lesson for us all in this, somewhere. Perhaps we all need to do a little more than just reach for the sock drawer, and try not to leave questions unanswered.

PS The Hounds do not seem to mind their very un-cool old Ford Focus estate that we now rattle around in. Phew.

The Widow Vibe, the bottle bank, and the question of dignity ...

2010-07-21T22:58:11Z

I’ll start with a little anecdote to give you a taster of the tiny readjustments I am having to make in my new life as a 'widow.'

It was bottle bank time at Cold Comfort Cottage.

It has been bottle bank time for months.

Like many other jobs that involve muscle, going to the bottle bank used to be one of Jonathan’s jobs.

It was, therefore, as a novice ‘bottle-banker’ that I found myself having to delve, reluctantly, into the dark, spidery spaces where the bottles are discretely placed (or slung).

The bottles were duly stuffed into bags and carted out to the car – the smart, leased car that was courtesy of the wonderful Motobility scheme.

It took only about a hundred yards of my driving for the bottles to manage to wiggle themselves free of their bags, slip off the back seats, tinkle over, and start dribbling, drunkenly, on the carpet.

What larks, my friends, as I pulled in the car to the nearest parking space, fielded in the rogue bottles, and mopped the wine from the carpet that was, almost, pristine.

Sadly, the car was returned yesterday. Not being the Rich Widow, this was always on the cards. Our Hero’s silver chariot was taken off to some auction, to be sold to someone (for very little, I suspect) who will have no idea of the drama in which the car played no small part.

Perhaps the new owner will be transported by the faint aroma of old wine.

I have to say I felt pathetically bereft as the car was driven away.

Ah! If lumps of metal had souls …

But, as I was dabbing up the wine spillage, with my bottom protruding out of the passenger’s door, I had a minor epiphany and finally understood something about this whole business of ‘dignity’.

We worry about it a lot, don’t we?

Dignity.

All that stuff our bodies do which we would rather never reveal.

We worry about our own dignity: we worry about the dignity of those we love.

About twenty years ago, seeking some comforting words after my mother died, I mournfully complained to an uncle, who happened to be a psychiatrist, that my mother had ‘lost all dignity’ in her last days.

‘There is no dignity in death,’ he replied shortly.

You can, perhaps, imagine my indignation at the time. It seemed very cold comfort indeed, and not what I was looking for.

Twenty years later, I think I can understand what he meant.

‘Dignity’ is nothing to do with death. ‘Dignity’ is shallow and trivial. We are more than the sum of our bodily parts, our bodily functions; or malfunctions. We are much more than this and, therefore, 'dignity' is really only to do with surfaces.

So, in the wee small hours, if you worry about this trivial thing that is your dignity, or your partner’s dignity, or your child’s dignity - remember that it matters not a jot.

Perhaps you are all ahead of me here; I hope so.

But I did worry, like a protective parent, about Jonathan’s dignity when I was projecting forward in my imagination to the probable outcome of his illness.

In the end, it mattered not at all.

We were both somewhere much more profound than that superficial place that we call ‘dignity.’

The Widow Vibe … and some feminist difficulties

2010-07-17T00:43:07Z

I was far from ready to be a widow – in so many ways.

Let’s think about the word 'widow.'

There is the Black Widow.

There is the Merry Widow.

There is the Rich Widow.

There are all those witches who are, without doubt, widows too.

Chekov had a widow who wore her ‘widow’s weeds,’ but still powdered her face – a predatory widow, by implication.

The word 'widow' is loaded with stereotypes which suggest that they are not to be messed with. You must steer clear because they are dangerous creatures: desperate, demanding, grieving. Out of control.

These negative stereotypes of widows most of us feminist girls of the seventies had not visualized as something we would have to experience ourselves and, stupidly, we had not created new roles for us to grow into. After all, we didn’t really think we were ever going to fall for all that romantic happily-ever-after-richer-or-for-poorer-sickness-and-health sort of narrative.

More fool us.

Thus, the stereotypes are still there and, I don’t know about any of you girls out there, but none of these are roles which I feel happy to slip into.

So, as well as this terrible problem of trying to fill the empty space in which my love used to live, a space which I sometimes see as this sharp cut-out of the shape where Jonathan used to be, with a howling black infinite nothingness yawning behind it, I have to deal with the new space I am supposed to fill.

There’s not much of a vibe … there is no soup … but we will try and look on the ‘bright side of life.’

2010-07-10T23:43:19Z

So here we are, The Hounds and I.

They are barking madly as I write, protecting me from all intruders or, perhaps, waiting for the familiar sound of the car that is going to bring Our Hero home at last.

I feel I owe you one or two more posts – you who have travelled with us for seven months now.

I realize that life is going on for you, but I miss your humour and compassion, so will you bear with me?

The suddenness of it all has surprised us.

Polite to the end, Our Hero caused us so very little trouble. There was no being bed-bound, no Mac nurses visiting the house, none of that …

But there was also no time.

We had been planning the next stage of action: cyber knife; radiofrequency ablation; or whatever it took to keep the flame burning. And he was feeling fine. He was eating with dogged determination, driving the hundred mile trip to have radiotherapy, and walking better than I had seen him for months.

Forty-eight hours later he is dead.

And now here am I. The funeral is over, the memorial ‘bash’ is over, and everyone is gone. The house is full of cards and flowers but,more than that, filled with a huge sense of absence.

I am busily trying to stop up the aching empty spaces with photographs, with things that Our Hero loved, but I seem to be generating chaos – drawers are spilling out with memories, and everywhere my foot falls there is a shadow of the past.

There is a terrible irony about the funeral/memorial arrangements that I will share with you: Our Hero, jokingly, wanted ‘Always look on the Bright Side of Life’ sung at his funeral, or he did before he became ill. He would whistle and sing it to us all if we were finding ourselves ‘chewing on life’s gristle.’

We did sing it, with gusto, at his memorial send off. We stood and held hands and laughed and cried. Silly and wonderful. People went home whistling.

But the irony is that Jonathan suffered so much and was so brave that, given the context of the song, it is not funny any more.

To suffer with grace, with humour and quietness is truly heroic and Christ-like.

But we didn’t understand.

Lots of love to you all,

xxx

Drink to Our Hero

2010-06-25T18:46:24Z

Jonathan died this morning at 10.30 am.

Because he never thought he was going to die - or not for another thirty years, as he frequently pointed out - we never discussed funerals. He did say, however, that he wished he had thought of Picasso's last words first which reputedly went something like this: 'Drink for me friends, for I will drink no more.'

So, raise a glass to Our Hero, who really was the perfect, gentle knight and loved by all.

Jonathan Watson Humphrey, 1957 - 2010.

there’s a Vibe in the soup … and there's going radioactive

2010-06-08T00:38:48Z

There’s a vibe in this soup … and there is going radioactive

We now have so much in the way of pain relieving opiate-type ‘meds’ in Cold Comfort Cottage that we could be doing a brisk trade in the village square to replenish the diminished funds. So I will not be making any joking ‘asides’ about topping up the poisons of your choice. (But, go on, if you must!)

If the blog has been quiet it is because the writer of our ‘script’ has recently seemed a little bored with his characters and it looked as if he/she was hastening them towards the end of the series. (But, really, I have not had the heart for it.)

However, the script has a few more twists and turns in store for us yet – or so we sincerely hope. But it has been touch and go, my friends.

After some truly terrible pain-filled days, some frantic phone calls, some threats of formal complaints, we have had not one, but two oncologists coming out of the woodwork (or taking time out from the conference season, which might be considered to be much the same thing).

We will do a little flashback for new readers: more than two months ago, Our Hero raised the point that he had a ‘little’ back pain. (For that ‘little,’ read ‘excruciating’.) The nice registrar pointed out that it could be the affected lymph node/s pressing on the spine and radiotherapy might be offered to help the pain.

As quick as a flash, the big boss oncologist has Our Hero back in to the local hospital to prove, it seems, that it is nothing to do with the lymph nodes but it is more likely to do with the treatment (PDT) which we have sought elsewhere. He prescribes a slightly stronger dose of Cocodamol. (Keen readers will remember that he prescribed the ‘tablet’ form – impossible for Our Hero to swallow.)

Nearly two months on the pain team, in a hospital several hundred miles away, who are monitoring closely the doses of pain relief drugs required, suggest that Our Hero has clearly been putting up with a lot of pain and it might be coming from the lymph nodes on the celiac axis.

Hmm.

This comes as no surprise to us.

In the meantime, another scan has been done, because we (with the other hospital behind us) have kicked up a fuss, and another ‘lymph node mass’ has popped up on the scan, sited between the spine and the aorta. It is not a tiny ‘mass’ – it measures a fairly hefty 3cm x something. Given that the other tumours are growing so slowly, if at all, this suggests that this one has been there for some time, doesn’t it? Or does it? I don’t know.

The good news on the scan is that ‘there is no visible invasion of the aorta.’

Phew!

That is all right then!

And we had only been worried about a little spread on the spine.

But it is not good news, is it? Or it doesn’t sound so to us.

After I point out to the GP and, later, to the Macmillan nurse, that Our Hero has been putting up with this pain for more than two months, and that I think that if something is not done soon I will, I tell them respectively, ‘kick some ass’ and ‘put in a formal complaint,’ the phone has hardly stopped ringing.

Our Hero is now going to be offered some 'palliative' radiotherapy and his appointment diary is getting very full.

You will remember that I am being ‘phased’ back into work to top up the funds? Being ‘phased’ back in’ is a little like ‘phasing out’ nuclear missiles, except in reverse. Like an elderly nuclear missile, my timing and control is very unreliable.

You can imagine my anxiety as I try to work out how we are going to manage all this. Work? Radiotherapy? Appointments? All those questions that need to asked of the medics? The Hounds?

Poor us.

It is all hell, and we are all going radioactive.

PS The liver metastases are all stable – to start with this was the major concern. The PDT also seems to have slowed the growth of the primary tumour in the oesophagus. Just thought you might be interested ….

There’s a Vibe in the soup … and then there are wind chimes, and the nature of anticipatory grief

2010-05-20T00:36:07Z

There’s a Vibe in the soup … and then there are wind chimes, and the nature of anticipatory grief

I have been thinking a lot about the nature of grief. Fortunately, since we are not getting out a lot, I am not able to bore anyone out in the ‘real’ world with my thoughts on the subject. And to whom would I talk? Everyone loves Our Hero and they are grieving too.

It was the wind chimes at the palliative day care centre which brought this business of what the psychologists, and the ‘wanna be’ psychologists, call the ‘grieving process’ sharply into focus.

Irrational as it may seem, I had a distinct moment of sheer rage when I saw some perfectly innocuous bamboo chimes futilely dangling between two pillars at the discreet entrance to the centre that I will call ‘The Willows.’

I have been vaguely aware of ‘The Willows’ since it was built just over a decade ago. I have also been vaguely aware that it is something to do with cancer care. And I have to say that I have always rather liked its ‘user-friendly’ wooden exterior which is designed to look as unlike a hospital as they could manage on a limited budget.

It is a brave little building, founded on the best of intentions. It is partially funded by Macmillan and initially came into being through the very hard work of members of the local community. I salute them.

I have often passed the building on my way to get on with ‘normal’ life, perhaps with an unconscious hope that it would be a building I would forever be able to pass by.

But here we are, Our Hero and I, pulling off the main road and driving into the car park. Apparently, Our Hero’s pain control can’t be managed by the GPs’ surgery where they have no one trained in pain management. It is good old Macmillan who has to step in. Because we have chosen the bucolic inconveniences of Cold Comfort Cottage, there is nothing resembling a palliative care team that we might have had if we were nearer a larger hospital. But we do have quite a large hospital near us and, I confess, I don’t understand why there is not a palliative care team there …

As you can imagine, I am grinding my teeth before we have even parked the car.

And, suspended at the entrance, are those wind chimes. They seem to my (metaphorically) jaundiced eye to mark the boundary where you leave the world of medicine and step into the realms of the soothsayers. It seems a case of 'abandon all rational hope - but here are some wind chimes to transport you to some other, better, realm...'

To confirm my prejudices, and fuel my fury, amongst the potted plants in reception, there are the leaflets offering ‘Art Therapy’ (hah!), aromatherapy, hypnotherapy, Reiki, acupuncture (etc, etc) which are kindly offered free for the first six sessions (thanks to the ‘Friends of the Willows’) and then at £15 a session after that. I think I even see some Reiki crystals hanging in the windows. But I might have been hallucinating, and I am not the one on all the morphine.

And this is all fine, I know. Given all the ‘alternative/complimentary’ paths we have been investigating on our own, I am not in a position to be critical. But I am furious with it all, none-the-less.

We have our interview with the Macmillan nurse and Our Hero looks more and more uncomfortable in the vile red chair as I vent my various irritations about the oncologist, the lack of care, the lack of attention paid to Our Hero’s gentle complaints about his pain, the mention of radiotherapy and then the withdrawal of radiotherapy … And I find myself, yet again, having to apologize for sounding ‘a little cross’.

As we pull away from The Willows, I remind myself of what a friend had said when I mentioned to her that I seemed to be furious about everything. She told me that people often are angry when they are ‘grieving.’

That was a surprise, I can tell you. I hadn’t realized I was grieving at all. Our Hero is still very much with us. I thought I was just angry because we seemed to have to be fighting at every point since Our Hero’s terminal diagnosis.

But I have been scrutinizing my anger since then, and have been doing a little research on the subject. Anger, I learn, is one of the feelings you may have when you are living with someone with a terminal illness. It is part of the gamut of emotions that you may feel when anticipating a death and, not surprisingly (psychology is so often not subtle) is named, ‘anticipatory grief’. It goes with all those other emotions you may expect to experience when someone dies.

I also read that anger, can be a mask for fear.

Well, I’ll buy that – up to a point.

So, as we drive out of ‘The Willows’, I examine the anger I experienced on seeing those innocent wind chimes, and on seeing the offers of Reiki, aromatherapy and so forth. Briefly, I wonder whether I am angry because this seems to me a very real step towards the predicted end. This is, indeed, very frightening. It could be partly that.

Or it could be because the NHS cannot even provide the necessary pain management expertise in our area and so have to depend on a charity. This is really not good enough.

However, a CT scan (was it two months ago that he first mentioned the pain in his back?) is, at last, happening. Radiotherapy is being mentioned again.

In the meantime the angry, grieving, meddling wife is going to have to go back to work.

The coffers at Cold Comfort Cottage are empty.