Half a decade

Five years.

Half a decade.

How can it be half a fucking decade since Pete died?

For some reason, like the first year, the five year milestone seems like a really significant one.

So much has happened in the last five years.

All of the kids have now finished primary school when only one of them had finished it weeks before Pete died.

Three of four of the kids are teenagers and next week the littlest one will turn the age the eldest one was when Pete died (12).

At the end of this month all of the kids will be at high school together. The eldest started high school the day after her Dad's funeral.

Friends and family have had babies and got married and divorced in the last five years.

I got a job in an office and have been on TV and radio and MC'd events for things that didn't even exist when he was alive.

We've had a global pandemic. I have remote schooled 4 kids for 6 out of 8 terms and worked from home for 2 years. And we remained, for the most part, sane.

We bought a house.

I have cried more than I ever thought possible.

I have operated on less sleep than I ever thought would allow a human to be functional.

We have navigated five fucking years of grief and heartbreak and firsts and triumphs and excitements and achievements without a dad and husband.

We have seen Pete's impact on people and communities be celebrated in amazing ways.

We have witnessed and been the beneficiaries of people at their utmost amazing selves.

We have been held up and let down and by-passed and included in ways and things that prior to five years ago I didn't even know existed by people who were part of or never part of our lives when Pete was alive.

There have been hockey premierships, rowing medals, cricket trophies, leadership positions, rep team selections, house captaincies, sport captaincies.

There has been jobs, licenses gained for teenagers ... boyfriends and braces come and gone.

I have tested out the 'dating in your 40s' waters without long term success ... got the added learning adventure of a narcissist for bonus points.

There has been new friends arrive and old friends move away and family members and pets lost and gained.

My heart and brain have given me the entire human experience over the course of the journey: I've been so scared I couldn't move, so depleted I never thought I would get up again, so proud I thought my heart would actually burst, so broken I never thought I could be repaired.

And despite of all those things happening in the 1825 days / 2,628,000 minutes since we lost Pete I can still tell you every single thing that happened on January 20, 2019.

The most difficult for me is that still, in a heartbeat, I can see the look in the his eyes the very last time I looked into them.

Those amazing sparkling blue eyes that danced wickedly when he laughed or told a joke or he told me he loved me, so filled with fear and panic. Without either of us knowing at the time, it was because he was dying in front of me.

The fear that look gave me has a special place in the pit of my stomach and depths of my heart to this day.

On any given day in the last five years where I am really struggling, or am too tired, or too overwhelmed, my brain will revert to the panic stricken state of that day and all the feelings I felt on it.

It's not as often as it used to be ... but that fear creeps back every so often, seeping into and opening the wound losing Pete made. It creates an anxiety that can paralyse me, and one which didn't exist before he died.

I've spent a lot of money in the last 5 years on food and shoes and cheese and alcohol and holidays and 'things' as a way of trying to cope with all that.

And I've also spent a shit-tonne on counselling and psychologists for me and the kids to better handle it ... also on scans of my body parts so I have a medical imaging diagnostic proof that I do not have DVT or a heart issue that will leave my children orphaned when my brain and body collude and convince me a random twinge is that feeling of 'weird' Pete told me he felt before collapsing.

*Note to anyone planning on falling down and dying on their spouse: please use more specific language than 'weird' lest it create a whole world of unknown anxiety in the surviving spouse. Thank you!

In the last five years I've also learned some things.

I have learned that the quote someone sent me the week after Pete died that says: you never know how strong you are until being strong is your only choice ... or various iterations of it ... is true... and also complete bullshit because expecting people to be strong in situations like this is just too.fucking.hard for them to actually bear sometimes.

The song in the Frozen 2 movie about doing 'the next right thing' is ridiculously accurate when faced with things that are too hard for your brain to comprehend. And if it takes a Disney movie song to get you to take the next step forward - despite the fact you are a grown adult - so be it.

I have learned that no matter how hard I cry in the shower I should should not let myself actually hit the ground ... allowing yourself to collapse into yourself but not to the floor is an actual differentiation. It's fallen but not defeated. Also tiles are hard to lie on. And the water is colder on the floor. And shower walls are actually very good at holding you up when your legs collapse. And when you haven't slept a lot, it is actually too physically difficult and exhausting to get up off the ground.

I have learned that people and community are amazing and extraordinary and just when you think no one notices just how far into the quicksand you've sunk and you think you might actually be suffocating, they arrive with a vine to pull you out - physically and metaphorically.

The 'vine' to get you out of the quicksand can be something so small the person might think nothing of it, like a call or a message or a meal or a hug at just the right time, or it could be the the most overwhelmingly generous support. The gratefulness for it is equal some days because both have had such profound impact on us when we received them.

I have learned that grief is a horrific beast that infiltrates all of the places in your body and brain and it sweeps in and muddles around with your insides like I could never have imagined, for longer than I knew and in ways I didn't even understand... I genuinely didn't know that I wouldn't be able to think straight because of it. Widow/grief brain is definitely a thing.

Being so ignorant around grief and its impact is something I wish I had stayed. And at my worst I get most upset at the unfairness that the kids had to experience it's devastating impacts so young when I had merrily lived my life with only glimpses of it for 39 years.

I have learned that kids deal with grief differently. They don't cry or process it like adults. It comes in fits and starts. I now know that kids just sometimes need 'sad days' where they are allowed to wallow in their grief for a bit - sometimes years after their loss and sometimes without rhyme or reason - and that is ok. One or two sad days sporadically is healthier than the outdated and damaging notions that I've been told about kids grieving, which includes but is not limited to: they should just carry on as if nothing has changed, that they get over it quicker (than adults), that they aren't grieving if they are not crying enough, that they should stop every activity they do so they can grieve / be sad, or that they need to grow up beyond their years because of what happened.

I have learned that even when you are absolutely very sure you cannot, you can actually get yourself out of bed, the shower, the car, to the event, by continuing to repeat any combination of the words: come on / get up / get out / you can do this / just breathe ... and when your mind and body is in a state of complete and utter out of control, a big deep breath helps.

This is as true today as it has been almost every single one of those 1825 days when I have had to use it in some form.

I have learned that my kids are even more extraordinary than I ever imagined they could be. Their capacity to lean in, hold on, love one another, find resources within themselves even adults can't when they are struggling to understand it all has been something to behold. They truly are fucking amazing.

I have learned that as a Western Society we absolutely suck at understanding grief and the expectations placed on people enduring it are ridiculous: The first year is not necessarily the hardest. Nothing magical happens on Day 366 - it's just as shit as it was all the days before. Just because you've done something once without the person you've lost, doesn't mean it doesn't sting again the third time, or the fifth, or the 50th. You can look at a photo of them 100 times and not cry, and on the 101st time, you burst into tears. That could be a month after, a year after or 3.6 years later. Grief has no time line. It is not linear - there are no 'stages'. And unless you're the person experiencing it (and even then) the words you should/could/would must not be uttered.

I now know there is such a thing as a the 'grief olympics' where adults try and compete with others to claim the title of the most grief stricken. It's bizarre and unbelievable what some people will say and do to claim that title, or minimise another person's grief to make themselves feel better.

I have discovered people who have experienced profound grief or have been widowed are some of the best people to sit with you in yours. There is a weird connection to someone who has also lost a person. Everyone deals with their grief differently but there is an undeniable connection to someone who 'gets it' - a lot develop a strange sense of dark humour as a coping mechanism for the enormity of it all. These people you might not ever meet in real life. Or they may be hundreds or thousands of kilometres away. The internet can be an amazing space to find people of a similar life situation.

I have learned people will say the dumbest of things with the most heartfelt good intentions and that is always better than someone ignoring you or crossing the street because they don't want to, or can't, speak to you. Or someone telling you they can't cope your grief.

I have learned that hugs are some of the most powerful healing things a person can give someone who is hurting. Being given one that allows you to collapse into it is healing beyond measure. Being able to give one that allows someone to do that is also just as healing.

With the impending anniversary date I've been thinking a lot about the last five years.

I look at photos of the kids then and now and think: oh my god, they were so little ...

And I look at photos and videos of all the things we have done and get such a pang of: wow we have done a lot ... muddled together with: look at all the things we have done / have had to do without Pete ...

But mostly I look at it all and think: how is it five fucking YEARS since we have had Pete in our lives?

Looking back on it all - I will never ever know how I have done some of the things I have done. How we have achieved the things we have. People ask me how and I honestly don't know.

I might be able to put some of it down to my absolute sheer refusal to let what was put in front of me/us beat me and destroy what we had made.

Basically brute force and ignorance.

It is a lot a commitment I made standing over Pete's dead body about the kids so deep in my heart on that day along the lines of despite, in spite, and irrespective of what had happened, my grief and no matter how hard it was for me, I had to be there for them and provide what they needed to make them ok.

It was also a little bit, maybe, my stubbornness and determination to prove the people who told me I couldn't do these things, wrong.

I admit I am not above this pettiness with some things. #toldyouso

We also had the people who helped us, help us.

I will never be able to express my gratitude to them enough.

Losing Pete seems like yesterday and a lifetime ago. The duality of all still dumbfounds me.

Some days I still long for the life I used to have. I loved my life before. I crave the normalcy of it. I still desperately miss the love - the greatest loss for me is a selfish one - losing the person who loved and put me above all. My best friend. The person who backed me in and backed me up. Having to do all of this on my own without ever having a person to whom mine and the kids wellbeing was their greatest priority day in, day out, has been just too hard sometimes.

People have been there for us. Oh my goodness people have been there. But there's a difference when we are not their people. It's difficult to explain. But getting into bed alone having settled four grieving children and having no one to hug you in your grief night after night after night, is such an isolating and lonely and heartbreaking experience I wouldn't wish it on anyone.

I look at the life I have now and I don't recognise my old life in it some days - what we had seems so long ago and what we have now hasn't had Pete in it for so long that I don't even know what he would make of it.

We have people in our life now who never knew Pete. Who don't know he died. Who don't know our life 'before'. I'm of an age where people just assume I'm divorced. Or separated. In reality we sort of are separated, but also not ... he moves between the wine rack and the bookshelf in the loungeroom and the kids have him in necklaces and anklets... so he's never far away.

We have people in our life now I wish had known Pete. I know they would have been friends. I have often lamented what might have been.

I do know for sure Pete would not begrudge or ague a single decision I have made for the kids and I since he died.

Wait ... he may question how many shoes I've bought ... and the way I've chosen to operate the BBQ and his golf clubs ...

In the beginning I used to use him and what we had discussed for our future and our joint moral compass we had for our family as a guide. That has become increasingly more difficult now the kids are almost all older now than the last time he parented them. I try to maintain that even keel but honestly, some of the things I've dealt with didn't even exist when he was alive! I'm looking at you Tik Tok ...

In the early days making decisions about 'us' was based on what we would have done with him as part of our family.

Now, the 'us' is different. Our 'us' decisions are about me and the kids and absolutely now look different to what we had planned or imaged because he isn't here. And he won't ever be here.

I feel like the last five years, though, have created a new core memory of what 'us' is.

The Disney Pixar movie Inside Out nailed it when the realisation came that core memories of joy often cannot exist without sadness. That upending all the balls sometimes shows you what the foundation of it all is. The last five years of us living without Pete has created a core memory ball for me and the kids that has blue and yellow - sadness and joy - equally mixed together but always with a base of love and a dash of 'oh FFS!' ... just as it's always been ... but different to what it was.

We as a family and individuals have experienced the greatest of sadness and depths of despair and days where getting up was just too hard, and at the same time, we have experienced amazing things and people and had holidays together, celebrated birthdays and achievements and laughed together and loved each other so much.

I don't know what happens after the five year milestone has passed. But it really feels like a line in the sand for me somehow. Because from hereon in, our life is different.

This year, we begin to do and experience things that Pete has not had a physical part of in any way shape of form - kids in high school, 18 year old children, a house full of teenagers - he didn't even get to parenting one teenager. Up until this year, there was always something tying us to the things we did with him, because even if only for a little while, he was part of them.

There is not a single bricks and mortar thing left in our life that Pete was part of. There are still people and places and activities, but it somehow now feels different. It feels like a chapter or a cover of a book closing. Like we have got to the end of that book of our life with him in it.

There is a huge sadness in my heart about that.

In lots of ways it feels like it's leaving him and something we love so much behind.

For five years we have reread and reread the book of us, and we know the story so well because we have loved it and lived it ... but now, we can only bring Pete along as a character in the book going forward ... he can't help me write the story any more.

And that scares me so much.

I've cried and cried writing those sentences, I've felt the heat of anxiety rise up my neck as I reread them and understand the consequences / reality of them by putting them on paper and not just having them in my brain where they have been scaring me for weeks as we get to this anniversary. It feels like a betrayal writing it out but I know it's not, it's a reality. We aren't 'moving on' but things have shifted. Time is marching on for us and we carry him with us, but he isn't with us like he has been the last five years. It's like I've crossed the battlefield... but now I'm in No Man's Land ... and I can't go back any more and keep checking with him if I'm doing it right like I've been able to.

So for the five year anniversary, the kids and I have run away to the city, where we will dine at a restaurant Pete always wanted to and never got to. Good food and good wine and good company were his favourite things. Making a good story about it that can be retold would have been right up his alley.

The five of us will sit at that table and I will look at my four amazing little people and we will toast ourselves for what we have done and where we have gone from and to in the last five years.

Not in a celebratory way but in a commemorative way.

Because oh my goodness the five of us have dragged each other through some trials and tribulations in the last half a decade.

But the five of us in Team Mecham - together with our amazing villagers - have got to where we are today when honestly, when I was standing in front of his still warm dead body five years ago, I wasn't sure I knew I would get through five hours of life thereafter.

But we have done it, for half a fucking decade ...