Sometimes in dramas or documentaries you hear comments made, maybe to someone who’s done something bad that they’ll regret – “you’ll have to live with it for the rest of your life”.

I’m coming to a conclusion about the emotional pain I’m feeling about the loss of John.  If all my various feelings about various things are populating a big rectangular field in the woods, my grief is like in a special paddock in part of the field, cordoned off.  At the beginning, the paddock took up most of the field, but now it’s getting smaller – there’s room for other feelings too.

But the point is – I think there’ll always be that paddock of pain.  I have to readjust so I can bear to live with it.

I think the pain will always be there, as a burden to be carried.

One of the goldfish I bought after.. the event, was 50% black, all along its back, its top fin, its tail.  Now, presumably because it’s got bigger/older, in the space of a couple of weeks, it has completely lost all trace of black, and is now completely ‘gold’.  First I noticed the fin wasn’t black any more, then the black on its body reduced until there were only a couple of patches, then finally even the black patch that was left on its head has gone.

So it’s become a metaphorical fish.  Because it’s like the black is the stain of grief.  And after a certain amount of time, the stain of grief has gradually lifted.

The only trouble is, I think the goldfish is ahead of me, because my stain of grief hasn’t lifted yet.

Well it’s six months today since … (I still don’t want to say it).

I’ve just been to the cemetery where I pulled up some big weeds around the grave, and replaced the framed card I’ve put there (because it had got all dirty and faded in the sun), and I did what I hadn’t been keen to do – because it involved digging in the grave – I’ve set two vases half into the soil so they don’t topple over, and have put in them the £40 worth of artificial red roses I bought some time ago for the purpose.  If they get stolen, I’ll just replace them.  So it looks a little tidier now (like anyone but me sees it or knows or cares).

It’s a weekday morning so there was no-one there, as I’d hoped.  After I’d finished I sat down on the ground next to it and thought/cried/talked.  I’m glad I’ve had a cry because it’s worried me that I’ve not been crying much.  The anti-depressants are obviously doing their job of keeping me from the depths of despair, but I’ve always been worried that means I’m not feeling what I might, or should, be feeling.  I’ll come off them soon and see what happens.

As I sat there I couldn’t help but go over all the circumstances again, and particularly the ‘hospital period’.  There were those one or two fleeting moments of consciousness where he responded with nods to my questions, and I can’t get over that in retrospect I made such a mistake…  I made the wrong assumption that because he appeared to be more lucid, that state would now continue and he would improve, so I left the hospital all happy, thinking that on the next visit I would continue to ask yes/no questions, and communication would now be possible.  I even went and bought a children’s writing/screen thing so he could write rather than talk.

But the point was, when I went back he was ‘gone’ again – not conscious/sedated/uncommunicative.  So the message is, for anyone else experiencing such a situation, if a person suddenly/briefly becomes conscious, don’t assume it will continue or be repeated.  THAT MAY BE YOUR ONLY CHANCE TO COMMUNICATE.  So don’t miss it.

Although I was there every day for two months and was constantly talking to him, most of the time he wasn’t conscious so probably didn’t hear any of it.  I regret that in those two moments when I asked a question and he nodded (‘Do you understand you’re in hospital?’ and later ‘Do we live in Croydon?’) – I didn’t make absolutely sure I said the right things.  Maybe I did, I can’t remember.  But I should have immediately said all the most important things, at those moments when he was most awake and might have heard them and understood  – I love you, I’ve been visiting every day, everyone wants you to get better, I’m going to look after you when you’re recovering.  I suppose if he had any real awareness he would have worked all that out, but when I think back I wonder if in those moments he wasn’t frustrated that I didn’t keep up the communication, that I didn’t say the things he would have wanted to hear.

I loved you John, and I came to visit you every day, and I hoped you’d get better.

And I wish I could be certain that you knew that.

Oh dear, found an old email from John which is very difficult.

I was arranging my trip to Oberammergau and the once in every ten year Passion Play, which I decided to go to on a whim (in 2010).  I had asked if he wanted to go with me and he’d said he wasn’t keen, so we’d agreed I’d go alone.

The last email in the string is from him to me and it says:

“I’ll come with you in 10 years time, I promise!”

Ouch.

People – talk to your loved ones, particularly your life partner, about death.

We generally avoided it because it was too morbid a topic and made us cry.  But I’m advising you from my current perspective – just once, sit down and talk things through, particularly think through what the person who’s left will have to deal with and will feel.  If nothing happens to either of you then all to the good.  But if the worst does happen, it will be so valuable to have had some idea what the other person would have wanted, and their comments while they were alive could be so useful and comforting to their partner down the line.

For example:

– Do you want to be buried or cremated?

– What would you want to happen to your ashes?

– Where would you want to be buried?

– How do you feel about reclaimed graves?

– Would you want your spouse to eventually be buried with you?

– What words might you want or not want on your gravestone?

– How would you feel standing by your partner’s grave and thinking about what was there?

– How will it make you feel to know the grave will have to be disturbed for you to be buried there also?

– Which of your friends might you expect your partner to stay in contact with?

– What things would you never want told or said to your remaining family and friends?

– How would you feel about your partner having to go through all your things after your death?

– Are there things you particularly wouldn’t want them to see or find?

– Do you have special requests about how some things should be treated?  (Eg please don’t bother to go through all those boxes there when I die, you can just throw them all out.  Or, whatever you do, please don’t show those old photos to so-and-so.)

– What would you say to your partner if you could speak to them six months after your death, as they walked alone through the cemetery?

– How would you feel about your partner moving out of your house/leaving their job/finding someone new?

– What words could you say now, to help your partner after you have gone – maybe to stop them thinking of suicide or getting deeply depressed?

Say these things to each other, just once, so you are prepared.

Just saw a balloon floating across the sky.  A child’s helium balloon, shining silver in the sunlight, high up.

I feel like all that’s keeping me in my current situation (I mean work, not life) is a tiny thread which just needs to be cut.  Then I’d be like the balloon, floating fast away, utterly free.

But of course I wouldn’t really be free (says the sensible part of me), I’d plunge immediately into money worries, and I have the responsibility of this house, which will take me months to clear out/pack up.

And there’s all my life to date, and all my memories.  Do I want to be free of them?  No.

(But I do overwhelmingly want to be free of work, so I think I’m going to cut that thread.)

In my sorting of John’s many miscellaneous boxes of stuff, I generally find they are 99% old newspapers and catalogues and bank statements etc, which can all be thrown out, but usually one or two precious things per box, like an old birthday or Valentine’s card from him, or something poignant or funny in his own handwriting.

Today’s such treasure is a typed piece of writing in a plastic pocket.  Now it’s not signed so I don’t know whether he wrote it, or if it’s a quote.  It’s also not dated but strikes me as very old.  If he did write it, I don’t even know in what context, because it was him who was bereaved early in his life (by the death of his parents during his teens), so why is it about someone else joining him in death?  (Unless maybe he just wrote it when he was walking the Pennine Way and I was his ‘backup’, and I’m just reading the symbolism into it.)

Was it written with me in mind?  I’ll never know.

Anyway – in the current context – it’s just about the most moving and significant thing I’ve found, and near the top of the list of most precious treasures.  It’s like message from him to me, from beyond the grave.

I am with you now,

I am sitting in the lee

Of a large rock, in a high place,

On a warm and windy day.

Can’t you see me waving?

From where I am I can see you clearly –

You are not so far away,

But your eyes are looking at the ground.

I have a flask of tea

To share with you.

It’s inside my coat, next to my heart,

Keeping warm.

I call to you,

I call to you –

But my voice is carried off into the hills

Still, I do not fret…

You are climbing closer all the time,

And soon we will be together again.