Category: Updates
Press the button and change your plans
Press the button and change your plans
So many wonderful people have sent me messages recently, this one particularly got me thinking:
“One sermon I heard at church…you are really excited about your vacation to Italy, you plan, map out and are all set for a fantastic vacation. You board the plane with your plans, maps, highlighted spots to visit, etc. and you land in Holland. What happens then?…do you embrace the beauty of Holland and all that Holland has to offer or do you just focus on Italy and what your plans were?”
Claire and I really did have plans, we were going to each work two or three days a week and spend the rest of the time bimbling around in our camper van. When our youngest child was 18 Clare was also going to have a sabbatical, anyone that knew her knows that she could tell you exactly the number of years, months and days until that was. Claire TOLD me, yes TOLD me that she was going to have an entire year where she did no cooking, no cleaning and no looking after anyone else and that we would have to spend that year running around after her. Fair enough I suppose after all she had given up for her family.
From my perspective I have been ensuring that my business is mobile and can be run from anywhere in the country leaving us free to travel and me able to do a few hours of work each day from where ever we parked the campervan.
That plan went out of the window on 17th April this year.
There must be something in our human nature which upsets us if our carefully laid plans don’t work out. What happens if we board the plane to Italy and land in Holland?
I saw this video recently from Heineken, listen to the reasons people give for not being able to change their plans.
“There’s no way we can change these plans, this is a bachelor party”
“I’d have to go through security and get on a plane and then go back to my real life”
“I can’t cancel this trip because it’s for work”
I find it striking watching that video and seeing the similarities in my life at the moment. The anxiety about pressing the button, ‘I can’t do it, I’ve got plans‘ is exactly how I feel… ‘Claire can’t die now, we’ve got plans’
But the button has been pressed, someone pressed it for me and took the decision out of my hands, I’m in a destination that I’ve never even heard of let alone considered visiting, and so I guess it’s down to me to make the most of it, right?
Two Pictures
Two Pictures
life is a real battle at the moment. It seems as though every day has a series of hurdles to overcome and each day I feel like I’m running 100 m through the thickest treacle imaginable.
It seems as though the treacle just keeps getting thicker and thicker, it’s relentless and getting deeper everyday. Just a great big sea of treacle.
I wonder when it will end. I can see the treacle horizon but the sea just seems to go on and on. I remember discussing with Claire once the idea of going on a cruise, she wasn’t keen because she didn’t like the idea of not being able to see the land. She told me that she could imagine being out in the middle of the ocean with no land in sight, only the watery horizon to look at and when she thought of that she got a rising sense of panic.
That’s how I feel now.
If I could see an island in the distance then it would spur me on, I’d get a sense that the end was in sight and an idea of how much longer I needed to keep going for, but the way it is now I keep wading and it just keeps going.
I think what I’m looking for is an end to the pain of the way I feel now. I’m looking for the light at the end of the tunnel or a glimpse of an island of respite appearing on the treacle horizon, but I’m not sure that that is a particularly healthy viewpoint to have.
I want the way I feel to stop, but the way I feel is related to the loss and by its very nature that loss can never be regained.
It’s so easy to give loss a meaning that it doesn’t have. To give it attributes like treacle, like the sea, like a tunnel with no end. But that’s not true is it? That’s only the way I am choosing to view it.
So reflecting on this now I can choose to view it a different way so let’s try this, let me start writing this update again with a different analogy.
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Life is a real battle at the moment. It seems as though every day has a series of hurdles to overcome and each day is getting easier.
All I feel at the moment is a deep red mist of uncertainty. The redness is a deep blood red painted along the wall of the corridor next to me, but as I go through each day the deep red that seems so overbearing at the moment begins to fade.
Each day, with less red paint to put on the wall, the intensity gets less. I can see that overtime that deep blood red turns to a soft pink and if I look down the entire corridor, whilst the redness is always there, at the end of the corridor it fades to a gentle rose tinted white. The redness never goes but it turns from something overbearing into something that is actually quite beautiful.
I wonder if the memory of Clare which leaves me in so much pain at the moment can also be turned into something beautiful in the future?
I wonder…
Reasons and Excuses
Reasons and Excuses
Since Claire died I’ve been making more of an effort to keep fit and because I’m too tight to go to the gym I’ve taken up jogging. I hate it! Every step is hard work and I don’t get that ‘kick’ out of physical exercise that so many seem to report, I just find it a real chore but I know that it’s all down to me now to look after the kids and so I have to stay in as good a shape as possible.
Every time I go for a run I’m looking for an excuse not to go.
Every time I go for a run I find an excuse.
When I’m actually out there running the only thing I ever think about is Claire, she dominates my thoughts from the first step to the last which makes the whole jogging process even more painful – and I’m not really keen on putting myself through unnecessary pain. But last night I realised something for the first time.
Losing Claire is my reason to go jogging. Losing Claire is my excuse not to go jogging.
It it would be so easy to use this almost intollerable time as an excuse to not do anything. To lay down in the corner and not get up again. But if I change my viewpoint for a moment I can see that it’s actually a reason to go on.
=========OK, now I’m crying again – you have no idea how much therapy I get from writing this =========
Up until this very moment I thought I’d lost my reason for living, I thought I did everything for Claire and that with her gone I had no purpose. She was always my reason for working so hard, building the business and even getting up in the morning.
But I was using that reason as an excuse not to think about the future and what it holds.
But now I can see that reasons and excuses are so close to each other and all that is required is a slight change in viewpoint and I can see that she is still my reason. Up until this very second I have actively avoided thinking about the future, it was an excuse. So as I take a different viewpoint now I find that I can take the old reason and turn it into a new reason to rebuild, and that for me is life changing today!
Life as a Book
Life as a Book
“For a long time it had seemed to me that life was about to begin – real life. But there was always some obstacle in the way, something to be got through first, some unfinished business, time to be served, a debt to be paid. Then life would begin. At last it dawned on me that these obstacles were my life.”
Alfred D’Souza
I read those words yesterday and they hit home, they hit home pretty hard.
I enjoyed lunch yesterday with a good friend (thanks Emma) and we were talking about the ‘when/then’ game. When the kids have left home then it would be better. When I’ve moved house then I can relax. When/then.
Claire and I used to joke that we would write a book called “It’ll be better when…” and then make jokes about all of the times that we had used that expression or heard other people use it, perhaps that’s a project of the future, but thinking about it now really does make me stop and consider things.
What has opened up for me now is a completely new chapter in my life, I thought I knew where the story was going until I turned the page on 17 April and the great author in the sky decided to take the story in a different direction. I can see now that those early chapters were leading me in a direction and I had made up my own ending, I was pinning all of my hopes on chapters I was yet to read, life was going to begin in those chapters.
But as I sit here writing this down I can see the entire book, it’s closed so I’ve no idea where the story goes, but I can see that this IS my life. It doesn’t begin over the page, it began at the beginning of the book and I’m in it now, this is it, these obstacles ARE my life.
There is a lot to be said for writing the end of the book ourselves and creating our future as we go, and there is also a lot to be said for reading the words of the page that we are on, reading them slowly, reading them with meaning and most of all enjoying them.
I’ve no idea what is over the page, at the moment I have no idea what the next paragraph says, but I do know that for the time being at least, I’m going to read those words very slowly.
Grief “i just sit”
Grief “i just sit”
[PostScript added after I wrote this, please bear in mind as you read: I’m not going to kill myself so don’t worry, it’s just better that I write down truthfully how I feel rather than try and hide it in the hope that it helps not only myself but other people in the same situation as me]
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This is a rather odd post and it comes as the result of checking the words that people type in Google when they end up on this website. It seems lots of people are typing Grief “i just sit” – and ending up on my site, of course I don’t know why they typed that but I know where they are coming from.
The temptation to just sit and do nothing often reaches the point of being unbearable. I often feel like one of those deep cave explorers, sitting on the edge of an enormous black chasm, dangling my feet in, looking down and wondering what it’s like down there in the depths. Except the depths of this chasm are the depths of depression… And it’s very black down there.
The grief can often hit me in waves and sometimes all I can do is just sit. But when I sit I know that my feet dangling on the edge of the chasm and I could easily fall in.
The strange thing is that I was always terrified of death, but now with Claire passing so early in life it seems that if she can do it then it can’t be that bad. Dying doesn’t seem so bad any more and just writing that down strikes me as being odd, but I don’t care. This change in the way I view dying could make it seem like an easy option, an easy way to get rid of the pain.
I’m not contemplating killing myself or anything like that all I’m saying is that I can now understand the full process that could lead to it.
So how do I get up when all I want to do is sit?
One of the most liberating concepts that I adopt is the idea of choice.
If I want to get extremely angry then I can, it’s a choice.
If I want to shout and bellow and curse then I can, it’s a choice.
If I want to feel successful then I can, it’s a choice.
If I want to feel happy then I can, it’s a choice.
Once we truly accept that the way we feel is always a choice then we can choose to wallow in our own sadness or depression for a bit, but I can also choose to step out that sadness and depression. It’s a choice.
Now it may not be an easy choice, we may not have access to all of the resources we need in order to make that choice at that given moment, but those resources are there buried within us-all we have to do is look hard enough.
So sometimes I choose to just sit, and then I choose to get back up again. It’s MY choice.
Which way to look – a bouncy existence
Which way to look – a bouncy existence
Sometimes it’s difficult to know which way to look.
Looking forwards is positive.
Looking forwards gives me the opportunity to create a brand-new future, to have complete control over what I do and to take things in a different direction.
Looking forwards is negative.
Looking forwards brings about a sense of anxiety and stress, how do I cope with everything that needs doing without Claire?
Looking backwards is positive.
Looking backwards gives me the opportunity to be thankful for the 28 years that Claire and I spent together, being married for 22 of them. Such happy memories.
Looking backwards is negative.
Looking backwards brings a sense of longing and reminds me of everything that I’ve lost.
And all that leads to a rather bouncy state of mind, bouncing backwards and forwards from positive to negative. The bouncing can happen quite quickly from the tiniest of triggers which can never be predetermined. The other day I was watching a TV programme, I can’t remember what it was but I can remember I was enjoying it. I felt positive. And then all of a sudden I realised that I could never enjoy a TV programme again and share that enjoyment with Claire. I felt negative.
I’m excited about moving house and looking forwards to a new life by the sea, I feel positive. Which reminds me of the life I’m leaving behind and everything that Claire knew, I feel negative.
This bouncing of emotions seems to be common amongst the grieving from what I can tell, which makes keeping up our relationships with friends and family pretty difficult at times. One minute I want to see people and the next minute I want to be alone – almost as capricious as the British weather, and certainly as unpredictable!
So if you know anyone that has recently lost someone close to them, bear with them. If they want to see you one-minute and don’t the next then it’s just them coming to terms with the loss.
I know that what I need to do is to make those positive views as bright and close and vivid as possible, all the while turning down those negative views to make them as dim, faraway and still as possible. If I change how I see those views of forwards and backwards and decide to make them bright or dim then I control how much of an impact they have. So whilst I can’t control the events themselves I can control their impact, and therein lies my little revelation for today…
Willing to Consider
Willing to Consider
You may remember me talking about an excellent book I’m reading called “Seven Choices”, it really is helping enormously. Up until Thursday of last week I was struggling with the concept of letting go. Why would I want to let go of something which was so perfect? The idea of letting go of the relationship that Claire and I had was not something I was even willing to consider, until I read the most recent chapter in Seven Choices.
I have realised that I don’t need to let go of anything at the moment, of course in time I need to readjust to a new way of life but all I need to do at the moment is to be willing to consider this new way of life. That’s the first step, just a willingness to consider things. The book also talks about incorporating my loss into this new life. That was also something I hadn’t considered before, I was just imagining that the past was the past, it was done with and we move on.
That was too painful to even consider and so the idea of working with the loss, incorporating the loss somehow into my life feels much more acceptable and doable. I can indeed be willing to consider a new way of life which incorporates the loss, that feels so much better than the idea of letting go.
Exactly what that means practically I’m not sure yet. My next step is to begin to work out what that new life will look like, and to take active steps towards achieving it. New routines and new plans will allow me to continue life and live it to its maximum, all the while incorporating the loss of Clare into it. Not ignoring the loss, but working with it. It won’t go away, how can it? It’s happened and that can’t be undone but I can forge a new life building the loss of Clare into it.
If I had to put some kind of scale to it with 0 being at the beginning of the process and 10 being complete, then I’d put myself at about 0.25 at the moment. I’ve just begun. The pain is still immensely raw. Every night, and I literally mean every night, I look to the empty side of the bed and am reminded of what I’ve lost. In fact I am reminded of what I’ve lost every waking second as I walk around this house.
But I am willing to consider the possibility of a new life. Just being willing is a start and something to build on, and build on it I shall.
An Empty Wardrobe
An Empty Wardrobe
This weekend has been the toughest by far for two reasons, firstly we sorted through Claire’s clothes on Saturday and yesterday I sorted through the loft and found a load of diaries.
Sorting through the clothes wasn’t actually as bad as I thought it would be whilst we were doing it, but it all hit me afterwards when everything was quiet and I was sat in my room with an empty wardrobe. That wardrobe feels like a metaphor for my life at the moment. There was a compartment in my life that was filled so completely, wholey and perfectly by Claire and just as that wardrobe is now empty, bare and actually completely pointless unless it is filled so it is with that compartment in my life – bare, empty and pointless.
We also found some diaries that Claire wrote for the kids. I was amazed to discover that she wrote a pregnancy diary for all four children charting how she felt every single day of the pregnancy. She then also kept a new baby diary, again charting how she felt every single day for the first few months of each of our children’s lives.
I didn’t know she did that.
I just want to hug her and thank her. She has left us a memory of how she felt, a memory that would otherwise have died on the 17th April when she did.
I miss her too much and can’t write any more today.
Good bye old, hello new
Good bye old, hello new
So many people are sending the messages and e-mails in response to my blog posts, thank you, please keep them coming you are not bothering me, you are not annoying and it genuinely helps.
Each time someone responds I have a new realisation, and here is one of those.
Here is a snippet of what was sent to me yesterday:
I realised that the loss of <<name removed>> had changed me forever, and importantly I realised that this was OK.
I know that I have changed, and with my training as a coach I recognise that my beliefs, values and decisions have all been jumbled up, reordered and have yet to settle.
I also realise that it is okay to change. It’s acceptable for me to reorder my beliefs, values and decisions to become a new person.
The battle I’m having at the moment is that I don’t want to! I put a lot of effort into my life up until 17 April 2013, a considerable amount of hard work went into my business, my personal life and especially my relationship. That hard work grounded my values and beliefs and ensured that they were all aligned to achieve the same goal. I was happy with that, it felt right and everything with the world was good.
All that has changed now, my beliefs and values have changed immeasurably and it’s so hard to let go of the way things were because of the hard work that I put into all that. And the truth is I don’t really want to let go but similarly I guess I need to as a key component of all of that i.e. Claire is now missing.
If you are happy in your relationship with your partner imagine being told that you have to abandon all of that, completely walk away and change everything. You would be pretty loathed to do so wouldn’t you, and understandably so. Yet that is how I feel. On the one hand Claire is here with us, and if she is then I want to keep hold of that. On the other hand Claire has gone, and I need to let go.
You see my problem?
I need to make a decision to let go of the old me and welcome the new me, soon.
A weird thing keeps happening…
A weird thing keeps happening…
When I started writing this site about my journey of coping with grief my intention was to use it like a permanent diary so that I could chart my progress over the years to come. This post is one of those.
I keep experiencing this weird existential feeling, a live ‘as it happens’ dissociated viewpoint where I am aware of what I am doing and can see everything through my own eyes yet I have a concurrent sense of viewing myself externally.
It’s kind of like being aware of two peoples viewpoints of the same situation at the same time.
I quite often experience this when I am presenting or running a course. I can be in mid-flow, delivering some excellent content (at least that’s what I believe!) with passion and enthusiasm and yet at the same time I can see myself doing it and my brain is in a different place thinking about what I’m going to say next.
From what I remember I’ve spoken to other people that do public speaking and they say they have had similar experiences whilst delivering a presentation or course, so I guess that is not so uncommon.
I’ve never experienced this in any other situation though, but recently it’s happened a few times whilst I have been going about my everyday business. It normally happens when the house is quiet, perhaps first thing in the morning or last thing at night. I become aware of myself making breakfast and at the same time can see myself making breakfast wondering where Claire is and is this all genuinely real?
To make sense of it going to take a stab at understanding why it’s happening…
…OK, so it’s now 20 min later, I wrote a few paragraphs about why I think is happening and gave up. They were gibberish.
I think what I can learn from writing this post is that experiences perhaps don’t always have a reason – they just happen. I think we can sometimes over analyse why we do things or what is happening in a desperate human attempt to create order out of chaos. And now strangely I’m reminded of when I studied chaos theory in my MBA, isn’t it odd how things come to mind and can be triggered by one word.
What I clearly remember from looking at Chaos Theory is that it can look very much like chaos and yet at the same time be self ordering and self-sustaining. I’m reminded of an example that was given to us of an empty beach. If we allowed people slowly onto the beach, one by one, it would be completely chaotic as to where people sat. And yet people would end up all sitting an equal distance from one another. The chaotic system of arranging where we sit on the beach is in actual fact self ordering.
So my lesson today is to let the chaos happen, know that the chaos is actually self ordering and relax without any explanation of why it happens… It just does!