There is a saying in Zen: Before Enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. After Mike died I couldn’t function coherently at all for about a week. I couldn’t focus on the basic necessities of cooking, cleaning, errands…even driving. I really could not drive…
widowed perspective
Hello Year Three
I’m struggling writing this week. I know the general gist of what I want to say, but some of it keeps seeming harsh, uncaring, like I’m an insensitive bitch. Because it’s about the relief and positivity I’ve figured out I find in Ian’s death anniversary. This past weekend was the second anniversary of Ian’s passing. And although it may sound…
The Box
I put a blue sticky note on it so the movers wouldn’t pack it. I carefully carried it to the car, hefting its astonishing weight, and placed it gently in the back seat. Alone for a few moments at the new place, I picked it up again, and carried it close to my body up to the new bedroom and found its new spot where it snugly fits. I closed the door…
Two Years Ago
Two years year ago this week, I had no concept of time. Nor of my life any longer as I knew it. Two years ago today, I was making funeral arrangements For the man I had planned to grow old with. And going from pain to disbelief and back to pain every 10 minutes Like an endless loopTwo years ago today, I was two days in to being an unwedded widow.
Plot Point
One of the things I’ve maintained since Ian died is a theatre subscription with a couple of friends. It gives me an opportunity to flex the grey-matter and escape to other worlds. Over the weekend I went to a show I’d been looking forward too in terms of performer and composer. It was a short, caberet style show and was a fantastic showcase for…
Safety in Numbers
I have been in Sydney this week to visit my husband’s family and also attend a national conference on suicide postvention. The conference has brought together people bereaved by suicide with organisations working in the field of suicide postvention, to discuss the need for services in this area and reducing the stigma around suicide. Pretty heavy…
One of Those Days
My car broke down. Again. It’s been acting up quite a bit lately. I took it in and they said it needed new struts. That wasn’t cheap. But it was still making weird noises and behaving strangely. A few weeks ago it didn’t want to start…then it finally did, so I immediately drove down and had a new battery put in. Then a few days later…
What grief is
Most people have heard about the so-called five stages of grief – denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance – modeled by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross in her 1969 book On Death and Dying. Even then, she clarified that these are not the only emotions felt during the grieving process, nor do they always appear in this order. It is now…
Nobody Remembers
If you are widowed, and you are reading this, then you know that missing your person and the life you had together is as constant as breathing – it is a new fact in your new life that you didn’t ask for, and it’s just there, always and forever. The missing of what was never goes away. But then, above and beyond that missing, is a whole other kind…
Raining, pouring
It’s been a crazy week. I guess I am just in one of those general bad periods that just happen in life from time to time. I have uni deadlines and assessments this week, I got sick Friday so I lost a study day, then a nasty nasty so and so of a virus attacked my computer rendering it to the status of a boat anchor (and not a very good one…
The Person Underneath
In the beginning, I couldn’t imagine talking about anything else. Did you hear? My husband died. I’m a widow. You have something else to talk about? Why? Is there anything else in the entire world that matters as much as this fact? Talking about anything else felt like forcing my brain to think around the sound of a tornado tearing through…
Strut
It’s been said that once we have found the true path, destiny unfolds before us like a red carpet. I’m a believer of that and the fact that much of destiny (if not all) is determined on our ability to self-propel ourselves into it. Sometimes we don’t notice our forward trajectory and the red carpet unfolds at a slow speed, that years…