At the end of last week, I was about as non compos mentis as I have been in 2 years.
My world was all just too much.
I had every one and every thing pulling me in a dozen different directions. I couldn’t work out which was the right priority order to put things in and when I did, there just seemed to be more come into play that I needed to consider.
I couldn’t find the time to fit all the things I needed to in. And then I would work out how to make the juggle work, and a ball would fall out of the mix or into the mix, and I’d need to start again.
I was not doing what I needed to do for people. I was not doing what I needed to do for work. I was not doing what I needed to do for me. And when I thought I had people lined up to help me navigate it, something in their world changed, which meant they couldn’t help. And that’s ok. Everyone has their own life. I just had to reassess mine to make the thing they were going to help me do fit back into my program.
I had to make adult decisions that I needed help to try and talk through but no one could help me. Or, people could because the decisions I had to make had paid experts involved, but I wanted someone to help me, personally, not professionally.
I was not handling the kids well.
There was yelling.
So. Much. Yelling.
There was late nights consoling kids, and lecturing kids, and trying to educate kids on the real world, and cuddling kids, and when I got one sorted, another one needed me. For kind of the same but slightly different things. Not the least of which was to spend some time with them reading a book before bed.
There was the physical removal of a phone from a child. It wasn’t pretty. From either of us.
Then I was dealing with the fact I had chopped the top off my thumb the week before.
And it just added to the mix. It might have only been a bit of skin off the end of my finger, but it just made everything harder. And it hurt like a bastard when I hit it!
And we had peaks of good during the week. We still got to school. We still got to work. We still got to our appointments. We still gushed over a new kitten brought into the fold to try and heal the hurt.
But every argument, knockdown, hard bit, or added thing just added a weight to the top of my head making it harder to surface for air.
So last Friday morning when I was getting up at 6am, to leave at 7am, to get to an MRI appointment at 8.15 and I was stressed from the juggle of it all, way too tired, I was booking a child into an MRI appointment and there was general discussion in the building about lumbar punctures and I was saying to the patient “I’ll just wait in the car I’ve got work to do” and I sat in the car and made work phone calls and sent emails … I started having a complete and utter panic attack.
I was reliving what was a recurring nightmare in the second half of 2018 when we didn’t know what was wrong with Pete. Why he wasn’t getting better. Why the ‘oh we’ll just you some prednisolone that should sort it out …’ wasn’t working. Why we spent hours and hours and hours of him being scanned and poked and prodded. It shot me straight back to the day we drove into Melbourne and I had my first ever panic attack because we were there for a lumbar puncture because the doctors needed to rule out MND. Because it was a realistic proposition at that time that’s what he had. And I couldn’t get my head around it and what that would mean.
As it turns out, it wasn’t MND. And the auto immune thing he had didn’t kill him. it was a blot clot he had developed in his legs due to his inactivity that suddenly let go and killed him within 10 minutes of him saying to me ‘I feel weird’.
After the MRI, I needed to take time out and I found coffee. And next door found the most amazing seafood store. It had the most incredible marinara mix. Pete and I used to judge supermarkets on the marinara mixes. It was a pre-child meal at least once a month. It holds a weird place in my memories so when I saw this amazing mix, I bought it, almost out of habit. And then it suddenly dawned on me I was the only one who ate it. The kids – much to our disgust – didn’t ever really take to it. And I realised I now had all this marinara mix, and the only person who would get excited about it and eat it with me, was dead.
To be honest, in hindsight, I find the fact I still have these realisations two years later fascinating.
Grief is so weird. I mean, I’ve been living this reality for two years. How can my brain almost spontaneously combust over an MRI visit and buying seafood two YEARS later?
I thought I’d got myself back under control, until it wasn’t.
I had someone ring and talk through how I was going. They knew I was not ok. I lost it. Completely.
And hour and 45 minutes later I got off the phone. Pulled myself back together and walked into the office because after all of that activity for a Friday morning, I still had to get to work.
Where I had someone tell me they couldn’t do what I had expected them to be able to and lament internet as a problem.
To be fair, in their world, on that day, it was a legitimate issue. They had no idea the impact that would have on me.
On any normal day I would have just yelled ‘oh for fuck’s sake’ and broken about 3 HR rules I’m sure I’ve watched videos on about being a supportive colleague and workplace behaviour.
But last Friday – I literally sat at my desk and felt utterly defeated.
So by the time I got home, I was a completely wreck.
I ended the night in tears on the phone to more than one friend.
The compound effect of all of the things simply broke me. But it was also other things.
It was me experiencing things I thought wouldn’t be happening 2 years later.
It was me desperately searching for the support I had from Pete but couldn’t get from any other one person or group of people.
It was me falling down that hole of what I had lost.
It was me, sobbing down the phone to someone that: I didn’t ever get to say goodbye.
Because I didn’t.
I literally didn’t get to say goodbye to him.
It was all so fast and so unexpected that it was literally me talking to him saying I’ll drive to the hospital, him collapsing, me trying to make sure he was conscious, me begging him to stay on the bed while he panicked about getting his breath, me having the curtains closed in front of my face while I watched him get up off the ambulance bed and onto the hospital bed … to ‘Liz, I need to ask you if we can stop resuscitation attempts’.
As I howled down the phone to someone about coming to that realisation.
I even rationalised that even in a divorce there is an element of goodbye, even if its nasty. The last time people spoke to him on the phone, they said goodbye to him. I didn’t get to do that.
And my heart was so broken that day, that’s where I had ended up.
Down a deep dark pit of ‘I didn’t get to say goodbye’ after having a week of compounding how hard it all was on my own.
And I cried about how awful that was when I have such amazing people in my life. People who try to help. People who do help. People who go out of their way to help.
And yet here I was. With all that support. Still down an awful pit of grief and still feeling like I was letting a lot of people down.
I know I’m not. Well, I’m trying to learn that I’m not. But if I’m keeping this real. That’s where I was.
But the next day I got up and went out for lunch and met my Mum, who had come down for a week.
It is the first time since Pete died that I have had someone come for an entire week to help me.
People have come and helped for a few days or a weekend.
But a whole week?
Never.
And I got to take the foot off the pressure valve.
It took a few days. And I can’t say I am completely unwound.
But I know that I haven’t had to do dishes for a week. I don’t have a piece of clothing to wash. The odd socks are all paired. The children have been put into place by someone other than me. I’ve been backed up in my parenting decisions. I have been able to have adult conversations in real life in my house every single night for a week.
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