The thing I’ve discovered lately is that despite the amount of time passes, nothing changes.
And everything changes.
But there’s still the monotony of dealing with the day in, day out stuff...
Still dealing with Pete not being here. Still kids being upset. Still kids being kids fighting between one another. Still packing lunchboxes. Still getting everyone off to school and me to work. Still realising I suck at dog training. Still cooking dinners. Still getting exasperated at kids leaving 1/2 full glasses of water in the lounge room. Still having no husband in the bed. Still having kids needing to offload their grief on me. Still struggling to sleep. Still not knowing if I’m really cut out to do this. Still finding the joy in the kids faces when they do something great. Still struggling to deal with their very normal child behaviour. Still doing the things...
It’s funny. It’s so much the same old same old... of the last year.
I have no idea what I thought would happen after a year without Pete had passed. I didn’t expect some great relief. Or anything specific, or for things to really be easier or different because the reality is, it hasn’t really changed at all.
Except I think we might be getting better at dealing with it. But honestly - who knows?
The anniversary came and went, everyone got back on with their lives, we had to get ready for school starting the year, start school, start extra curricular activities, just keep rolling on, irrespective of that it’s been a year and so did everyone else.
I’ve tried to write a few blog posts since the anniversary and I’ve deleted them.
One was so angry and bitter about our reality, but it was just that day. It had been a particularly hard day (and week) and I’d spent a lot of it defending myself and my actions from people...
Not the least of which is because I’ve been having coffee with friends, and they are male, so I must be having an affair.
Because that’s what I do now: now my husband is dead, I steal other people’s ...
I was tired; emotional; just hating the grief so much (not my life, not Pete, just what grief was doing to my family and friends and me...) but it spiralled into a bitter angry rant and I was saying things out loud I shouldn’t, about people I shouldn’t, because I was angry at them. But then I deleted it because - like an angry email you shouldn’t ever send - it was me letting off steam. And other people’s actions and words and feelings are theirs. I can’t control them. And I clearly need to get better at not reacting to them.
I tried to write another one but it just sounded whingey. Whingeing at the realty of it all. Complaining about my lot. I reread it and thought: you really need to get your head out of your own backside and change what you don’t like...
So now I am here. 14 months later and still not really believing this is our reality, but enjoying things and doing things and crying and laughing.
Overall, the tears of grief from children are still just as sad. But now less frequent.
Although with less frequency comes bigger grief. Like when they dissolve into puddles because they don’t think they can remember the sound of Daddy’s voice anymore. Or that they are scared they are forgetting memories with him because they’ve made so many new ones.
In the middle of writing this at 10pm on a Saturday night I’ve had a distressed child appear and climb into bed in a flood of tears about missing Daddy because today we did some sheep work with friends ... the first time we have been back out there helping with their sheep work without Pete.
It’s probably the same with mine. Less frequent are the tears but my gosh when they hit, the waves and waves of grief and overwhelming sense of loss make me double over; struggle to breathe; and ache in my stomach.
Last week I happened, quite unexpectedly, to be on a bus driving past the Hungry Jacks at which Pete collapsed and then driving up the road I last travelled while in the back of an ambulance with him not in a good state.
Interesting, I thought, that I had so subconsciously but specifically avoided that route through Ballarat for the last 14 months. Interesting also, I noted to my friends in a text, that it could be a triggering experience. But good thing I was just assessing all this from an overarching perspective ...
I got off the bus, walked about 100m towards my car and completely lost it - hot and cold sweats, chattering teeth, hyperventilating... turns out it was actually triggering for me. And despite my conscious brain actually telling myself ‘breathe normally, just get to the car...’ I clearly have no control over my own body’s subconscious.
I had to get in the car, take a few deep breaths, get myself back under control... then get home, collect kids, get them to bed, get them up the next morning ...
And so it goes on.
I often find myself now looking slightly jealously at friends who have husbands to help round up kids at functions, to share the load of the kids, to go to functions with, to laugh with, to get frustrated with, to lie in bed with, to growl at over mundane things that just used to make our life: ours.
Even if some of those friends, often after lamenting their partners, offer their husbands up as replacements ... thanks, I don’t actually want yours - nice as he is - I’d like mine...
But in between all the hard bits, the kids have been doing amazing things.
One has started rowing and the smile on her face after that first training - my heart exploded! Last year she gave up every single thing Pete watched her do because it was ‘too different and sad without Daddy watching’ and she had wanted to try rowing but totally freaked out on the first day because she didn’t know what she was doing. But after the first training, and every one since, the smile on her face is just so overwhelmingly genuinely happy. And I haven’t seen her like that in over a year.
One received her first ever A+ and has finally, after 8 years of dance, gone onto pointe shoes and she is so utterly thrilled and excited about it all that she is smiling like I haven’t seen her smile in over a year.
One is loving their sport and school and friends so much and went back to dance and said he loves it so much that he’s going to give up the opportunity to play footy because he can’t fit hockey and footy and dance all into winter. It’s a hard enough juggle around cricket and Parkrun in the summer.
One just keeps being the extraordinary personality that had Pete so wrapped around her little finger... all the highs and lows and love and anger and tenderness and help. So many days I curse the grapple on the English language that she has because, oh my goodness she can be hurtful with her very well articulated words, but her heart is broken and every tirade is followed by something like this:
And this week she will begin a new sport with her friends and she cannot wait. She is so super excited to be doing a team sport with them - she has no idea about basketball, we are not a basketball family, but she wants to give it a go and she has given up dance so I need to make the time and space to let her do something she loves.
And so life goes on. All the ups and downs and ins and outs and everything in between.
I just so wish he was here to experience it all with us. I often sit in bed at night and think of all the things he’s missed. All the things I wish I could at least ring and tell him about - good and bad.
But he’s not. And so we will keep doing the things remembering how much he would have loved to be here and see them.
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