Humbled

After 4 1/2 years together and three months since her death, I thought that I knew everything there was to know about Louise. But this afternoon I discovered another aspect of her life which I had previously only briefly glimpsed.

Piercing My Soul

Since Louse's death my laptop has barely left my side. It has become my constant travelling companion. Even when away from home it has been the first thing that I have packed. I have long since discovered that the only effective balm that can applied to my wounds when they are at their most raw is writing about them. Whenever my emotions overwhelm me I therefore reach for my laptop and write, either in my private diary or here on this blog. Indeed it is the very reason for the existence of the blog. Somehow the discipline and structure that writing requires of me helps both to process my thoughts and to calm me. And this evening, sitting in a hotel room in Stockport after a family wedding party, I really needed to be calmed.

Crying Time

I've now cried on 90 consecutive days. I never imagined that I would come to know the experience of crying so intimately, to recognise so well the sensation, the distinctive noise, the smell and the taste of the tears themselves and the burning sensation that they leave in my eyes. All now are as familiar to me as breathing.

Spring Blues

(For Philippe - may the Swallows bring peaceful days with them)

Its 12 weeks today since Louise died. I've stopped counting the individual days but the number of weeks which have passed still comes to me as naturally as breathing. Its become a mark of my identity. I'm not alone. I've noticed that whenever people who are recently widowed gather together in support groups, whether online or in the real world, the passage of time since the loss of our partner is one of our first self descriptors,  handy shorthand for the condition we currently find ourselves in, not dissimilar to women in pregnancy. 'I'm at 6/10/12/15 weeks' is often enough to tell others much about our current mental state and ability to deal with the world.

Living with Uncertainty

The night that Louise died about the only thing that I grasped straight away was that my life had just been turned upside down. Nothing would ever be the same again. All the certainties were gone.

Life and Fate

I should be in work by this time on a morning. Instead I'm sitting in our bedroom crying and feeling bitter at the unfairness of it all, that I should be wrenched away from my wife who I loved so very much, and a life that I loved so very much, and handed instead a lifetime sentence of sadness, a burden of grief and loss that may in time lose some of its rawness but will remain with me to the day that I myself die.

Feeling Bad about Feeling Good

I've been wondering what kind of person I am, examining self critically my response to Louise's death and the way in which I am mourning. In the last few days I have generally been calmer. There have been moments in each day when I have keenly felt Louise's loss and the tears have flowed. Just seeing a couple kissing in the street was enough to cause me to break down, there and then, prompting me to rush for the nearest cover to hide my tears from passers by. But outside of these moments I am relatively emotionally stable.

Falling in Love Again

I expected bereavement to bring strong emotion. Loss, guilt, anger, despair, fear. But what I've realised is that the strongest of all is love. When I cry out in my pain to Louise, occasionally its to say 'Why did you do it?' or 'Why didn't you call me?', sometimes its to say 'I miss you', but mostly its simply to say, over and over again, 'I love you Louise'. Its this that I urgently want her to know now, more than anything.