I spend a great deal of my day concentrating on what I have: my health, healthy children, a safe house and a degree of security. However the irony is that I have, until recently, lost sight of the things I have lost.

It is two years since we moved to Edinburgh, almost two years since Keith died: the full complexities of loss and grief are only now visible in their intricate patterns. I grieve greatly for a career I once had and also for the people who were in it. I suppose I grieve also for moments that have passed, this is probably a normal part of growing older, but the lens of loneliness I now inhabit can’t help but magnify the loss that I feel acutely through my core. It erodes some of the hope I have within me, bit by bit, slowly, every day.

I am well aware that some of this grief I feel has been self inflicted: I have withdrawn myself from circles of support (admittedly sometimes through need to leave a physical place) and I have misplaced a great deal of friendships along the way – we as a race can all be guilty of this, over time.

I also grieve greatly for the person I was. Perhaps we all do this, as we get older. It’s hard for me to separate the natural form of things from any other – I can’t tell how much of this is purely the wisdom I’ve accrued as I head into my late thirties. I’m a much more serious person that I think I have ever been. I used to believe I shone a small amount of light in a room, now I don’t think I do that any more. I feel more mineral than organic, I don’t want to dance either, and that is very sad. Recently my dreams have been filled with faces from the past. I wonder about these people, old friends from school, university, other lives. I wonder what they would think of me now. On holiday this summer I came to a great deal of peace accepting I am unlikely to be the person I always wanted to be, doing the things I always wanted to do. Again, is that because I am lonely and widowed, a single parent with the pain of my children on my shoulders? Or has it come from growing older, accepting really that dreams and hopes are for our children? My youngest daughter told me not too long ago she had forgotten what I look like when I smile.

Fortunately I have them, my children, my healthy sparkling children who can be the jewels and silk and colour in my life. They dance and sing and dream and demand of me every day to make me feel needed and wanted enough. Around us the Edinburgh festival is exploding with standardly riotous energy, it enfolds us in its dynamism and vigour and sweat. For now we will take in as much of it as we can, and enjoy absorbing the creativity of others. Right now the best way for us to survive is to be as much as we can in the moment, focusing on what we have, and how very lucky we are to have it.

Joy in sadness

Over the course of the Christmas break Lucy Penman, a wonderful friend of mine, wrote an incredibly touching newspaper column (see below) in which she said (of my year):

"She got on with it with infinite sadness but without moaning or complaining...I'm starting 2016 with Helen's example in mind".

I have a great deal of respect for Lucy and seeing in print her respect and understanding of my situation has been quite inspirational (and helpfully reassured me that yes, I do know who my friends are). 

I see melancholy around me everywhere. Life is packed to the brim with difficulty and disappointment, loss and suffering. What helps me, is accepting that sadness. I am in a sense fortunate - I know specifically where my sadness lies. This naturally constant, regular presence; I have accepted the sadness of Keith's death as part of me, as much as I have accepted the other losses in my life that have come with it (those of love, intimacy, affection, attention, company, of the father of my children...Lucy mentions my "high-flying career: well that has gone too and I miss it desperately). I am still, in my most private moments, torn to pieces by these losses, and have written much about them here. But yet I do know I have much: my beautiful daughters, my health, wonderful friends, a roof to live under, a joy in music and a thirst for adventure. Knowing I have these priceless things makes it so much easier to cope with the rest.

This world we live in wants us to believe we're special and we deserve better, well in my experience that's just not true. We're all each living our own individual stories, but remember: we're individuals like everyone else. None of us is different or special or unique, despite what much of the world (and social media) would have you think, and my problems are no worse than anyone else's when viewed from each individual's frame of reference. Accepting this has been very hard, and granted I had something of a catalyst, but it has helped me enormously. I won't complain about the daily tribulations of life because they are what they are and we all suffer them. What I will do is try to take the moments that put some sparkle on the tribulations and focus on those. (It's worth pointing out I will change things I don't like - if a problem is fixable, why not fix it?) So as much as the kids and the housework and the minutiae of daily living can be testing on a never ending cycle, all it takes is one of my girls asking me to 'put Ryan Adams on' to push the negative emotions aside and let the positive ones blast loudly from the speakers of my soul (and kitchen).

Thanks to Lucy for being the inspiration for this piece. May I take this opportunity to wish you all a very happy and peaceful New Year.

Helen X