Having a particularly bad time at the moment.

I thought I was a bit ‘back to normal’.  The ship had righted, so to speak.  I was feeling more independent and looking to the future.

But today I feel like I’m walking around with a knife stuck in my soul.  I feel bereft.  I feel like the enormity of my loss is just going to keep hitting me again and again.

I’ve been doing some more sorting and have found some more lovely cards, from me to him and from him to me.  A postcard from him when he was away alone, saying ‘wish you were here’ and ‘it’s not the same without you’.  It’s gone in the ‘most precious things to keep’ box.

Also an early (fifth) anniversary card from my sister where she’s worked out how many days, hours, minutes, seconds we’d been together.  Imagine how many seconds, after 29 years!

I can just feel echos of myself in the future, becoming a lonely recluse.

It doesn’t help that I’m pouring my heart out online and yet not a single person has read anything I’ve written yet.  That’s another private horror.  You see the internet as a means of expression, and yet whatever you write or create is a drop in the ocean, and if no-one’s looking at it, it’s still just a secret thought in your head, a file on your computer that no-one else will ever open.

I had 29 years of companionship and intellectual stimulation and humorous conversation, 29 years of shared memories and love and kindness and happiness.

Now it’s just me, wandering round on my own, feeling profound.

Oh John, it’s not the same without you!

It was bad enough finding the ‘As long as there’s a me, as long as there’s a you – there’ll always be an us’ card.

Now I’ve found another difficult one, which despite being sad feels like the most precious treasure.

John was aware of when he was going to reach the age when his father died – he had worked out the date and must have told me.  The card is dated (presumably) the day after and I’ve written, ‘On the occasion of you outliving your father – CONGRATULATIONS ON YOUR CONTINUED EXISTENCE’.

Ouch.

Well, at least he did reach that moment.  But the existence only continued for another 5 years.

Oh dear, I was always a very profound person anyway; bereavement is making me so profound and thoughtful about this sort of thing, I can’t bear it.  The only solution is to try to be harsh and put these things from your mind.  Is that the right thing to do?

There’s some sort of condition, I can’t remember what it’s called (John would have known), where people become convinced that everyone they know isn’t really that person, they’ve been replaced by an impostor, and every object or possession they used to have – someone has come into their house and stolen those items but replaced them with identical ones.

My weird thought for today is that I feel a bit like that about this house and all my things.  It surely isn’t the same house that I lived in for 17 years with my husband.  I’m in a slightly different universe/reality.  Every molecule of it has been replaced and put back in the same place, and now it’s, well, the same house, but not the same house.  A different version of it.

Perhaps I am going mad.  Or perhaps I am just trying to explain how strange I feel.

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.