New Years Eve

Hello my love,

I haven’t had a chance to enjoy my Christmas present to myself and New Year’s Eve is here. The realisation that I will be moving into a year that I didn’t share with you is horrible. I don’t want to say my husband died last year. That makes you sound so far away and long ago.

I was dreading Christmas so much I hadn’t really considered what New Year without you would mean. It makes me feel further away from you. It brings the first birthday you didn’t get to see very close. It means I should be looking forward with the rest of the world and I still can’t face doing that. I have no plans, no goals, no resolutions. I just want to wake up and it be tomorrow as is the case every day.

I still feel like I am existing not living and life is flat and empty and pointless. Doing things that I used to enjoy is meaningless without you. I guess I am waiting for the emptiness and pointlessness to stop and some other more positive feelings to arrive. I guess they won’t come unless I do things to invoke them but I don’t have a clue what would, and I don’t really want to anyway.

I am trying to put less pressure on myself and to accept that I am allowed to feel like this, and whilst I won’t let myself wallow: I will try not to stress about the fact I “should” be doing better, achieving more. I can’t. Surviving at the surface is all I can do.Work, kids, house is about all I can manage.  I want to do more and make life mean something and feel like I am achieving and making you proud but I just can’t at the moment.

You remain my everything and I can’t work out how to live without you. Hopefully one day I will for the sake of little legs if for no other reason.

I still love and miss you more than I could ever convey. I wish with every fibre of my being that you were here with me right now. Life is shit without you.

xxx

My Christmas Present to myself

Hello my love,

I have decided what I am going to give myself for Christmas. Which is a pretty  big deal  bearing in mind that I am trying to survive christmas preparations and, so far, I feel nothing but dread and frustration and stress about the upcoming festive period and a slowly dawning recognition that it will never again feel “joyful” or magical for me. For the first time ever I truly understand why so many more people kill themselves over christmas what with all the focus on families and togetherness: it is hard to imagine a time of year better designed to make you feel isolated, alone and your loss magnified.

So; how am I going to survive this shitty family festive time? I am going to give myself you for Christmas.

I was day dreaming the other day about how clearly I can recollect the different parts of your body: the look, the shape, the contours, the warmth, the feel ,the textures and how much joy and calmness your physical presence brought me. And once I started thinking about it there were so many tiny little details that I wanted to concentrate on remembering.

But as always I was on my way to somewhere, to work or back, to collect little legs, do dinner, clean up etc so couldn’t indulge myself completely in my memories and I realised that I really wanted to sit and remember all the special little parts of you that I loved: to bring your physical presence as back into my head as possible before any of the little details start to disappear from my memory. I want to sit and quietly consider your body inch by inch, top to bottom and remember how it looked, felt, how we joined together so beautifully.

Which gave me the idea of giving myself you as my christmas gift. When E asked me what I want for Christmas, I half-jokingly replied “just my husband” and it reminded me that I always used to say to you that you were my gift to myself: the one and only truly selfish thing that I think I have ever done in my adult life. That is honestly how I saw it. The logistical difficulties of our early relationship (because of childcare and selfish ex-partners) meant that just seeing each other and letting our relationship develop was a challenge from almost day one. But we persevered and our tentative early dates quickly snowballed into the life-changing love and closeness that we shared. Going on dates with you and then building our family and life together was the only thing I have ever done in my adult life that didn’t come from a position of trying to do the right thing by the kids or to do something for someone else. It was purely and simply because being with you was what I wanted as it made me so completely and utterly happy.

I always said to you that I was with you because I wanted to be, because I chose to be, not because I needed to or because I was actually looking for or wanting a man in my life Remaining a single parent would have been so much simpler in so many ways given all the aggravation I was dealing with, and you came with your own set of circumstances to contend with, and I have never been one of those women who needs a man to feel complete. The irony of how incomplete and broken I now feel without you isn’t lost on me.

So I decided I would “gift” myself a bit more of you my love: some time alone to sit and think about your body and capture as many of the little things I wanted to remember as possible. I am still waiting for the right time as I truly want to be able to lose myself in my memories for a while and not get interrupted with a toddler or teenager requiring something of me.

Hopefully I will get the chance soon. It is the first thing I have vaguely looked forward to in I don’t know how long. I am struggling so much at the moment that the bereavement counsellor has kindly offered to have an additional session between Christmas and New Year as , bless her, I think she is worried about how I am going to cope with it all, as she is currently the only person who I share the depths of my sorrow and loneliness with. This counselling has become an outlet that I have come to rely on I think: I am able to hold it together a lot of the time as I know I have an hour a week to let out all my sorrow and fear and misery and crying all the way there, there and all the way home, somehow seems to help me contain myself a lot of the rest of the time.

Anyway, I better try and sleep before little legs wakes up (still not back to sleeping through the night) but hopefully I will have some time to lose myself in you soon.

Love you loads

XXX

Giving Blood because of you

Hey my love,

Today I gave blood for the first time ever. The idea came to me at some point that I can’t quite remember. Perhaps it was watching the pints and pints and pints of blood that you had pumped into you over the course of the last year. Perhaps it was after you died and I was thinking about ways in which I could make sure that positive things that make a difference to someone’s life came as a result of your experiences. I can’t remember. My memory is pretty crap at the moment.

I signed up online to be a blood donor a couple of months ago and after a few weeks of dallying I booked an appointment for today. Over the last 2 months I have been having various medical investigations and on Monday I was prescribed iron tablets as my haemoglobin was low. I was so disappointed as I thought that would mean after all this build up I wouldn’t be able to give blood today, but I decided to go along anyway and hope that the levels had improved and I thought I would at least find where the sessions take place for next time.

I got quite emotional sat waiting to see the nurse as it was similar to the haematology day unit where we used to sit while you received blood: rows of chairs with people having lines put in, being attached to the familiar looking bags but with the reverse happening and then filling rather than emptying.

When the nurse called my name and we went through the checklist I was increasingly nervous (considering I have been known to pass out at a simple blood test before now!) but after running through a long list of questions, and as I held out my left hand for her to do the finger prick test for my haemoglobin levels,  she saw my engagement ring and said “oooh that is beautiful, someone must really love you”. And I looked down at my hand and smiled and said yes they do.

No-one has ever commented on my engagement ring before and that was all I needed to calm me and remind me why I was doing this (although I am still me so I still had to go for a nervous toilet break afterwards before I went and sat in the donation chair!). And surprisingly my haemoglobin levels were just high enough for me to be able to give blood 🙂 I was so surprised and pleased.

After a year of watching you have bloods taken and endless canulas put in for chemo and antibiotics and almost hourly blood tests at times, I am aware that those that do it daily (as these nurses do) are generally really good at it and that there wasn’t too much to fear as long as they seemed comfortable with the vein they found. I also have watched how many times you had to go through it and it gives me some perspective on what I was about to go through for only the second time in months and months, so I wasn’t bothered about the needle at all in the end.

Once it was set up and the nurse happy with it, I laid there looking at the ceiling while the blood slowly drained out of my arm thinking of the symbolism of it all and the similarities between my position and the position you had been in so many times as I had sat alongside you and that made me feel close to you and overwhelming sad that those times of us sitting together were gone forever all at the same time. I also sat there with a small part of me hoping you could see me and would be smiling at me and saying you were proud of me.

While I was sat there another nurse came up and admired the bracelet I was wearing on my other arm. It is one I had made for myself after you died that has a verse of “our” poem engraved on it to remind me that you are with me and I have no fate to fear. She was so taken with it she asked about the poem and what it meant and where I got it from. It felt “ok” to say I got it for myself  after my husband died as it was a special poem to us and it reminded me that he was always with me. Again: no-one has ever commented on it before but the fact the nurse did today after I had given blood comforted me somehow, both things brought you directly into the room with me and made you a part of what I was doing explicitly, and that felt special to me.

Pathetic I know, but I felt pleased with myself for a brief while afterwards. I have done something positive and productive in honour of you. Someone who needs it will get blood to help them continue living and it is 100% thanks to my wonderful, wonderful husband.

I am so proud of you my love. I hope today you are a tiny bit proud of me too. I have been struggling even more than usual these last few weeks with Christmas fast approaching. It felt good to feel good for a fleeting moment.

Love you forever and beyond

xxx