DEALING WITH GRIEF – part one written in January 2024.
“BEYOND THIS PLACE OF WRATH AND TEARS, I FOUND MYSELF”
Hello 2024, you have broken me already.
Many people are greeting you with a Happy New Year shout and positive feelings and hope. Resolutions are being promised in your honour. People trying to be better people, care for themselves more, think about the environment perhaps, or determined to try something that may scare them, a leap of faith maybe.
I’m sorry I’m not.
During your predecessors twelve months I’ve had many moments of pure joy. Being a grandmother to perfect healthy twins, watching my youngest son marry in 1920’s style. What fun. Spending three weeks with both sons nearby. Planting a new garden, a vegetable patch and watching and tasting the results. Entering writing competitions, writing a whole story in draft in just 54 days. Making apple juice for the first time with great success. Making a new friend in a nearby village. Experimenting and playing with different art techniques and enjoying being freely creative.
I’ve had many days of hope too. Planning cycle tours and dreaming of cycling to new places but never quite getting there. Hoping mum in law could get to see her great grandchildren, which she did, but it was bittersweet as she will never be well enough to come to our home in France again. Hoping to finish and publish more books but falling short. Hoping to have success at marketing the books and stories I have already sent into the world but failing again to be social and make contacts beyond my already small circle. Hoping to enjoy a huge autumn harvest and watching the plants grow and thrive but then having 10 days in which to harvest what was ready, process, preserve, pick plants before their prime so there was no waste. Just 10 days to prep beds for next year, to throw in seeds and broadbeans as a winter crop experiment and then leave my comfort zone for the last three months as family called. Hoping to get our failing internet based lego business back on track after so much neglect in 2022 as we were needed in the UK. Slowly seeing it getting back on track only to close it again as family called. Hoping for a less emotional year in 2023 but then losing my uncle so sudden, so painfully, too young.
I am not making resolutions as I live day by day. It is not possible to make plans when Mum in law is dying. My parents are now settled in a care home but their home needs selling. It has added complications from their choices in the past and I will need to be there for some things, and I cannot live full-time at my mum in laws with my hubby as his brother’s cats live there and I am allergic to cats. It’s taken a while, but I have a grand arsenal of medications now that seems to be doing the trick. Not being home for over 3 months and aching to be back there near my gorgeous twin grandchildren, but knowing that when I do go back it will mean my mum in law has passed and another ache will rest in my heart.
I try to care for myself, but I am eating supermarket food instead of enjoying energy-giving home-grown vegetables. At home, even through the winter I eat at least one meal a day from the garden. My histamine levels soar with the damp in this country, mould, dogs, and cats leaving me fatigued. I’ve had a stubborn cough that wouldn’t leave despite copious amounts of fresh fruit, vit C and medications, but thank you 2024 because you have finally seen off that cough. I know that writing and being creative is so good for me, but I've not written now for almost four months and although I miss it, I don't have the head space, I've been making too many decisions for other people and had none left for writing.
But things are changing as my role in caring for my parents, settling them into a care home and sorting their house for sale is almost done. I am handing over the official part of the selling to my sister who lives in the UK. Head space for writing is returning.
2024, I know some of what you are bringing to my life, but the rest will be a surprise. Any leaps into scariness? Maybe. But taking one day at a time for now.
And those one days have not been full of joy.
The inevitable has happened and after days and nights of sitting by her side, my mother-in-law died. It was a cruel death of pain and suffering, but at home as she’d wanted. It was so hard to see what her slow demise was doing to her sons, so I tried to be a rock of calm for them. A support so they could have respite and rest. We shared the honour and fear and sadness. We fought for a release from pain side by side. I thought I was okay.
How much we fool ourselves into believing we are okay. We are fine, that we can keep giving of ourselves without a backlash at some time. How long can we keep our shoulders back and our backs straight and that smile on our face as we sort and care for loved ones? It seems that grief for all the changes and acknowledgment of the frailty of life catches up. I was so sad that we would not be with our grandchildren on their first birthday, but we were needed here. A sore and pulled apart heart in my chest.
The day my mother-in-law drew her last breath I was near. I rested my hand upon her still chest and touched her cooling hand while my husband fetched his brother. I left the room when they returned. Leaving them to their shared grief. I left the house within 30 minutes of her passing to travel to my mother in the care home I had settled her in, in time to take her to hospital for high blood pressure. We spent the day there. I returned to my parent’s home which I have stripped of their memories and life as if it didn’t matter, to find my grieving husband dealing with a leaking pipe from cowboy workers who were working in the roof and left a mess.
No time to grieve. No time to comfort, just battle on. I was so numb.
I saw my father and he looked so thin. The comparison with my mother in law’s journey was too similar, too raw and grief seeped through a tiny crack.
Battling on wasn’t possible.
The dust from the loft work was the final straw for my lungs and a chest cough began as I returned to my husband’s side to support him in his held back grief.
The news that the cats were remaining in the house meant it was time to leave again. To be away from my husband and son again because of my stupid body and its chronic allergic asthma. I have taken so many medications to make it possible to stay with them there are no more I could find, and now I had a chest cough I could not stay and risk a chest infection. So torn apart.
I’m told, I’ve read, that in the end we either lash out or withdraw.
I have done both.
I am ashamed to say I lashed out at a man with mental health issues who is grieving for the loss not only of his mother, but of his support system. I apologised but the damage was done, and now I have withdrawn like an injured fox so I can do no more harm. But in withdrawing I am abandoning my husband and son in a time of emotional support need. It seems I cannot do anything right. Every choice I make is hurting someone.
I am ashamed of myself. I do not like this person I am. The darkest, meanest, cruelest parts of me surfaced and I had no option but to acknowledge them. I don’t want to look at myself, to be alongside me. It doesn’t matter that it was months of strain and stress, unresolved grief, not being able to support my husband when he needed me. I’ve made too many wrong decisions, have too many regrets, and I am so sorry.
I’ve tried too hard and failed spectacularly.
So, this is me in the first month of 2024. Broken and ashamed, a heart stained with regret and confusion.
We go home soon, together, my husband and I. Maybe we can grieve, and heal, and recover there. Maybe the rest of this year will bring back joy and hope and happiness, but I know there will always be a grey shadow on the start of 2024. And on my heart.
I started a healing Art Journal into which I express my grief. It helps.
I am ready to share my grief journey in the hope that it helps others.
We are not alone in making mistakes.
We are not perfect.
We are human.
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