Tag: loneliness
How to support someone that is grieving
How to support someone that is grieving
If we know someone that is grieving and want to offer them support, what can we say?
You may feel that the person you know is doing really well and want to offer them encouragement, however just saying to someone they are doing really well is not ‘seeing’ them.
As a human being we all want to be ‘seen’, we all want to be noticed and understood, sometimes when we grieving it can feel extremely lonely. If someone just says, “hey, you are doing really well”, it can feel like we’re not really being noticed, we can feel like “Oh no I’m not, I am struggling enormously and feel terrible”.
Acknowledging how a grieving person feels can help them feel ‘seen’, noticed, and understood and can help them with their grief and loss, particularly coping with grief very soon after the death. Rather than just say our grieving friend is doing well, if we ‘see’ them and notice their pain also this can help them through their difficult times.
Try saying something like, “I see how much you are struggling, I see how much pain you are in, I see how difficult this is for you and yet at the same time I see how well you are doing”, this time our grieving friend has the support and encouragement that they are doing well and we have also noticed the difficulties they are going through – they may now feel ‘seen’ , more understood and better supported.
Good luck…
A change of perspective
A change of perspective
When I feel low I write. Writing helps me make sense of everything, it helps me put things in order.
Perspective 1
It’s the loneliness that is truly getting to me at the moment, I’m not talking about being alone, I’m talking about being lonely. When I married Claire I meant every single word of our vows, I completely and utterly gave myself to her and I know she did to me also. From that moment, when the Rev David Pytches joined our hands together and raised them high, two people became one. And that was how we lived.
Claire has been gone eight months and I still talk about ‘we’. “WE moved to Dorset because…”, “WE bought this house because…” – it is just ingrained into my every thought and my every action that we do this together.
The result of living like this for 22 years is that I still want to share everything with her. When I see the waves crashing against the shoreline in the middle of the storm it only seems to have significance because I could talk about it with Claire. When I taste a glorious bottle of the finest red wine, it tastes so good because I could share that experience with Claire. Without sharing there seems to be no significance.
What’s the point of seeing a beautiful sunset if there’s no one to share it with?
What’s the point of enjoying a lovely meal if there’s no one to share it with?
Sharing is me, sharing digs to the root of who I am and without the ability to do that it seems to rock my identity. I don’t know who I am any more.
I can’t see any immediate resolution to it.
I guess time will find a way.
Perspective 2
This part is written with the exact same loneliness emotion in mind but I want to tackle it from a different perspective. I met with a wonderful friend the other day, our situations are different but we share similar experiences of loss, she wrote to me today:
“I’ve developed a stronger and deeper relationship with [family and friends] that I wouldn’t have had… and that has enriched my life enormously”
This statement made me stop in my tracks. Of course the pain of losing Claire cuts deep but sometimes those surgical cuts can also have a healing effect. I can definitely feel a deeper relationship with some family members since losing Claire, especially my wonderful kids. I can feel a deeper connection (rather intangible) but also notice things that are said and done (much more tangible) which never would have been said or done before.
In that sense, and with that frame of reference on the same situation, I can also see that my life has been enriched enormously.
Thank you O,T,T & M…. I love you guys.
Love is…
Love is…
This post has the possibility to be cataclysmicly misinterpreted, but I’m going to write it anyway because I want to document how I feel and I know others feel the same way when they have lost partners.
Words can’t express how lonely I feel at the moment, and that is very definitely ‘lonely’ and not ‘alone’. Those two words seem to have the same meaning on the face of it but they are so completely different, I’m surrounded by wonderful kids, supportive family and amazing friends who are doing everything they can (for which I am truly and eternally grateful) but it doesn’t matter what anyone does there is no substitute for the love that is shared between partners.
There is something about the love of a partner that is so very different from anyone else. There are conditions to the love from a partner, it’s not handed out because they are family or because they feel sorry for someone, the love from family and friends is unconditional, it’s kind of compulsory because of the relationship. But the love of a partner is conditional, conditional upon that love being reciprocated and it feels very different to all the other kinds of love.
The Love of a partner has to be worked at, it has to be noticed every day and it is completely two-way, and because it has to be worked at you feel it every time the other person extends their love towards you – and right now that love is missing. Not only missing from being given to me but missing in that I can’t hand it out, and that feels cold… so very cold.
There’s nothing that can replace noticing how beautiful Claire was, stroking her hair, giving her a peck on the cheek and then getting on with what ever I was doing. Even hearing the jingling of another woman’s jewellery brings those emotions flooding back, or seeing someone wearing some clothes similar to what Claire wore reminds me that I can’t just tell her I love her, give her a peck on the cheek – giving love and feeling love!
I posted this on Facebook last night, and I really mean it…
“If you have a partner, please go and hug them right now and notice how wonderful it feels to be so close to the one you love. I’m wishing I could do the same.”
Keep Looking Up
Keep Looking Up
I’ve got so much support around me from friends, family and work colleagues – thank you guys, you’re all amazing and I really appreciate it.
There’s no point to this post, I’m just writing how I feel because it’s better that way.
When the party’s finished, when the work is completed or when the day turns to evening everyone else’s life continues the same as it did before with the familiar people around them. Mine doesn’t. I come home to an empty house. I sleep in an empty bed. I’ve no-one to share the day with, no-one to say good night to, no-one to look forward to seeing first thing in the morning.
Waking in the morning and the evenings are the worst times. They are so very quiet and I’m doing everything I can to not listen to the silence.
Silence really can be deafening.
There isn’t anything anyone can do. In fact doing more things in the day (thank you to everyone that has invited me out or offered to help) in some strange way makes the silence worse. It’s the contrast I think. Busy in the day and then BAM… it all stops when everyone goes home.
Sometimes it’s just easier to keep things low level all day, then the evenings don’t seem quite so bad.
Yes, I’m struggling, but YES I’m fighting too. I will win, I will learn to deal with the silence in some way and no matter how deep this black pit goes I will always keep looking upwards to I can see the light above me, no matter how far away it is.
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!
Loneliness
Loneliness
Last night I realised that this is the longest time in 29 years that I haven’t seen Claire. She died 2 weeks ago and the first year we were going out with each other, she was 15 and I was 16, our parents ‘dragged’ us on our family holiday for a fortnight and we didn’t see each other – that’s been the only time we were apart for this long.
We didn’t live with each other before we were married, and so, since the 22nd June 1991 when we got back from our honeymoon we haven’t spent more than 6 days apart and we’ve spoken everyday for those last 22 years.
Yes, I guess today I feel a little lonely.
Now here are my thoughts about loneliness:
- Loneliness is a ‘label’ which has no definite meaning
- Because it has no definite meaning it means different things to different people
- Because it means different things to different people it can never be defined
- Because it can not be defined, what is it anyway and does it even exist?
I can give how I feel a label, I can call it ‘lonely’ if I like but I won’ t let it define me. If I label myself as ‘lonely’ then people will feel a need to respond in a certain way… dependant upon THEIR idea of what that label means. If I label myself as lonely I might start acting that way even more, and so it will become a self fulfilling prophecy.
So I’m not ‘lonely’ I just want to talk to Claire. I want to hold her again.
What does holding her get for me?
I guess it helps me relax, feel warm inside, feel at peace. And if I close my eyes and take myself back to a time when I was holding her I can still feel that peace, relaxation and warmth.
Thank you Claire, you’re still with me. I love you.