writing

One Year

Posted on by Cathy Penman

Went to a Bereavement Group meeting and heard some horrible stories about other people’s recent experiences.  I suppose there does come a point when that isn’t helpful – it would be better, maybe, to go to some different type of meeting now, that would help me to be more cheerful and move on, rather than dwelling on horrible things and sadness.

I talked about how I felt about it being the one year anniversary of the start of the ‘hospital period’, how I had to push it out of my mind a bit because it made me flinch to remember what it was like, visiting him every single day for so long, and never being able to communicate, and gradually losing hope.  If I’m not careful, it can feel like he’s still there in that hospital and it’s all happening again.  I can so picture every part of it, all the details of what happened.

On the day that was the anniversary of.. it happening, I went to the place and ‘paid my respects’, and also went to the Cemetery and left a beautiful big bunch of purple lilies (which neither he nor anyone else he knew will ever see).  I must be careful or my profundity about all this will become debilitating.

I deliberately went Christmas shopping afterwards, and now I am keeping myself busy finishing off my newly decorated bedroom, just as a way of trying to return to normality and stay in the real world.

It doesn’t mean I’m not (very) aware, or that I’ll forget.

Paddock

Posted on by Cathy Penman

Earlier on, I wrote that at first feelings of grief take up most of your mind, like a paddock taking up most of a field.  Then the paddock shrinks and other feelings reappear as well, but the grief in the paddock is always there, you have to learn to live with it.

Metaphor for today:  At the moment I feel like grief keeps escaping from the paddock, it won’t be constrained.  I imagine it like a horse that I go and catch, and lead it back through the paddock gates, into the space it’s supposed to be kept in.  Stay here, grief-horse, I’ll come and walk with you sometimes, but let me have life apart from the grief, can’t I?  Keep out of this grief-free part of the field that is my mind.

But he escapes, the horse.  He jumps out, he crashes through the fence, he charges round all the areas he isn’t supposed to be in.  He won’t be ignored, he won’t be shut up in one space.

It’s not working, this trying to keep the grief in one place.

Depression

Posted on by Cathy Penman

At the moment I really can’t tell the difference between depression and grief.

You feel bad, you can’t think.  You’re overwhelmed with low feeling.  Obviously it’s come about because of my circumstances.  I probably wouldn’t have been feeling like this if he was still here.

But somebody – a counsellor I think, or a doctor – said to me, do you think maybe you’re getting depressed?

How can I tell the difference?  I’m upset and unhappy because my.. (still don’t like to say it in the simplest words) .. my life partner passed away.  I’m approaching all the one year anniversaries, I’m still struggling with decisions about work and worry about not losing weight and not knowing what the hell to do with my future (if there’s going to be one).

I started taking an ‘anti-depressant’ tablet after a month or so because I was feeling so bad, then I felt guilty that I was feeling okay and being too cheerful and coping okay with practical things.  But at that point I didn’t think I was depressed, it was clearly grief – emotional pain.  Now I’ve come off it because I’ve felt like it’s been too long and I need to know how I really feel underneath.  So I guess now I know – I feel bad, worse.

Maybe at some point grief turns into depression.  Anyway, now I have yet another decision – to go back on the tablets or not.

And – whether to bother with this blog or not.  Nothing worse than feeling you’re ‘reaching out’ to the world and expressing yourself, but no-one’s actually reading it.  I think setting up this site has just detracted from me finishing the ‘A Widow’s Words’ book.  But what’s the point when probably no-one will ever read that?

Ministry

Posted on by Cathy Penman

People of the world!  People who are still alive!

Don’t be unhappy – don’t be unpleasant.  Today may be your last ever day.  Make it a good one.

All over the world people are having their last day today – not knowing it’s their last day.  (I didn’t know when it was mine.)

Not all the time, but sometimes – think of them.  Think that it could be you, that it will be you sometime.

Be kind.  Show love.  Don’t hate.

Please – it makes sense.

London

Posted on by Cathy Penman

I think London is one of the things that will save me.

I’ve been to the V&A cafe again, with the nice windows and tiles and chandeliers and piano (silent today) – and nice food.

I no longer feel quite so distraught and sad about my poor dear partner and friend no longer existing.  Well, it’s still bad, but that balance between him, me and the world is changing.  The world is pulling me back.

People all around are talking about everyday, inane things.  You can’t hold it against them.  Everyone can’t be profound all the time.

As I’ve said before, I no longer have him, but I do have the rest of the world.

I’ve looked round a shoe exhibition, seen shoes worn by David Beckham, Naomi Campbell and Marilyn Monroe.  (So what, I hear you ask?)

I’ve eaten nice chicken and courgettes and new potatoes.

I’ve seen some of my favourite old pieces – the amazing statue of the woman nursing a baby, in the long gallery by the courtyard; the way her expression is captured, the way she looks so real.

If I was a sculptor I would make a statue of my dear John.  Soon I will start to do artworks of some sort to commemorate him.

But today I’m just going to enjoy looking at pretty things.  I know he would have forgiven me for carrying on with life.

I carry him with me in my heart.

Leicester Square Horses

Posted on by Cathy Penman

For the record – to note for posterity a private thing between my late partner and myself – the four beautiful big bronze horses in the fountain at Leicester Square are called, from left to right:

  • Bucephalus
  • Nero
  • Callisto
  • Florian

Doubtless other people have named them differently, but these were our names.  Every time I saw them with John I would test his memory and he would generally get them right.  Sometimes we would dispute which was Callisto and which was Florian.

May they draw his chariot through the heavens!

Queen

Posted on by Cathy Penman

So the Queen has reigned longer than any previous monarch, outdoing Queen Victoria.

How interesting; I would like to have been around to see the coverage, being a historian.

Congratulations, Your Majesty.

63 years and 7 months.

Hmm.

Just a little annoyed that I didn’t even live as long as she reigned – 59 vs 63 years.

But what can you do?

Wife – I saw that you were looking at an array of photos of the Queen, each taken in a different year of her reign (featuring many different hats).

I can see what you are thinking – that you must do the same for me, find a photo for every year of my life.  You’ll never do it, there just aren’t enough early ones.  Don’t waste time on that, please.

I’ve just been and gone, and there’s nothing either of us can do about it.

Chin up and keep smiling, Queen of my heart!

Life and Death

Posted on by Cathy Penman

Salutations!

You used to flatter me sometimes, when we had conversations about what we really should be doing with our lives, and what perfect jobs our characters were suited to, by saying that I would make a good King.  The old fashioned sort, who was brave and noble and ruled fairly and whom everyone loved.  Or maybe it was me who came up with that idea!

We also used to say I would make a good non-religious priest.  Someone full of wisdom and caring who would impart his wonderful warm character on other people, would help them, counsel them, all the things a good priest might do, but without the faith, which I didn’t have.

You used to encourage me to express myself in writing, to write essays about the world, about my outlook towards things. There was never time though, it was always something on the ‘to do’ list that never got done.

But hey, now I have time on my hands (eternity in fact) so maybe I can impart some wisdom and sentiment through you!  But how to begin my ‘ministry’?

People!

All 7 or more billion of you!  Every single one of you is right now on the opposite side of a divide from me, a horrible big thick iron curtain of a divide, the boundary between life and death.

But every single one of you will one day be over here on my side of that ultimate boundary.  In a hundred or so years, none of you 7 billion will be on the planet, you’ll have died and been replaced by a new lot.

How can we bear to know we are going to die?  Of course people shouldn’t walk around fearing it every minute, you have to take life for granted to a certain extent, or you wouldn’t be able to function.

The people who are alive, all those people around you, in the street, on the bus stop, on telly, at work – they are all there by default, all on the life side of the divide.  And yet slowly – or actually not so slowly – they are gradually all dropping away, like the boundary between life and death is a sieve, a strainer, and all the time poor souls are falling through, dropping out, with most of those left living not even noticing their passing.

There is no solution, there is no message.  If you cannot believe there is anything beyond death, you have only this life you hold in your hands now, in this precious minute.

Cling to it, treasure it, make the most of it – hope it lasts you a little longer.

And be happy.

And help people.

(Oh well, maybe I wouldn’t have made such a good priest after all.)

Happy Anniversary (Not)

Posted on by Cathy Penman

Happy Anniversary John!

Today would have been our 27th Wedding Anniversary.  And the date is the 27th, so we would have been saying, hey, it’s 27 years on the 27th!

Well, sadly, we didn’t make it.  We made 25 years (nice trip to Venice to celebrate), we made 26 (I’ll have to look up what we did, probably just a local restaurant).

27 years and I’m standing by his graveside.  At least we didn’t split up.  At least it was a case of ’til death us do part’.

It was a beautiful day at the cemetery, sunny and lovely white clouds and windy.  No-one there but me.  I took some deep red and orange/golden chrysanthemums.  I didn’t cry much today, I just felt sad.

This awful, awful thing that by definition your partner is no longer experiencing what you are experiencing.  No-one ever sees their own grave – not after the event anyway.

It’s growing over with weeds and I’m not sure if I should clear them or let it revert to nature/grass.

I thought – poor John, it will soon be autumn and the leaves will be falling from the trees again, a whole summer of ‘lush’ (we used to joke about that word with regard to spring greenery etc) growth in the cemetery around your final resting place, that you never saw, gone.  Soon back to another winter, and you a whole year in the ground.

Sometime, maybe (though I can see it’s over the top), I will go through all my diaries and note down what we were doing on every Wedding Anniversary.  Does it matter though?  That first 27 August mattered, you crying at the altar, you were so moved, at the church on the Isle of Wight.  Then fast forward to graveside.

We so often used to use, in day to day conversation, joking about something, the Private Eye refrain, ‘Er, that’s enough.(something/whatever it was)..’  (Private Eye readers will know what I mean.)

Thought for the day: ‘Not enough anniversaries.’

A few more would have been nice, John.  There weren’t enough.

(Er, that’s enough profundity and gloom!)