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Tag: birthdays

Day Zero

Day Zero

For the year after Claire died I wrote so many blog posts and every one of those contained so much pain. In recent times the blog posts have been more positive and uplifting… But sometimes the pain returns.

It’s my youngest daughter’s 18th birthday today.

Claire and I had 4 kids, all close together, 4 under 4 years old at one point!

It was really tough with no time to think or do anything for ourselves… All there was were the kids.

About 10 years ago Claire started to count down the years, months and days to when she considered herself ‘free of parental responsibility’ when the youngest was 18.

Every time the kids kicked off, she’d smile at me and say through gritted teeth “7 years, 3 months and 2 days to go”. We laughed. Sometimes.

She told all of the kids (and me) that when she was free of parental responsibility that she was having a year sabbatical. No cooking, no washing, no cleaning, only doing things that she wanted to do.

When she died the countdown was at 3 years 11 months.

Today it’s at zero.

The one thing that I’ve discovered over this past four years is that whenever there is pain this can be helped by taking a ‘learning’ from the situation.

When we learn something it’s a positive, we can either learn something that we should do or learn something that we shouldn’t do… Either way we can improve our lives  for the future.

So what have I learnt this time?

I’ve learned that:

  • This pain will never go away, it’s part of me, it’s part of [my] life.
  • What happened to us as a family will continue to impact us when we least want it to,  birthdays and anniversaries are no exception.
  • Putting life on hold isn’t worth it..
  • Be clear about why we are delaying doing things we want to do and ask ourselves the question “What does this thing I want to do in the future get for me? And how can I have that, at least in part, now?”, That thing we are putting off may get us freedom, enjoyment, fulfilment, excitement or something else… Why delay those feelings, let’s look for other ways  to enjoy them now, whilst we can.

Today is a day of very mixed emotions. I’m totally excited for my daughter, happy in so many ways and yet, at the same time so desperately sad that Claire never saw her day zero.

Or perhaps she did…

 

Removing a critical component

Removing a critical component

My middle daughter (16 years old) wanted to go to the shops on Saturday and asked if I would go with her, oh joy I thought!

We wandered around for a bit going in and out of various shops whilst she looked for the sunglasses she wanted and I really noticed how sorely lacking in certain skills I am. The whole ‘shopping’ thing is totally beyond me, I do man shopping and it takes me a few minutes to get what I want and then I’m in the car and going home again.

It just highlights the things that Claire used to do which we all took for granted. Don’t get me wrong, Claire hated shopping too and we often joked that she could be an honorary man when it came to her style of shopping, but at least when the girls wanted someone to accompany them, she knew how to play the good mother and join in the ‘fun’.

It’s also been a few family members birthday this week, and I missed it. Once again, I’m a typical man.

If things were the other way round and it was me that had died then Claire would be writing the same things I’m sure, from a different perspective. I suppose it’s to be expected that as we get back to normal, what ever normal is, we begin to notice the old ‘normal’ things that are difficult or impossible to do now.

I’m quite resourceful person so can usually cope in most situations, but it’s so difficult when I spent 22 years not exercising a whole load of resources. It sounds sexist but there are whole load of ‘motherly/womanly’ resources which Clare had in abundance and so it was easier to let her look after those side of things in life. And now I can almost see the gaping hole where those resources should be, but I don’t even know what they are let alone how to begin using them.

Sending birthday cards, booking holidays or going to the shops with the girls sound like easy things to do, but I’m struggling to know where to start.

Making the printer work, packing the car to go on holiday and finding the best deal to shop online is what I know how to do and to me those things seem easy, but ask me to get organised enough to buy a birthday card a week in advance, write it and get it to the post box and I’ll struggle. I just haven’t used ‘that resource’ (what ever that resource is) for 20 odd years.

I guess that’s one of the problems of working Together in a marriage, like a well oiled And highly efficient machine, as soon as one of the critical components is removed the whole machine falls apart – Our marriage worked so well because we worked so well together, and it seems ironic that it is that very fact that makes things so tough now.

I know that as time goes on I will recognise what resources are lacking and begin to find out how to use them but in the meantime if I miss your birthday please accept my apologies.

 

Negatives Don’t Attract

Negatives Don’t Attract

It was Olivia’s,  my eldest daughter’s, 18th birthday on Saturday – that was a tough one. We went out for a meal as a family and yet at the same time we weren’t a family. There was someone missing which left something missing from the room, something missing from the conversation and something missing in the atmosphere of the day.

Right at this moment in time every breath seems like an effort, the tiredness is almost overpowering, I make it to 8 PM each night and need to lie down.

Next weekend would have been our 22nd wedding anniversary and on reflection I think I can see where the tiredness is coming from.

It’s almost as though I know I’m going to have to face these events, birthdays, anniversaries, Christmas and family celebrations without Claire. It’s like these events have a magnet attached to them, except rather than be attracted to them I feel as though my body has the same negative polarity and I’m being pushed away. Those events are in the future and I’m being pushed to stay in the now and it’s making moving forwards a hard slog.

Normally in life we have events to look forward to, those same birthdays, holidays and anniversaries are positive attractions. But without the one you love those days are to be avoided at all costs.

Right now I’m not sure what the solution is, I think finding something positive that I can look forward to would be good. The future would then hold some form of positive draw which would help to overcome the aching tiredness.

On an entirely different note I’ve had three people contact me via this website in the past week. Two of them have recently lost their spouse and one doesn’t have long left as their partner is in the final stages of a terminal illness. One thing struck me, in times gone by I would have avoided any conversation that involved death. It’s often a taboo subject and depressing to talk about. Yet not one of these three communications I had left me feeling depressed, in fact quite the opposite.

The  conversation (via e-mail) with the person who is about to lose their partner to a terminal illness was the toughest, and yet even in what could be my darkest hours, it was good to help someone else. Knowing that my experiences, no matter how difficult they are to me as an individual, can help someone else can only be a positive thing.

50% of all couples will experience the death of their partner, I guess that is the reality, and so I know am not alone!

So, back to work – Finding a new positive future is going to be my job this week. Something to look forward to, something that is a positive draw which can get me through the more challenging days… I wonder what that positive thing could be?

Change Time

Change Time

I know from my training as a coach that we create emotional problems (phobias, fear, anger etc) when there is a massive change, or significant emotional event, in our lives that our neurology can’t cope with, our mind simply dumps everything in to an ’emotional dustbin’ and screws the lid on tight to keep us safe and to allow us to cope.

Up until now I’ve not really experienced such a significant single event, sure we’ve had some tough times (people that know us know what those are) but apart from when the twins were born and we nearly lost Toby things have been pretty stable – or at least they’ve seemed that way.

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At the time things can seem up and down, like tracking the stock market up and down with one of those little charts they draw… up, down, up, down… almost a rhythm to it.

At the time it seems like it’s up and down, but when we get a SIGNIFICANT event, like the death of a spouse and we pan out from that chart and take the whole thing in context, that small area of our lives seems to be constant when we can see that huge event in the context of everything else.

Up until last night I didn’t realise how much my life has changed since 17th April 2013.

If I compare now to 16th April everything has changed – work, kids, home, relationship… everything!

That old life has gone – the routines, the way we did things, the habits, the aspirations, the plans – all changed.

Accepting that is difficult, but the reality is that there is no choice and Claire always told me “If you can’t change it, accept it and move on to something you CAN change’ – she was right… she always was!

Claire, it’s the twins birthday today and we miss you. I remember 16 years ago when we almost lost Toby and he was hooked up to a ventilator looking really ill. You did so well, you were such a great Mum and you sat by them both for weeks in special care. It’s days like today when we really notice you are absent. You are so missed, you really are. I love you so much Claire and this pain of loss is hard to take, but I know I have to get through it. Thank you for all you did sweetheart. We’ll miss you today.