Grief

My one loyal reader, Archie, has noted that I have not posted anything for about two months.

I have every reason to have not written anything for so long – I have been grieving. And in my grief I have not been of a mind to write about it or to share the reasons for my grief, or in fact to write anything at all.

In the great scheme of things one more death matters not – the World Health Organization estimates that roughly 155 000 (one hundred and fifty-five thousand) people die every day. So one more is no big deal. But if that one was my wife – then it is a big deal – for me!

When the person who dies is very close – and has been for over 36 (thirty six) years - it is difficult to be rational and to avoid emotion. But in this instance I am trying, trying to let my head attend to reason and to reduce the emotions of my heart (the “traditional” seat of emotions). The trouble is it is so personal, so private that to try and explain how or why I feel the way I do is a hard thing to do.

Writing for me, however, has always been a way out – an escape; in this instance I am using writing for cathartic purposes. I need to let in the light, light to banish the dark thoughts that hover in the background. Putting it all down on “paper”, as it were, helps me to put things in perspective.

To know that a person, close to one, is dying and to know that they know they are dying is quite confronting. To hold someone’s hand and then to feel the life force (whatever this is conceived to be) slowly slip away and the body that was animated and alive grow cold and lifeless, is not easy.

Yet this is what happens roughly 155 000 times every day. There will be, therefore, at least another 155 000 (if not a great deal more) people feeling much as I do. This, also, is confronting; that death and grief are such an “everyday” occurrence that there is still a strange element of surprise and a degree of shock when it happens to someone close.

In some ways this feeling of shock – and grief too I suppose – is, to a degree, a selfish experience. The person concerned, in this case my wife, no longer experiences pain (pain is a warning that the body is in some way compromised). So it is me that is the one affected. Logically therefore, it is me experiencing the emotional shock (which is normal) but also me, to a degree, feeling sorry for myself – I have lost someone. I suppose this is also normal!

To a certain extent I have got over the initial grief and now it is a matter of a “long unwind”; slowly letting go and establishing my own routines to suit only me! Again this is not easy living as I do in the house we shared, sleeping in the same bed we shared, with photographs, with all her little nick-knacks everywhere I look.

I find solace in poetry so I will end this post with a poem that expresses my feelings for my wife very well. A poem by Robert Louis Stevenson called, My Wife:

Trusty, dusky, vivid, true,
With eyes of gold and bramble-dew,
Steel-true and blade-straight,
The Great Artificer
Made my mate.

Honour, anger, valour, fire;
A love that life could never tire,
Death quench or evil stir,
The Mighty Master
Gave to her.

Teacher, tender, comrade, wife,
A fellow-farer true through life,
Heart-whole and soul-free
The August Father
Gave to me.