I don’t even know how to get my head around the fact yesterday marked two years without Pete.
I spent more of yesterday in tears than I did on this anniversary day last year.
Granted I was debriefing with someone from early in the morning trying to get my head around my life and how I can make it work physically, fiscally, mentally, emotionally, practically...
It was a conversation I absolutely needed.
But it meant I first teared up before 7am thanks to some early rising children, and I continued in a state of teariness for at least the next 3 hours.
And it all helped.
I needed to cry about the fact I feel like a complete dunce when it comes to planning my financial future with what I have left of what Pete’s death has given us. I feel a huge emotional weight on investing it correctly to deliver what we had wanted to as a family.
That irrespective of every single person desperate to help, the gaping wound of lost love and partnership is something no one can heal for me, and it is like a black hole sucking in everything else to make the whole lot of day-to-day living hard.
That despite being an apparently strong and capable person how fucking scared I am all of the time, how much confidence I have lost in my own self making decisions and doing things, despite still having to do the things and make the decisions.
There was also distress in our house as the two youngest children left for a beach holiday and the second eldest left for a rowing camp and the emotional fall out of that happening.
I also spent the second anniversary of losing Pete the following ways:
Hearing from so many wonderful people acknowledging the day.
Drinking early afternoon beers and then awful gin and good red wine later in the day.
Apologising to people that I needed to limit the visitors.
I spent a lot of the day looking at the clock remembering what I had been doing at that time two years prior.
I cried at least once an hour.
I laughed at least once an hour.
At the same time I had put my head on Pete’s chest two years ago and felt the death of his body on his skin and recognised how strange it was there wasn’t that familiar heartbeat when I put my head on his chest, I was hugging someone who was at my house to help me through the day, noticing their heartbeat in their chest. I cried about that.
I made the first dinner Pete and I ever shared together.
I watched a movie with the one remaining child at home.
In what can only be considered fate - the pillow covers made from Pete’s shirts arrived at 8.30am despite them having only been posted by the maker at 12.40pm the day before in another part of regional Victoria.
I also spent a lot of time looking at photos from the last two years.
We have done so much ... and I don’t know how I feel about that.
There are photos of us smiling and crying and having experiences and going to events and celebrating birthdays and school milestones and so.many.photos. of all of the food and wine we have consumed.
One part of me sat back and thought: Wow, we have done so much. Maybe we are functioning way better than I give us credit for.
The other part of me sat back and thought: Wow, we have done so much without Pete. I am so sad so much of our lives have happened without him.
Year Two of widowing felt like it smashed me from every angle.
I felt so utterly defeated so many times.
I tried and failed so many times to get help into our house but thanks to Covid was so alone with dealing with it all.
I didn’t ask for it, but my friends and villagers appeared in whatever way they could with the Covid restrictions that locked Victoria down for so much of 2020.
Once again, I won’t ever be able to say thank you enough to them for those times people appeared when I was at such a threadbare point that their kindness meant that final thread holding me together triggered a collapse into tears.
I want to so much believe the hardest things are behind us.
2020 marked the third year of difficulty for our family and I just cannot hold onto anything other than hope that 2021 and Year Three of widowing will be less difficult to navigate.
If I don’t hold onto that hope I might as well just give up, curl into the foetal position and admit I cannot do it.
But doing that would go against every fibre of my desperate need to be functional for the kids and because I need to keep moving or I’ll drown.
People have asked me how I do it. How I have done it.
I don’t know. I genuinely do not know. I just know I have to.
And so, in Year Three, I have to keep doing it. But maybe with less swearing and less wine. That would make my parents happier (Yes, I still get scolded with an ‘ELIZABETH!!!’ from my mother for dropping an ‘oh for Fuck’s sake...’ at the kids...)
I know it will still be hard.
I have children still incredibly impacted by their father’s death, which raises itself in unexpected but passionate and desperate physical and emotional ways.
I still feel like I am trudging through quicksand. But rather than it being up around my neck all the time, or even waist deep, despite my tears yesterday, I think maybe I’m only knee deep in the quagmire.
I know I will continue cry a lot. But hopefully less.
I know will yell so much the kids will continue to call me out on it by saying: why are you yelling at us AGAIN? But hopefully that happens less
I know that if I need it, my amazing friends who continue to dispel the myth of everyone disappearing 6 months after the death of someone, and will be here to help faster than I can say: I’m not ok. But I hope we can spend more time together as friends enjoying each other’s company rather than one needing help and the other being there for support.
Now we have survived the year from hell (2018); the death of Pete (2019); and a pandemic with remote schooling and working (2020)... I’m not saying out loud this year can only be better, but I am hoping that we have now proved our mettle to the universe, and it just cuts us a little slack In 2021.
OK, Year Three of Widowing ... I never wanted you in my life, but now that you here, let’s fucking do this.
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