Ramblings of a Reluctant Widow

I'm writing from my hotel bed, Oliver is finally asleep in the bed next to me.  I am so tired that I really should be sleeping myself but naturally I am wide awake, my usual go to options of listening to a devotional or a guided relaxation being impossible due to my forgetting to pack headphones. We are on our first break away as a team of 2. Well, when I say team, what I mean is an exhausted big person and a small person with relentless needs and demands.  We are in Windsor, with two nights in the hotel and two days at Legoland.  We did the first day today.  It went pretty well, we had a lot of fun and I can appreciate that the relentless needs and demands are a lot less relentless and needy than they were two years ago.......it just doesn't feel like it when you're the only one dealing with them. I cursed him (Mark) more than once today, starting this morning when we arrived at the car laden with coats and bags to realise I'd left the car key in the hotel room....

 It's christmas eve. Somehow we have got here, nearly three months without him. I'm suprised at how OK I am feeling.  After the past couple of weeks of crippling anxiety and almost daily panic attacks, today I feel better. Being back at my parents and being looked after has been such a tonic for my heart. For a couple of weeks, it's not all on me. I get to lay in, have some head space and not worry about solicitors or bills or running a house. And breathe. It is needed, I was headed for a breakdown.  With the help of my counsellor I've let go of toxic relationships that were not helping Oliver and were just adding to my anxiety and pain.  I've written letters I will never send to these people and got all the anger and hurt out of my head and onto paper.. I saw sonethig this morning that really resonated. 'your anger is the part of you that knows your  mistreatment was unacceptable. Your anger knows, you deserve to be treated well and with kindness. Your anger is...

I am a liar.  I tell lies every day. I've reached the point of hiding how I am so as to avoid being a broken record, hard to talk to, boring, difficult. So I pretend I'm better than I am. That decade-old mask has been dusted off and put firmly back in place. It's easier to wear this time as I'm well practiced.  The truth is I am having good days. I had a lovely Saturday with visiting friends and actually went out for dinner and theatre.  I shared about it on facebook.  What I didn't share was on Sunday I had a panic attack at the church community carol service.  I went alone and looked around at all the families and just well....panicked.  Anxiety has been sky high ever since. At my appointment on Monday I told my therapist that I was struggling with anxiety, he said yes I can see that.  Within minutes of waking my heart is racing and I'm struggling to control my breathing.  I know what i need to do, I count my breaths, exhale longer than inhale r...

I'm swinging back and forth between intense anger and intense grief.  Tick tock, tick tock, tick tock....BOOM!  The emotions are big and yes, intense. It's not even really a rollercoaster, it's a pendulum, one extreme to the other.   There's a photo of the three of us taken last Christmas pinned to the fridge with a magnet.  Wednesday was an angry day so I turned it over. I didn't want to see him grinning at me every time I went to get milk for my tea.   Anger was triggered by a rainbow. Yes, a friggin' rainbow. I was walking to school for Oliver's year one Christmas concert and as I got there saw it. A lovely beautiful rainbow appearing to end at school.  F off Mark. You should be here to see this, not sending me a rainbow. I wanted to scream.  But once again reset my face, put on the smile, joined the queue of excited parents and made small talk about how nervous we all were that our child wouldn't say their lines.   It was wonde...

 Is this all his life is reduced to? A box of Ash. It's so surreal. I've spent one last night next to my husband and today I have to put him in tbe ground. I've woken up feeling so anxious. I didn't expect that. Its like before the funeral all over again. I was actually on the brink of a a panic attack. Deep breaths, take a beta blocker, slow down. I've got 5 more hours until the interment service. ...............................................  An hour to go. I feel numb now. I know it isn't him in that box, he left over two months ago. This is just a ritual, a final hurdle before the endless expanse of the new normal. It still doesn't feel real. Perhaps after this it finally will feel final. ................................................. It is done. I walked down the lane approaching the church with my heart racing, and remembered walking down the same lane with my dad 14 years, ago, nervous and excited to meet my fiancé inside. I remembered walking be...

I've been out in the world this morning, I needed a few bits and bobs and I'm feeling strong today so I went for it.  I was surprisingly OK, but it's still exhausting so when I got home I allowed myself a lounge on the bed with my cat and a cuppa and a scroll of social media.   My news feed will be so different to yours. Amongst posts from widow groups and adverts for memorial jewellery pops us an article from Winston's WIsh, about supporting grieving children through the holidays.  Not right now I think, and scroll on. The very next thing? An article from still standing magazine about remembering your baby during the holidays.  Time to put the phone down. FFS. This is my life.  How did I get here? You'll probably remember that I wrestled with God for a very long time after Bertie died. It took me years to reconcile my faith in a good God with the loss of an innocent child.  Eventually I got to a place of acceptance that I won't get that answer in life...