I promised myself there would be no more macabre posts. I mean, in two short days it will be twelve months right. No more weepy tales. At least that’s what I told myself, and if you can bear to indulge me, I will make this promise – no more public posts about my grief save this last one.  There is no doubt that writing has helped me over the last twelve months, but I know that my journey is just that, mine. Sometimes that journey can take on a life of its own but in all of this I really just wanted to assure myself that, while there was nothing ‘normal’ about losing your husband when he was only 40 years old, that my journey was normal. Through all of the ups and downs, the rivers I’ve cried, all of the pain and all of the associated behaviour I wanted to make sure that my journey was just that, a journey and not a place to get stuck in.

There is no doubt that grief can be self-centred, maybe even self-indulgent but by its nature, there is really no way around that. While two people can grieve the same person, no two people grieve in the same way, and neither way is wrong, it’s just different. Before this, I was the fix-it girl. The one who wanted to look at others and their needs and help them plough through. I never liked to burden others with my “stuff” or put others out. But losing someone takes you from a place where it is totally possible to hide how you’re truly feeling to a place where people will ask you how you’re doing or if you’re okay because grief is a badge you wear by virtue of the fact that someone you loved is no longer there and there is just no hiding from it. It’s loneliness because no one else understands or gets it, and try as people might they have no answers to your questions which no doubt causes frustration for them too. It tears you up inside. It has the capacity to make you mad at everyone, everything and every situation. It’s bitter. You can go from zero to resentful, annoyed and ticked off at the world in 0.01 seconds. It’s certainly not passive or patient and it IS debilitating, intensely emotional and incredibly painful.

There have been times over this last twelve months when the pain was so overwhelming I wondered how I was ever going to get through it. Beautiful, loving, well-intentioned people would tell me that time would make it better and I would feel like screaming “WHEN”? When would I stop missing Chris? When would all of those wonderful memories of him stop being too painful to remember? When would that song he would rooster dance to bring more pleasure than pain? When would I stop thinking I see or hear him in a crowd and be bitterly disappointed when reality stopped me in my tracks like an almost physical blow to my stomach? When will the night time once again become my friend and not my enemy as I lie awake and stare at the ceiling with the weight of the household responsibilities very firmly on my shoulders alone now? When will the anger reside? When will the regret disappear? When will the fear of never really being completely happy again fade? When will I stop just existing and really live? When will the resentment for all of those unfulfilled dreams and plans, not only for myself but for Georgie as well, dissipate? When will I be me again? When will the pre-Chris’s death happy, spontaneous, Que sera, sera me return? When will the plans to prosper and not harm be fulfilled, the plans that offer hope and future be realised? When? When? When? WHEN????????

The answer is that there is no answer. I read an article that said that grief is an attachment. The attachment is a way of holding onto our idea of what was. We want the person we lost to match what we thought would always be, or at least be there longer than they were. When a person dies we are grief-stricken for a few basic reasons, we weren’t ready for them to die and we wanted them to stay alive, so we can continue to feel better (which we say is because we love them). I’ve heard it said that people come into our lives for a reason (there’s a song in there somewhere!). I don’t think I’ll ever fully know all the ins and outs of the reasons why Chris came into my life and then left way too soon, but here’s what I do know. There is no way through grief but through it. The only cure for grief is to grieve. And the only way to survive this process is by having people help you through it, to remind you that there is life after someone dies, however painful that may be. The only way to survive is to have people around you who love you unconditionally, even when they don’t know what to say or do. The truth is that most of the time I just want someone to put their arm around me and tell me they love me big, big (like my Grandma used to say) or to hold me up, support me, carry me until I’m ready to live the life I know Chris would want me to live. Sometimes I need someone to tell me I’m not a crappy mother (even though I know deep down I am and have been through this) for all of those times I’ve been less than patient, said things that hurt because I was angry at this horrible place I find myself in or bought takeaway because the thought of having to cook was just too much. Sometimes I need someone to just be there while I cry for the billionth time this year.

So I have come to the conclusion that I may not ever be who I used to be. It may mean I might forever be just a little bit broken, I don’t know? What I am one hundred percent certain of is that I have a broken heart and shattered dreams and a whole lot of questions with no answers (yet). Grief is what it is, there is no way around it and sometimes all I see is my pain, all I see is the loss. But I am still here somewhere. Somewhere behind everything that makes up this strange creature we call grief I am still there. I have no idea how long this journey will take, I just know that I am meant to go through it, not stay in it forever. For this moment grief is something that I have to live with and hope others can too. I can’t say how long this season will last (and there’s a time for every season under heaven right?) but just know that even on my worst days (and I’m certain there are still many to come) underneath it all I am fighting to get out the other side.

Always and forever……