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Syncopated Grief

Posted on: October 15, 2019 | Posted by: Emma Pearson

Today is one of those exquisitely beautiful, bright autumn days. With temperatures that would feel “just right” on a mid-summer’s day, but with the added benefit of a gentle breeze to doubly kiss my bare skin as I sit now, in the garden, writing this piece.

I have been out on a “long run”. The kind of “long run” I do in the run-up to a half-marathon. I am registered for the one in Lausanne (Switzerland) just two weeks from now. Today should be my “peak distance” run, but because I have run so little, there was nothing noteworthy about this particular peak.

I was reflecting while I was out. I don’t take podcasts or music with me. For years I have allowed myself the privilege of total silence when out and about running – for mental space as well as personal safety reasons. Where I run, on fairly remote forest and mountain tracks, I need to be vigilant.

I was reflecting on how I had been in a conversation the night before with a dear friend whose friendship goes back now 28 years. She’s known me through all my losses. We don’t see each other much and when we talk there feels to be much to catch up on. But it’s work. Hard work. Going into my grief stories, trying to find words to articulate that for which there are no words is so painful. Tiring. It hurts. Particularly when it’s what I live day in day out.

We talked about Julia. It was full-on efforting. I monitor how I am in conversations and if I shift towards comfort or away from it and noticed it was all just too hard. At one stage I said, “I will answer this question and then we need to talk about something else. I need a break from grief from time to time”.

There comes a point when I can’t stomach another question, whether it’s about what happened when Julia died, before or since; how I am doing; how my alive kids are doing; where I am at in terms of getting back into work; what I have done to sort out a bedroom or wardrobe or whatever. Everything comes back to Julia. Even what I now eat or don’t eat, drink or don’t drink, feels to have a Julia edge.

We talked about Mike. That was less hard. Noticeably less hard. Less painful. Less breath-suckingly awful or stomach punchingly brutal. Just that bit further down the line. Far from insignificant. It’s just that something even bigger has engulfed that specific loss. I remember after Mike died, I preferred to talk about Edward. Talking about Mike was too close. Too painful. Now, so soon after Julia’s death, I prefer to talk about Mike.

While on my run, I reflected on this semi-conscious habit of bouncing away from discussing Julia to discussing Mike, (or Ed or Don or indeed any other loss – mine or someone else’s). I have an image of Neo in The Matrix, bending the projectile of bullets fired at him. I do the same with questions. I make them ricochet and then handle them.

Whatever the question, whoever asks it, it’s hard. Searingly painful. But if I can just bounce some of the questions off in a different direction, I will have a chance of slipping some light padding into the parts of my heart that need most protection.

It’s not that I don’t want the questions. No questions would be worse. It’s just that my heart is so sore from all the pounding. I need to make it last a while yet. And for that it needs reinforcement.

 

Categories: Widowed Effect on Family/Friends, Widowed and Healing, Widowed Emotions, Multiple Losses, Miscellaneous

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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