Today marks 6 months since Pete died.
I cannot get my head around the fact it has been half a year. How can it be half a year already? How can we have functioned without him, for half a year? How can half a year have gone past so quickly it feels like only weeks ago that we lost him?
So, in light of the fact that it’s been that long, I thought I’d write down what I’ve learned in 6 months of widowing*:
No matter how much it hurts and how much your body tries to convince you otherwise, your heart won’t actually, physically, break.
You can run out of tears.
Wine does not appropriately rehydrate your body after you’ve cried all your tears.
The sun keeps coming up no matter how dark your day feels.
The world keeps turning despite the fact your own little world has stopped.
Grief can make people behave extraordinarily - at both ends of the spectrum.
Repeating the same story about how your husband died doesn’t make it any easier to repeat.
When you are widowed people seemingly genuinely expect you to walk around in tears all the time.
If you do cry in public, people seemingly genuinely have no idea what to do.
You can laugh even at the saddest times.
People will say the stupidest things to you.
People will say the most amazingly heartfelt things to you.
People will say the most hurtful things to you.
You cannot tell anyone how to grieve.
Other people will spend a lot of time telling you how to grieve.
Smiling & laughing does not mean you are not sad.
Children are the most wonderful assets to make sure you get out of bed every day.
Wine does not bring your husband back.
Crying does not bring your husband back.
Wishing the world would stop spinning doesn’t work.
Your subconscious can turn a tweak in your neck or muscle strain in your leg into a blood clot and start panicking faster than you can say ‘that’s ridiculous’.
It is possible to have a full body shock response, complete with all over body heat, cold chills and shivering legs many days after a traumatic event.
That ‘event’ can just be a letter in the mail or trying to get to a friend’s house for wine.
The mail can bring the most wonderful words of love.
Letters in the mailbox can contain the worst things like death certificates, coroner’s reports, and bills from the hospital for treatment on your dead husband.
You can make logical decisions in the most awful of circumstances.
You can be in shock and still make good rational decisions.
You can basically operate on 2 hours sleep a night for a week or so.
You cannot operate effectively on 2 hours of sleep.
Random people and photos and places will make you cry when you least expect it.
It’s possible to clench your teeth so hard your jaw aches and you give yourself a headache to stop yourself crying.
You can speak to people normally and not mention you have a dead husband.
Some people cannot see you in the supermarket or down the street without talking about your dead husband.
Some people can take the hint when you try not to talk about your dead husband in the supermarket.
Some people cannot.
Some days you just want to talk endlessly about him.
You can try and buy stuff to fill the void in your life made by your husband dying.
Physical things cannot replace your dead husband.
Money does not replace your dead husband.
Children can be unbelievably insightful into what you need.
Adults can be tone deaf to the emotional needs of your family.
People you don’t know well can be more generous and helpful than than you ever thought possible.
Your friends can take the place of family when you most need them to.
Routine can be helpful to just try and keep operating.
Your household can still function while in complete chaos.
Grown men crying is still the hardest thing to console.
Children have the best cuddles when you are crying.
It is possible to make many medical professionals swear and cry and get angry for and with you.
You can eat your own body weight in chocolate at Easter and not give yourself diabetes.
Contrary to popular belief, country men can speak in the most heartfelt manner and convey their deepest feelings to their friends.
You can love your platonic friends more than you ever thought possible.
You can miss being given a deep loving cuddle from someone who is not a platonic friend or a relative.
Your friends can go so far above and beyond where you could ever imagine to support you and your children.
People will be aghast when you joke about your new reality and how inconvenient it is you now need to work to pay the rent.
People will be aghast when you try and conduct your life with normality.
People will be aghast if you burst into tears in public.
You can lose hours and hour and hours looking at photos of your dead husband.
Even though he is dead, you can use your husband as an anchor as you ride through the waves of all the decisions you have to make.
You can make clear, informed decisions in spite of the fact you have a dead husband.
You can have absolutely no idea what the right decision to make is.
You can laugh and cry and smirk and reminisce at memories for days and weeks and months and never run out of them.
You can confidently know that you can navigate this new normal of your life after your husband dies.
You can collapse and cry hysterically at how much you cannot handle this new normal of your life after your husband dies.
You can laugh and cry in the same sentence.
Hugging is one of the most cathartic things you can do.
Crying can be one of the most cathartic things you can do.
Writing everything in your brain so other people can understand it all can be the most cathartic thing you can do.
You can have absolutely no idea what you need to do as a cathartic thing to help you operate.
Lots and lots of wine is not a good choice as a cathartic thing, nor is rum, or scotch, but a couple of glasses help.
The weight of the load of being the only parent is very, very heavy.
Thinking about being the only surviving parent can put you into an anxious meltdown.
It is possible to feel overwhelmed by kindness.
It it possible to feel crushingly overwhelmed by sadness.
It is possible feel overwhelmed by the fact the name of the day ends in a Y, the sky is blue and the grass is green.
Leaving the house every day can be exhausting.
Going to work each day can be the best medicine there is.
Talking to friends and doing things can be the best medicine you can have.
Doing nothing can be the best thing to do.
Doing nothing can be one of the most destructive things you can do.
Laughing and crying and collapsing from both can be the best medicine you can have.
None of the above may be true.
All of the above may the true...
The thing with this list is that I honestly have no idea what makes things better, what we need, how people can help - because what helps one week doesn’t the next.
What we need one day isn’t what we need the next.
It’s an insane roller coaster ride and to be honest, I’m pretty ready to get off it. To hit the button and say “righto, I’ve had enough now, I’ll try the old ride again, thanks.”
But I also know that this is just the roller coaster we need to learn to ride.
To just still sit here, hang on, learn where the hard bits are, the fun bits, the scary bits and that this is just what our new ride looks like, so we need to learn to ride it.
Not to love it.
And at the minute, I completely resent it.
But we need to ride it and we’ve ridden it this far - sanity mostly intact.
*This is by no means a definitive list ... it is, infact, endless.
💕💕💕 💕💕