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I wish I could better imagine…

Posted on: May 23, 2023 | Posted by: Emma Pearson

Photos my own – taken at Christmas 2022, on runs with my dad

Sometimes I stop short in my tracks and realise with desperate sadness that I can no longer imagine what my life would be like with Mike were he still alive. In the last years since he died, I have lived through what would anyway have been a crucial transition in our lives – with the kids becoming old enough to leave home, and shifting into empty nesting.

All of what we would inevitably have had to reinvent together, I have done alone. It’s not like he died and the rest of home life remained the same (as if!) It’s so radically, fundamentally different – my life, my home life – as compared with before. No kids at home. No husband. No au pair. Just Black the dog and Silver the cat.

If Mike had not died (and Julia had not either), it would still be radically different at home. No kids. No au pair. Just Black the dog and Silver the cat. But I’d have Mike. He’d be at home. We’d have three kids, away at university. We’d be together for home life, work life, holidays and trips. We’d have time for going out on runs, swimming, playing music, watching films, cooking, and more. That is the bit I cannot imagine. Empty nesting home life with a husband. The household radically different, but easy. Non-busy. Non-stressed. Comfortable. Comforting. Warm. Cosy.

Life Accompanied.

I get flashes though of that old life – even if not when in my own home.

Like earlier today, when I went on a gentle run with my 85 year old dad, in the Hauts de Céret, south of Perpignan, in the foothills of the Pyrenees. A run that dad, Mike and I did so many times over the years when we came to stay, invariably with the kids. Mike running on ahead, dad next, me at the back. Sometimes Black joined us. Mike looping back from time to time, so as to not get too far ahead, and so as to extend his run.

Today, on that run that I have done so many times, I could imagine Mike, I could feel him, out in front. Now, despite having slowed down a lot myself, my dad is even slower than I am. He has slowed down much more, relatively speaking, and his deceleration has been faster. Mike would still be much faster than me – for sure. He’d still be out in front, looping back to check on us, smile his winning smile, then lope off again while we all kept enjoying our together-alone runs.

But no Mike out on that run. Even though I felt him.

He didn’t loop back. He was not there. He’s dead.

I did the looping back instead – to check on dad, to ensure we both felt accompanied, out on our run, together-alone.

It’s times like this that I can imagine how things might be if Mike had lived. Runs, trips, holidays, visiting places that so often we visited together. But not my day to day life at home. Just too hard to imagine. No experience of it, and the imagination gap too great to be possible. So I am grateful to have some little sense of it today – even if only on a one-off run, a long way from home. There, the imagination gap was possible to straddle.

Categories: Child Loss, Widowed, Widowed Parenting, Widowed Memories, Widowed and Healing, Widowed and New Love, Widowed Holidays, Widowed Emotions, Widowed by Illness, Multiple Losses

About Emma Pearson

My life is a whirling mix of swishy strands, dark and glowing brightly, rough and silky smooth – all attempting to be seen, felt and integrated at once. Here are some of my themes.

I am British and now recently also French (because of Brexit), and I have lived in France for the past 21 years. I am 55 and sometimes feel to be an “older widow”, and yet I feel so young. I lost my best male friend Don to bowel cancer in September 2015, my brother Edward to glioblastoma in January 2016, my husband Mike to pancreatic cancer in April 2017, and my sweet youngest child, Julia, to grief-related suicide, in July 2019. And I met a new love (let’s call him Medjool, after my favourite kind of date), off one single meeting on a dating website. Our relationship has exploded into blossom as of June 2019.

I am widowed and I am in a new relationship. I have lost a best friend, a sweet brother, a beloved husband and a precious child, and I still have both parents who are alive and well. I live my days with my grief wrapped in love and my love wrapped in grief. I no longer even try to make sense of anything. I just hope to keep on loving and living for as long as I can, while grieving the losses of loves that are no longer breathing by my side.

I suspect my writing here will be a complex mish-mash of love and sorrow. I also write on http://www.widowingemptynests.com/.

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