There have been some things I’ve done over the last 19 months that have been just plain crazy. I mean there is something almost certifiable about deliberately watching P.S. I Love You anywhere within five year period of losing a partner. There are a number of romcoms which fall into this category, the ones which had me teary at the best of times but since losing Chris have reduced me to an almost inconsolable blubbering mess. Those who know me well know that I am probably about eight percent emotional and only twenty percent rational. I have tried to fight this ratio all my life and even though it does fluctuate occasionally, it seems to be something that I can’t change even if I wanted to and so I have learned to live with it. I’m certain there were times when Chris and my kids must have thought I was crazy when they would find me crying like a baby over an advertisement on TV. I also have a policy, crazy or not, that no one cries alone in my presence.

It’s unrealistic to think you’ll never watch romantic movies again or that you’ll never watch TV again just in case you get triggered. That being said, I have avoided programs like Ambulance Australia, knowing that on most episodes there is at least one patient they treat for cardiac arrest and all of the usual questions of “why were those patients able to be brought back and Chris wasn’t?” or “why didn’t we know about the mild heart attack Chris had in the weeks leading up to his death?” are too much for me to bear. There have been times, today for example, when you are watching a totally innocuous TV program and smack bang in the middle of a great comedy is a totally unrelated storyline about a man who loses his wife and all of a sudden I have tears flooding my eyes and mascara running down my face like two black rapids. Crazy right? Just plain crazy!

There is no doubt that in the days after Chris died that I know I did crazy things. Totally irrational, make no sense crazy things. The Sunday after Chris died I had a sudden urge to go to the Mall. It was partly an excuse to get out of the house and it was partly something I couldn’t articulate until I got there. When I got there I was a woman on a mission. I just wandered around the Mall desperately scanning the people there for the face of a woman who had become the only person I felt I could be justifiably angry at. She is a woman who has no moral compass at all and who had caused Chris and I a considerable amount of stress and had ripped us off for a huge amount of money. What I had also found out in the few days following Chris’ death is that she had also negligently not given us specific financial advice about life insurance which had put me in an untenable position on so many levels. Somehow, in my grief-pickled brain, I also blamed her for Chris’ death. I had planned what I would say to her if I saw her, even if the people around me thought I was crazy. Someone somehow had to pay for all this pain that had been so suddenly inflicted upon me and my family. Thankfully she wasn’t at the Mall that day because it is not in my character to behave in that way.

Subconsciously I was also looking for Chris. I was also scanning the sea of faces for his face, listening for his voice and his laugh. It was like my heart wouldn’t let my head believe that he had actually gone. Surely he was just out shopping for more fishing gear or was sitting in the food court eating his favourite Chinese food or ANYTHING that wasn’t what actually was. It would be months before my head actually caught up with my heart and I stopped waking up at 5:15am waiting for the familiar tickle of his beard on my forehead before he left for work for the day or stopped subconsciously putting his favourite food into my shopping basket when I did the grocery shopping. Crazy right, just plain crazy?

I have had lots of time since Chris died, in some ways more time than I’ve ever had before. Time that was once spent sitting on the lounge watching the football together, or whatever silly redneck program Chris loved or even the occasional romcom is now spent, for the most part, sitting on my own, only half watching whatever it is that is on. Holidays that were once spent camping at the beach or exploring some part of Australia we hadn’t been to before are now mostly spent pottering around the house because the couple of times I have been back to our favourite haunts have always tinged with that familiar sadness that seems to be a permanent resident these days. Weekends which, even on the Saturdays he had to work, were still spent in each other’s company are now either one extreme or the other, looking for reasons to keep busy or sleeping the hours away so that his absence is not felt so acutely. Crazy right, just plain crazy.

Craziest of all – thinking that life would ever be the same again. Crazy, just plain crazy!

Always & Forever…