I’m currently finding myself struggling to come to terms with the change that just continues to need to happen since losing Pete.
It seems constant ... uncomfortable .. unrelenting ... frustrating
Pretty sure a lot of people are saying: Did she seriously not think everything would change when her world was tipped upside down??
And that’s true.
I knew things would change, but like all my ignorance with grief , I also honestly thought outlying things would basically remain the same despite the middle bits being forever changed.
But there are some things I am now needing to change, to let go of, that I don’t necessarily want to... but I sort of have to... for me, and my sanity, and for my moving forward ... and sometimes because it’s just not the same anymore and there is not the joy or the fun I once had doing the thing now Pete isn’t here.
This has seemingly been a slow realisation for me.
I just figured we’d keep on keeping on - doing the things we had always done, enjoying the things we always had. Just without him there. We would carry on. Carrying his memory with us doing the things.
But it’s different now. And rather than blame it on that early grief blur like I did last year, I’m beginning to see that it’s actually a new reality that I need to get used to, whether I like it or not.
Today, that’s manifested itself in farewelling a coffee shop - Woody's.
For a couple of years before Pete died we had coffee most mornings in this coffee shop.
This started because I accidentally discovered a pattern that he would grab car keys and announce ‘I’m heading off ...’ as I was wrangling kids to drop them off the school, and then I would noticed he would reappear about 45 minutes later at home.
When I queried why he was home as I'd assumed he was gone for the morning or day, he replied: oh I made a few calls but I was having a coffee...
The day after I confronted him over this (admittedly rather clever ploy to avoid the morning craziness), we started having coffee out each morning together.
My work back then - which I did from home - had flexible hours and the dishes or laundry could wait. If he was getting to have coffee out child free, so was I.
That time allowed us to talk, discuss stuff, talk about the kids or work things without anyone within earshot, read the paper with our stars and the comics each day ... also to sit and drink coffee alone while the other one was on a work call...
I had often wondered whether the local coffee shop community scenarios shown on sit-coms could be real, until I became part of one - there were people I only ever saw at this coffee shop, and we had this odd relationship with them that included banter over football or cricket or animals or politics or the weather; we said hello to people every morning for a year before actually ever learning their names.
It was wonderful, and when Pete was away for work I'd still have coffee with those people, and I continued to try and do the same after he died.
Then covid hit.
And the coffee shop shut.
Now it is back open again.
But it is different.
Time has moved on. And when I had coffee there with someone who I used to have coffee with this morning, we both decided it was different.
There were so many memories attached to that process of sitting at the table we used to sit at, and drinking the coffee we used to drink ...
I don't think I need, or can, do that anymore.
Drinking coffee at that coffee shop felt weird ... like a desperate grab to try and hold on to the past and bring it into our present ... to try and keep doing something that we always had, but that no longer seems to fit right ... and it felt wrong to be doing it without Pete - there wasn't that feeling last year when I did it with the same people, but now it does.
The realisation that things need to change and we can't keep doing the things we have always done has been really hard to get my head around.
I think because I genuinely liked my life beforehand.
I have been accused of looking back on it with rose-coloured glasses, that I have forgotten the every day reality.
I haven't.
I complained as much as the next person about annoyances of every day life. See above where my husband was leaving me to go and have coffee alone each morning to escape the ridiculousness of "what do you mean you haven't packed a lunchbox? It's a quarter to nine ... you need to get in the car!!" only to return home to work once I'd made it a childless, quiet environment.
And so now, when I have to give up things that don't fit anymore, its a really hard thing to explain. Because I know that I liked these things we did and I did. That I enjoyed these things. But now some of these things don't seem to fit anymore.
The coffee at Woody's is one of them.
Work has been another.
I knew I had to give up my very flexible work with the people I liked pretty soon after Pete died. Working from home alone wasn't going to be great for my mental health. So I took on a new job that meant more hours, an office workspace, other adults to speak to, and a reason to get out of bed and leave the house, dressed, each day.
Putting the fact I've been working at home in that job since February last year aside, the additional hours of work has meant I have had to give up other things.
I stood down from the primary school school council last year. It was insanely hard. I am very passionate about being involved with the school. To live by the mantra that you can't just throw rocks from the cheap seats, if you want change or something to be as you would like, get in there and be involved.
Tears aside, that was ok.
But this week I have also given up a sheep industry role that I have genuinely enjoyed doing for the last 5 years.
I became secretary of a Merino group when the committee couldn't find one and Pete, as a committee member, came home from an AGM saying 'want a job?'.
A great and passionate group of people, the role was one I enjoyed for its social aspect as much as I did for it allowing me to keep my hand in an industry I'd always had an association with.
When Pete died, they wrapped me up and allowed me time to be an appalling secretary who couldn't get to meetings, who was late writing minutes, who couldn't do the job as she once had so efficiently.
Last year, with covid, working from home, remote schooling, and everything else that I was juggling, I think I did an even worse job.
The group, members of whom all quite liked Pete, were generous in their "it's ok" commentary, but I felt I was letting them down badly, and my kids down as I struggled to find time and mental space to do all of the things I needed to do.
And so I made the decision - unable to see a clear way forward - to step away.
I sat through the last meeting making comments like "us" and "we" out of habit. I have agreed to put together one last newsletter to help the new secretary out. And I feel genuine sadness at leaving the committee and its people ... sheep and this committee and what it does were Pete's passion that I supported because it fitted in with my life, but I have had to admit it just doesn't fit like it used to, or should, any more.
I'm finding the journey forward hard, because the change is forced. I don't feel like I'm choosing the change, its being presented to and at and for me. And I have zero choice in the matter.
It's hard to explain. And I'm writing all this down thinking it just sounds like gibberish.
But I didn't want this change.
The biggest change came when I didn't choose it. And now the change just continues to come.
And I want to fight against it, on moral grounds if nothing else, and I can't.
I've enjoyed these things and these people and these routines. And normally you don't give up things you enjoy.
So I've found it particularly difficult to admit to the changes in my life, my non-desired changes, impacting on the things I've enjoyed.
One day they might come back. People remind me these changes don't have to be forever. But for me - they are so intrinsically to Pete that I'm not sure I ever will.
*As an aside: Why are all the change memes and images happy? What about unhappy change? What about forced change - where are the dark and broody and moody free online gifs representing that?? Because these ones suck ... and also seem very unrealistic when the forced change has come about the way ours has.
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