My Journey
It’s Getting Tough
It’s Getting Tough
They say ‘It’ll be tough’ – so what is that ‘it’ that they talk about?
It’s getting tough now. But what is it?
Can it be defined?
Can we say what it is, or if it has gone.
It’s just a play on words isn’t it, surely?
And if it’s just a play on words, we can’t tell if it’s gone and we don’t know what it is… does it exist?
I’m confused now about it. Good, it’s gone!
Missing her
Missing her
Yesterday I went to see a new client in Epsom, Surrey. On my way back I drove through Ashtead and remembered that my old boss that I worked for when I was 19 lived there… for some bizarre reason I could remember his address.
Via the joys of a SatNav I could see I was only 4 minutes away, I had no idea if he still lived there but I took the chance, knocked on his door and to my surprise there he was.
What a great 2 hours we spent catching up with our families.
Now the thing is this. I really enjoyed catching up with Michael, he had a wayward son when I worked for him and I used to get stories of his exploits. He also had new born twin grandchildren, so again I used to get stories of all that twins get up to.
I used to come home and share all this fun stuff with Claire, and I know that if I’d been able to share what became of those kids and stories with Claire yesterday we’d have been talking for ages.
Yesterday I felt myself bursting with little stories to share with her. What the twins are doing now, what became of the wayward son, and more.
But I came home to nothing.
For the first time I had some stories to share and no-one to share them with. Even telling them to my Mum later last night wasn’t the same as she didn’t get all the original exploits 20 years ago. Claire did. Claire knows the full story and could have referred back to “do you remember the time when….”.
I guess that’s just part of what I need to let go of. She was the only person in the world that knew so much about me and my life which made those conversations so easy.
It’s the interaction with Claire I miss. The deep, deep knowledge of understanding about every facet of our lives that being with someone for 28 years brings.
I’ve nothing more to add, other than I truly am missing her today.
Loss of Love
Loss of Love
Whilst driving the other day I had a realisation. I’m not loved any more!
I’m not saying that no-one loves me, it’s just that I’m not loved in a husband/wife way any more.
I had a long chat with 2 of the kids last night about Claire (To. and M.) – they too are feeling it… they aren’t loved in a motherly way any more.
I guess we all feel that ‘loss of love’ in a different way, the love of a Sister, a Daughter, a Mum, a Wife or a Friend. And that love that’s missing can never be replaced because it goes deeper than the specific role.. it was the unique and special kind of love that Claire gave to her husband, wife, children, sister and friends. And that love can never be replaced.
Life does feel empty without that love, it really does.
Coaching mode engage!
What does that love get for ME?
It’s that sense of warmth, that spreads out and surrounds me, like putting on a really thick woolly jumper in the middle of a cold dark night.
That warmth of lying in a steaming hot bath and feeling the stress soak and relax away in to the water.
That warmth of a huge hug from the person you desperately love.
And once again as I think about it now, the picture of an island all alone and stranded comes to mind. Yet that same island is surrounded by the warm and relaxing sea that Claire loved so much.
I’m going to buy a big picture of an island and hang it on the wall, it’ll remind me of that love each time I walk past it.
Love isn’t something that emanates in a physical sense from another person, if it were then we wouldn’t feel loved when they left the room. Love is something that endures in the absence of that person… so if that’s true I am loved by a wife and the kids are loved by a mum – we just are!
The journey to a new routine
The journey to a new routine
Today I’m feeling rather overwhelmed.
Overwhelmed with a) The practicalities of running the house b) The practicalities of dealing with the legal side of Claire’s death.
The legal side of things I’m happy to delegate to willing volunteers where possible, and indeed I have done, but the house side of things is different.
We need to work out the new routine of how we do things, and the answer lies in ourselves as a family. People have been REALLY kind and offered lots of help, and if there is a special event or similar (it’s Toby and Theas’ 16th and Olivia’s 18th soon) I’m happy to accept help but for the everyday stuff we need to do it ourselves, we need our new routines.
Claire used to do the dog walk every morning and some evenings, now the kids have to do it.
The washing, cooking, cleaning, shopping, running about, arranging all now needs to be done by me – and on top of working it is a little overwhelming at the moment.
The only reason I’m writing this all down is to document how I feel NOW, so that in a few months I can look back and see how far I’ve come and how well we’re coping.
Today is a marker of that journey, a conscious “This is my current destination” – because, just like a SatNav, if I don’t know where I’ve started the journey can’t be navigated. With my current location set I can see what needs to be done and plot my route to somewhere new.
There is a new routine out there for myself and the kids, we just need to complete the journey to find it.
Yesterday was a low day
Yesterday was a low day
Yesterday was a low day.
I thought that after the funeral all the nasty ‘compulsory arranging stuff’ would end and that we could get on with dealing with things – how wrong was I!
I’ve now got a huge pile of paperwork to complete, as with many couples we had no life insurance for Claire, but she worked for Barclays 20 years ago and more recently in the local school as a learning support assistant. Both Barclays and the school had pensions attached (tiny ones, but still something) that I can now claim.
As we have no debts, no credit cards, no HP and everything was in joint names I felt no need for a grant of probate, but these pension companies are insisting I have probate before they’ll pay out… so now not only do I have to complete their lengthy forms, I have to go through the probate system as well. As if loosing Claire and trying to find new routines to do everything she did around the house wasn’t enough, I now have this extra burden of form filling to claim pensions of £20/week!
Yesterday was a low day.
The loneliness is also starting to kick in. I know I’m not alone, but I really do feel lonely. Please don’t ever take for granted your ability to ‘share’ with your partner, sharing is such a powerful and meaningful thing to do, even the small things like “Oh look that cloud looks like a duck” have a whole new meaning when you’ve no-one to share it with!
I used to store up little things like that to share with Claire for a few days and then we’d have a little chat over a coffee or on a walk – but now I can’t and I feel so lonely.
Yesterday was a low day.
OK, so rather than wallow, what am I going to do differently next time that’s positive, for me and that I can learn from?
30 MINUTES LATER
If you’ve not experienced Time Line Therapy® before you may not fully understand what this all means – apologies but this means a lot to me.
I’ve just notice that my time line changed colour a few weeks ago, if I look to the past my time line is bright right up to Claire’s death where it almost fades out, then if I turn to the future it still remains faded. I can change it in my mind but at the moment it’s not easy to maintain.
Learning 1: Each day I must check my time line and ensure it’s bright, if not make it as bright as I need to make it the brightest and most brilliant time line.
Looking down on yesterday what can I learn?
I feel like an island, alone and not connected. But as I go higher I notice something… what is an island surrounded by? Of course, it’s a beach and the sea – even writing that down brings out the tears – Claire loved the sea, she felt alive by the sea she wants to be laid to rest by the sea.
Learning 2: As that lonely island I am in fact surrounded by Claire. If I keep that picture in my mind, even though it makes me cry, I feel the love and warmth of her all around me.
Today will be a little brighter.
It means what I want it to mean and no more
It means what I want it to mean and no more
Today I feel disconnected – like there’s something important missing, the only way I can articulate it is to say I feel like I’ve had something amputated.
There’s a part of me missing and it is the strangest sensation.
I don’t really want to give the missing part of me a label as that will begin to lead how I feel, that part is clearly Claire but beyond that I simply can’t articulate how I feel – and that’s the first time I’ve come across that problem.
I think it’s all tied up with the ‘erasing’ process. The other day my mobile rang and it was the home phone calling, so it popped up saying ‘Claire is calling you’ – that felt too weird so I had to delete her from my phone. Such a simple and actually meaningless task, yet I gave it meaning… OK – coaching mode kicking in now (I just spotted the complex equivalence trigger word in that sentence for any NLPers reading this), now I’m understanding it… I’m giving things meaning which don’t have any meaning except in my head.
- Deleting Claire from my phone doesn’t mean anything, other than she’s not in my phone.
- Putting widower on an official form doesn’t mean anything other than to tick a box for someone else.
- Calling her ‘my late wife’ whilst on the phone to the pension companies doesn’t mean anything other than a label that they can understand.
When I start out writing these posts I genuinely have no idea where they are going, I just type and see what happens and often in the middle I get a little light bulb go on and I reach a new understanding.
I understand now what I was doing, and I’m not doing it any more. It means what I want it to mean and no more!
Total Recall
Total Recall
I really want to be thankful today, and most of all I want to be thankful for the vivid memories I have of Claire. Enjoying those memories is a great sign to me that I’ve come a long way in 3 weeks. Yep, it’s 3 weeks today that Claire died.
Every now and then, when I was aware that I was enjoying a moment with Claire I made sure I fully associated in to that moment – it was a conscious decision to do and I have been doing it for about 5 years now.
As soon as I became aware that I was enjoying myself with her, it could be a chat, dinner, a romantic walk by the sea or simply she could have just looked lovely one day, when I noticed those times I made sure I didn’t delete ‘stuff’ – I fully associated in to the moment to be aware of everything I possibly could.
I’d look around me and notice how she looked, what she was wearing, how she smelt, what she said, what words she used, what we were talking about, what noises were in the background, what the temperature was like, what I was wearing, if we were enjoying food/drink then what tastes was I experiencing, what were other people doing around us, how did I feel, where was that feeling, what was her hair like, what jewellery did she have on, what sensations was I experiencing, what was Claire’s make-up like, what did her skin look like, how did it physically feel to hold her hand.
Noticing all those things deliberately means I REALLY enjoyed those times we shared, and what I didn’t realise at the time was how easy it would be to recall those times when I can have no more of them.
My memories of those times are not some hazy distant memory, I have total recall. I can enjoy them over and over as if Claire was here.
And even though I’m crying again now at the thought of never doing that again, I am truly happy that I did what I did so I can continue to enjoy those moments with clarity. The name ‘Claire’ even means clear and bright. And she still is.
Moving on and Grieving seem at odds
Moving on and Grieving seem at odds
I’ve not posted for a few days as we went down to Devon to spend some time with my sister and her family – thanks guys for having us – I must say I missed the therapy that writing this blog brings!
It was tough at the sea, being there without my Claire didn’t seem right. When ever we went we used to make a point of walking on the beach, hand in hand, often in the evening and talking about how nice it would be to live there – all a bit surreal.
We’re settling in to some new routines which, to be honest, doesn’t feel right. It feels as though we are re-writing our lives without someone who should be here.
On the one hand we need to move on and develop new routines, and on the other hand we need to… to…. to… I’m not sure sure what the words are. To respect, to grieve – yes that’s the one – ‘grieving’ and ‘moving on’ seem at odds.
So what is the highest positive intention of grieving for me? Protection>love>peace>amazing joy.
And what is the highest positive intention of moving on me? Surviving>belonging>peace>amazing joy.
So actually, grieving and moving on have the same highest positive intention for me of ‘amazing joy’ – so I wonder if I could allow all the resources that are available to the part of me that wants to grieve, to share those resources with the part of me that wants to move on. Perhaps they could share those resources in synergy and harmony, working together for the same highest positive intention of allowing me to have ‘amazing joy’.
Moving on and grieving have the same intention, so I can do both.
It’s OK to move on. It’s OK to grieve. Their purpose is amazing joy.
I can live with that!
A sense of dread
A sense of dread
Last night I experienced something really odd. A deep, painful and dark sense of complete and utter dread. If I think about my own death, about the eternity of not living I get that feeling, and last night, for the first time, I was thinking about Claire and all the lovely times we had and I got the same feeling. Deep, dark, black, heavy, in my chest rising and up & outwards down my arms.
A complete sense of dread. I’ll never see, hear or hold Claire EVER again. Even writing that down seems to elicit that state in me again, and I can feel it rising in my chest…
So what if that deep and dark sense of dread that rises from my chest happened in my little toe… can I still feel it, can I get that old state back?
No.
Well I wouldn’t want to do that then would I?
Each time I feel that deep and dark sense of dread that rises from my chest I’m going to force it in to my little toe, and for some weird reason I can no longer feel it.
This is weird shit, it works so I’m doing it.
The funeral is tomorrow. My little toe is going to get worked a lot.
A Thank You
A Thank You
Over the past couple of days I’ve had a few conversations about coping and grief, and how we deal with those emotions. I know this website gets read a lot and so I want to say a public thank you to Bruce Farrow and Kim Blackmore plus Dr Tad James (although I’ve never met him!).
Almost 2 years a go I started a journey of personal development in understanding how we think, how we communicate and how we deal with emotions and manage our state. Kim and Bruce were the trainers on that journey.
As part of my development we undertook therapy for negative emotions using Time Line Therapy ® developed by Dr Tad James (hence the thank you to him also).
Over the past 2 weeks since Claire’s untimely death the techniques, ideas and mind set I’ve developed have literally saved me from despair – each day I do Time Line Therapy on myself, learn from the day, apply what I learnt to myself, decide what I’ll do differently next time and move on… just a tiny bit.
I’m experiencing one of the biggest significant emotional events it’s possible to endure, yet I come to it clean. I have no baggage from the past which enables me to deal with this event, bit by bit, hour by hour and day by day I deal with what I experience each day and resolve it.
Writing this blog helps as I can use it as a dialogue with myself, one sentence is often me being client, the next me being coach. It helps – enormously. So if you read these posts and it sounds like two people having a conversation, then that’s often exactly what it is.
Bruce and Kim, I want to thank you from the bottom of my heart for giving me access to all my resources, for helping me realise that I control my mind and therefore my results and for taking the lid off the dustbin!