Notes from normality

My imagination has served me well over this past year. 

I imagine to escape, to push my sadness to happy. Rarely this year until now have I imagined Keith is still alive but recently I am doing it more and more. Christmas, I suppose. I imagine he is here to put his arms around me and tell me it's ok, it's going to be ok, that I'm doing a really good job, that the kids will be ok. Will they be OK? Right now they're not ok. I imagine him telling me about what he feels about everything, Gary Neville, Syria, Labour, us getting stuck at the top of the big wheel on a cold Saturday night. I imagine how proud he is of my girls learning Christmas songs on the keyboard, Florence reading, Darcey singing in the choir. I imagine how worried he is about them both, about Darcey's terrible anger, about the effectiveness or not of their counselling. I imagine his opinion on my choice of wallpaper, my haircut, my therapy, telling me to not be so hard on myself every time I fuck up with the kids. It is endless.

People tell me I need to move on. 

Then when that becomes too painful I push myself the other way to save my heart from breaking even further, into the grand realm of fantasy. It is a wonderful wonderful place. Music helps get me there. What if this song were written for me, if the singer is singing to me, because I am the

 reason for the song? It would be nice to mean something again. Can I be the centre of attention, the value, the other half. Christmas. The weight of it hangs heavy like the scent of cinnamon and cloves. The most wonderful time of the year, yes of course. Kids are ferociously excited, embracing my love of tinsel and fairy lights, but: what do you want for Christmas? I want Daddy. 

The New Year approaches and with it the need to keep going, planning, coping. Constant self help, assessment, introspection, analysis. An awful lot of work in progress. 

The girls get older. I will find further reserves of energy to adapt to their changing needs. Mummy I know you care but I don't feel cared for. I would feel more cared for if you smiled more. Why are you angry all of the time? What's for dinner?

When I do see beauty it is sharper than ever. The equal and opposite reaction to experiencing deep pain. There is so much beauty in the whole sense of the word. Acceptance and perspective are the grand words I continue to hold onto and take into 2016. Also integrity: the only colour is transparency. Truth, however difficult that may be. Time and life are too precious to flail around in superficiality. Life can be beautiful without filters. Reality may be sharper and more brutally exposed, but that delivers that word perspective again. Perspective brings depth, depth acts as a prism, splitting life into colours, and then you can see beauty. Try it; when it becomes too painful just take a hit of music and imagination. Those are the best filters.

For the record he would love my wallpaper.

Anger

Take a breath, take a deep breath, we are almost at eleven months and fast approaching the first anniversary of the day Keith died.

My anger is astonishing. Surprising and overwhelming. I am furious. Furious for me and for my kids. My eldest, seven and a half, suffering a desperately sad swell of emotion as she watched her sister turn six without her father there to see. 

I really really really really miss him

I really want him to come back

It's not fair that other people have a dad and we don't

It's so long ago since I saw him

There's nothing that can make me feel like he's here

There is nothing here that has been healed by time, it oppresses itself upon her, memories slipping, voices fading. There's no comfort to give so I cry on her shoulder, letting her turn the tables to look after me, bring me cuddly toys and glasses of water. She is less violent now, but more sad - am I supposed to choose which I prefer? She sees that the world has been thrown around the sun and we are back where it started, a year ago, in autumn, when the leaves were turning and we were wearing boots and scarves. She is worried what we might do on the day Keith died, she brings it up, not me. More able to grasp time now she is a year older. And I think, good grief, was she really only six? Her sadness makes me seethe, her childhood spoiled by this rotting event. This sort of sadness should never be present in a child. 

I am sick and I am angry as I move from one fog to the next. I am angry for the career and the people and the futures that I had and now haven't. The feeling that the edges of my character have been rubbed away so I lack definition or form. The pure unadulterated pain for my children and the ignorant, clumsy manner with which I manage it. I am sick of trying to see the bright side, the things I have and the ways, all the ways in which we could be worse off. I am given adjectives designed to flatter and empower, but I am not courageous or brave or strong. I am lost in a maze of discarded dreams and basic survival taking the path that opens up before me in the least courageous way possible. My eldest describes her anger as though she has flames in her throat; well mine are in every cell, burning low, dark, and constant.

People

I feel sick. I feel sick at the end of every day now, my digestive system battered by stress, my body the victim of unwanted change. There are internal and external signs, marks made and left as if to be read at a future date, like the rings of a tree trunk, a sort of physiological archaeology.  The sickness fuels the anger, the anger the sadness, and we are back forever in a position of working, working hard at fixing, solving, changing, just trying to make it all better.

I am taken by surprise by a photograph: of the past, before the cancer. And here now, I have my very own moment of stark clarity, that those moments, since forgotten, were of a time so foreign, so full of a joy, of minor tribulations and niggles and disagreements, so full of everything and nothing at the same time, and never, ever again, to feel as I felt in that photo.

The feeling that this is the southern most point, that the low can't be lower, that the daily fight through acres of this confronting pressure must get milder, that really there must be a corner soon, a lifting of something, a change that enables, an end to the sickness.

To look at my children, fighting their own dark and difficult fight. The eldest almost completely despondent, saved thankfully by the simplest of childlike pleasures: animals, paint, cartoons. The youngest fuelled by affection, soaking it through every pore, with a love for the world that can wash my heart clean.

But: there is a core around me and in me that is my concrete foundation. The people. Here, there, close, far. Some I know well, some barely at all; I am excited, about all of them, I can see hope in the future because of them, and I think we all have a place. No great complex expectations, only joyous, positive anticipation. I have realised some of my value. 

Because of my children and the people I will not wither. I would miss too much; and then, really, when all is said and done, quite what would have been the point of it all.

Tonight

Tonight, 27th May: seven months since Keith died.

This is the saddest night ever says five year old Florence.

My seven year old: Before when Daddy was alive I was normal good Darcey but then Daddy died and it turned me into bad Darcey. 

It's not an excuse, it's heartfelt self awareness, I see it in her tears.
Maybe if tomorrow I believe in God I could ask him to bring Daddy back. I want him here now I want him to give me a bedtime kiss - she is sobbing.

I tell them that the feelings in their heads are like clouds, and there’s all sorts of different types of clouds, sad ones, angry ones, bad ones, naughty ones, but above the clouds there is still blue sky, like when you go in an aeroplane and climb up high. I say imagine Daddy is there in that blue sky and he is smiling at you and waving. Imagine the blue sky is in your heart too.

Florence says again this is the saddest night ever.

They consume every joule of energy, I am left with almost none for myself. I often find myself stranded, bereft, lacking the ability to do anything well. The things I need to do are overwhelming to the point of smothering so I step away and don't do them at all. Communication is my current downfall. I have not the drive to respond to emails, phone calls, messages, conversations in the playground. As I result I isolate myself further, I see interaction and correspondence like a bright point of salvation, fading farther out of reach with every dismissed reply. This blog, it is a helpful connection, but there is irony in not knowing if it will be read. I am no longer on Facebook, it was darkening my time not enlightening it, so I closed it down - a selfish act, yes, but my mental health demanded it.

I know the support is there, I haven't the power to reach out and take it. 

Summer doesn't look like happening here in Edinburgh, spring is cold and sad faced. School finishes in four weeks and we hit the promise of holidays. There are long evenings, there is lot of light, there is that wonderful Northern feeling I get when I stare out of my window: there are long days, there are long shadows.

The girls have gone to sleep with their silver hearts on their chests, crying. And people are still surprised when I tell them truly how I'm feeling.

Value

These past two months have been occasionally rapturous, but mostly horrific. The rapture has come from doing some work and buying a flat, the horrific is everything else.

Practically: we are about to move again, but this time into a flat we will own. I want some roots, new ones, ones that can do us for a longer expanse of time. It's a lovely flat and I know we will settle there. We have moved five times in the last five years, twice across hemispheres; this is a real opportunity to sit still for a while. 

Over the last two months I have been grappling with all sorts of large scale philosophical questions. Perhaps this is grief, I don't know, it's hard to tell. When I write them down they appear fickle, juvenile. But nonetheless: what are we for, other than to reproduce and maintain the evolution of the human race? What makes us different from each other? What the hell, in summary, is the fucking point? 

The conclusions I have come to are as follows: nothing, nothing, and really, I have no fucking idea. But then, in my deepest, darkest moments of sadness dwelling on all of this I stumbled upon a word I hadn't thought of to that point. Value. And herein, in this one moment of minor revelation I believe there lies a key to unlocking a bit of the darkness. Value; and worth.

When my husband was alive, I had value. He gave me meaning, definition, and prominence. We moved away from a place which made me feel worthwhile on a daily basis. I left a job that gave me value in ways I never anticipated. At the moment, the grief and the loss I am feeling extend beyond just that for the man himself, my husband, my best friend and the father of my children. It's the loss of me, the person that he loved and respected. That other half, the part he gave meaning to. The life that gave me meaning on a daily basis. This new way, this new world of me and the girls, it is a hard, lonely place. It is not enough for me to be solely defined by my children: I'm not afraid to admit that. It doesn't mean I love them any less. 

Where is your value? Where do you get it from and to whom do you give it in return? For me this is the one thing that distinguishes us from each other. To be a part of something bigger than just us. If I'm just me, what makes me different? What is the point? They're dangerous questions to fall into. But I think if you have something you can give, that in turn can give back to you, I think that makes it a little easier to let them go.

Of course I recognise the value I still have beyond my daily life, I'm not so blinkered I can't see that. It's just right now, at this moment I am too consumed with my grief to move forward. I know I have some definition and I love giving value to others I care about. And my kids, poor things, have no choice but to be defined by me, which makes me smile, particularly when they are dancing around the room in sequins. But losing the man who believed in me as much as I believed in him, losing the meaning and purpose that went with it all; it makes the physical loss even harder to bear, whether I'm wearing sequins or not.

Thanks for reading. 


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