That Night

To go back to my post "This Day" ...... I will continue where I left off. 

WPC Richards suggested I call someone to sit with me. Of course that was my Mum and Dad ... I called Dad and think I even apologised for the lateness of the call (I was still not accepting what had happened) Mum and Dad were hosting an Extraordinary Events Committee Meeting (a Church Group that organised fund raisers) so the Vicar was with them. 

I can't recall how I told my Dad, what I actually said .... but I was still calm - actually still being quite brilliant with Jess - because of course my brain was protecting my heart ...... I was most definitely numb.

Then Mum, Dad, the Vicar and my brother and his fiancée arrived. There was a lot of discussion, soul searching, condolences and comforting. I was still doing OK ...I cried even ..... but the brain really is remarkable in providing this cushioning effect .......

However, the body isn't as efficient ..... oh no ... there was no fooling my internal processes .... after about half an hour when everyone but my Mum had gone ....... I exploded - literally !

I purged myself completely .... both ends (too much information?)

I could not stop throwing up ...... not your normal, everyday sickness but just constant and violently emptying my stomach until I was heaving with nothing coming out - as I said before, that "punch to the stomach feeling" was real - I am sure there is a medical term for it and it is related to shock but needless to say - I WAS  a complete mess - my stomach was reacting !!!

My Mum took over and was the heroine of the night (and many days and nights afterwards) She was obviously concerned for me because she had seen me sick many times before but not like this ... I cannot describe how different this was ... but she knew it was, so called the doctor for out of hours help .... but no-one was available

I was actually quite glad about that later on because it would have been too easy to take a pill and forget ... and that's how addiction can start !

So she took over with Jess - she sorted out Daniel (who had his jabs Wednesday morning so was having a bad night) - she left me in the bathroom a sobbing, heaving wreck, as she could do nothing for me but place a duvet over me to keep me warm 

She did all this, while dealing with her own shock and grief for Mark's death. While being seriously worried for her daughter and while being concerned for her grandchildren. She calmed Jessica to sleep and was just an absolute rock !

I don't remember much more about that night - I do recall telling myself over and over again like a mantra that he would not have felt any pain because it was instant - that there was no point in getting angry (one of those 5 stages of grief you go through) and that I had to cling on to my memory of the day - those moments I mentioned in my "This Day" blog - as they would be so important to me to remember how he was and how happy we actually were ...... on that last day.

I did sleep eventually - I really don't know how and it all became a blur ----- I think at one point I did end up downstairs with Jessica.....  but I cannot even remember waking up as such ..... I just "came to" on the bathroom floor ...with a duvet wrapped around me.

As I woke ...... I heard Mum ........... downstairs sorting the kids out - getting breakfast - and giving the best sort of support possible - letting me get on with it but being there to guide, advise, prompt and be practical with the kids. Keeping everything as normal as possible for them - so we could brace ourselves for the long, hard road ahead.

Health Warning

My last post prompted several comments on facebook. All were lovely, supportive and caring. Most of them actually made me cry, feeling blessed to have such good friends and family.

One friend in particular mentioned that she had read the blog at work and it had bought a tear to her eye. That prompted me to state I should put up a "Health Warning" before my next few posts ...... as I do intend to continue with the immediate aftermath of the impact of Mark's death ..... not just on me and the children ..... but on others who took that journey of grief.

Now ... part of this warning is to say to everyone whom I love ....DO NOT WORRY ABOUT ME!

I am fine ...... I am not wallowing, not looking for sympathy, not unduly sad. In fact - it is precisely because I AM OK .... that I can now write this.

I had always intended to write at some point about the experience .... awful as it was/is. I wrote my diary during the grieving process and had done this partly to express myself in a cathartic way and also to pass on the experience. This is not a new experience - even at school, there was a girl in the year above me who's Mum died when she was 5 - and my best friend for several years - Debbie - had an older and younger sister who were around the same age as my children, when their Dad died

However, in my case, to get a perspective ... you need to understand that this was 20 years ago.

There was no Road Victims Trust, no Victim Support, no CHUMS (Child Bereavement Service), no Widowed and Young, AND NO INTERNET. Even mobile phones were still referred to as car phones and, at the time of the accident, only one of the 6 people travelling with Mark had a car-phone! So my grief and that of those around me was quite insular - we could not "look up" the 5 stages of grief on the internet to see if what/how we were feeling was "normal" (NOT that there is a "normal" process to grief). 

I did at one point call Bedford CRUISE bereavement care ......... they were unable to help ...... not that I could blame them ....they were a community of older widows supporting each other with coffee mornings and events relating to those of retirement age. They sent a lovely lady who must have been around 70 to sit with me one morning ....... she chatted with me about some of the feelings I may come to experience but, after about half an hour with the children running around us, she said "I am so sorry my love ..... I just don't have the words to say to help you and your children"

So that was that !

Nowadays I could join some of the support groups like WaY (Widowed and Young) or ask CHUMS for advice or guidance with the children ...or generally just do a Google search and I am sure I would find some online source of help or information. NOT that this lessens any of the grief. I would still be distraught. BUT what it perhaps would have done would have been to have relieved those who were "caring" for us. 

One of the best healers is talking. Talking it through out loud. Talking about the event. Talking about how unfair it all is. Talking about your anger. Talking about how you are going to cope.

Thankfully I had such fantastic family and friends they were all there for me, but others may not be in that position and the new groups I mentioned can be of some help. . 

Another healer is humour ..... yes even in grief .... humour really can release the stress ...... and again ... I had the sort of friends and family that found humour in the weirdest places and the strangest things that kept us all sane (like my Granny being so angry she wanted to kick a cat ...and no ...she would not have actually done it ...it was just the way my Mum told me that had us in stitches!). 

The children also need to simply continue with as much "normality" as possible - and again - friends and family would take them to the park, take them out for a day trip or just keep them occupied for me while I did some of the awful paperwork or bureaucratic stuff that comes with the death of a spouse.

So ... like I say .... the next 3, 4 maybe 5 posts will be about Mark and that fateful day. 

It has clouded my life but it has not kept the sunshine away .......... I am happily re-married (although Greg frequently drives me nuts  but he says that's his job !) I am negotiating the new path of being a Nana and nearly empty nester (as some of my blogs note) and let's face it - most people's lives have equally been clouded with some event that has caused distress and pain - divorce, the death of parents, illness, money worries, job security worries.

We all have our crosses to bear and I am glad that I was able to bear this cross, with all the support I had ... because if not ..... I would not have been the one married to Mark ..... and having our children and  the 10 years I had with him ...... were worth it all.

This day .......

Today is the Wednesday before the August Bank Holiday. 20 years ago this date was the 25th August. My life was very different then .... as I'm sure many of my readers lives were .... 20 years is a long time.

We lived in a 1 bedroomed flat, an old Victorian home with old sash windows ... so old you could stick your finger through the gaps. In the Winter the wind howled through and it was bitterly cold. The damp in the bedroom had made the wallpaper peel away (with a little help from tiny fingers, encouraging the peeling once it started!) Jessica was 4 years and 3 months old, Georgina was 12 days away from being 2 and Dan ..... was just 4 months.

On the weekend before this day, we had finally got round to getting a sofa-bed for Mark and I to sleep on, in the living room, to make a little more room in that bedroom for the children to have a play area. We had managed with a double bed, 2 single beds and a cot ... along with wardrobes, chest of drawers and a vanity unit for too long - once we could get the double bed out of there it would be a room for the children. Mark also surprised me with a kitten that weekend .... Figaro was welcomed into the family with open hearts!

The day was very similar to today ...... beautiful sunshine .... fresh in the morning and a hint of Autumn in the air. It was our friend's birthday and we had popped to see her earlier in the day - she was celebrating that night with a picnic with the "new" man in her life and had told Mark she would not be going to the usual skittles night. Mark was captain of the local skittles team and tonight was a match within the local league.

I did not go to the matches these days .... I was a young Mum, 28 years old and frankly ..... exhausted ! I could not imagine getting myself ready to go out at that point in time - I usually ended up with baby sick/milk or poop somewhere or other over me and Dan was still having 4 hourly feeds - so I was not getting a great deal of sleep ...... along with also being entertainments manager, climbing frame, chef, waitress etc for a 4 year old and 2 year old ...... so I was quite happy to be left at home with the children, while Mark did his thing.

At about 7pm Mark took the bins out and went to the local shop to get himself some cigarettes - I knew he would bring me back a Flake too, as he always did. I heard the doorbell go and thought he had forgotten his keys ...so ran downstairs to find him standing with a huge grin, a boxful of ice-creams and an ice-cream 99 in each hand! (we lived next door to an ice-cream van service - they had some spares and knew our children and us fairly well so just handed Mark the end of the day box!)

We ate the 99's and then he kissed me goodbye. He was on a high, in a happy frame of mind as things had started to turn around for him, after over a year unemployed. He had got through an aptitude test for a programming course and (other than our ever present money worries) we were enthusiastic about our future!

A couple of hours later I had settled the children, fed baby Dan and I made myself comfortable on the sofa, with Figaro on my lap, eating the Flake that, of course, Mark had bought me from the shop. I was watching "Windmills of the Gods" - funny how a nondescript TV mini-series has just stuck in my memory - it was after 10pm ...... then the doorbell rang .....................................

You just know ......... yet you don't want to know ........ the policeman and policewoman asked to come in ........ "Let's go and sit down" ..... I told them our living room was upstairs "Let's go upstairs then" ....... 

That was the longest climb of my life. 

Something's happened ....... hope Mum and Dad are OK ..... or Phil or John ....... but hang on ...they asked if I was Mrs Jane Goodwin ...... oh maybe it's one of my friends ...... could it be one of Mark's family ?

All the time knowing EXACTLY what they were going to say but not once allowing my mind - my heart - to acknowledge it.

They had rung the doorbell so hard that they had woken Jessica - I am not sure how it must have been for a distraught 4 year old peeking through the stair-rail ....... but she later told me she thought they had come to arrest me - so had snuck out of bed to find out what was happening.

They had sat me down ........ and then they told me ....... it is physical .....it is an actual punch to the stomach.

You know that movie special effect where they zoom out and zoom back in again ........ that happened ..... I felt very, very cold.

Then they asked if I wanted to call anyone. 

The first words out of my mouth ...... after being told my husband had been killed in a car crash were " I have to go and wash up ...... there will be lots of people coming round"

I was totally in denial - choosing something boring and everyday to focus on rather than face the awful truth.

Then I realised Jessica was up  - I took her in my arms and explained that daddy was dead, that he died instantly and was not hurting and that he was in heaven. I somehow remained calm, I guess because it didn't seem real, I was reassuring, I held her close as she cried and told her that I would teach her to make toasted cheese sandwiches when she was older as she always said Daddy was best at making them.

........ and then I told her that we would get through this ... it would be a long hard journey but we had each other, Gina and Dan ...our family and lots and lots of friends ..... it might be slow but we would do it ...... we would take it 2 steps forward .............. 

Empty Nesting (again)

I have touched on this subject a couple of times and am grateful that the position of Danny, sometimes being at home but often staying at his girlfriend Nicki's for 2/3 nights at a go, is making the full transition easier!

I do not know if it would be different if my children had stayed at home for longer - you do expect them to leave home at some point ..... I think both my girls left fairly early on and both very close (time-wise) together.

I do not want my girls to feel at all bad when they read this - I am just writing about some of the feelings it provokes - the positive and the negative - so maybe others who stumble across this can be prepared. Although in reality, there should be NOTHING to prepare for ... lets face it - this goes on generation after generation and actually it is one of those occasions where we should all "just get on with it"          BUT - it does create a feeling slightly akin to grief - the loss and occasionally even loneliness - that is something I was not really aware of or prepared for.

It is the summer holidays and I work term time only, so of course it may be that I have noticed this more this last couple of weeks. I know - the easy answer would be to find a job that was NOT term time only but hang on .... I actually love the holidays ... and always have done - so that's not happening !

Anyway - I digress - As I have mentioned before, I have never had an issue with being alone - am usually quite happy with my own company and can always pick up a book/watch a film or find something to amuse myself with. However, before the girls left there was always SOMETHING going on in the house - noise, music playing, food being cooked in the kitchen, someone rushing around chatting on their phones, friends in and out of the house. This general busyness seems to be what is missing and YES the quietness has it's plus points but you really don't appreciate how quickly you miss it.

I worked with an older lady a few years ago who suffered from depression after her 2 children had moved out of her home. I can remember trying to be sympathetic but actually not having any appreciation at all of how she had failed to adjust and how this was affecting her. In fact I was a little dismissive (as I am not known for my patience in these kind of situations) ! 

I wish I had given her more of my time and listened to her fears more !

Luckily - none of the factors that affected her have hit me in the same way but many I have touched upon.

I recall her saying that she felt a loss of purpose in her life (yes ...I can now see that ...not fully as I still have many other things in my life but there is that sense of loss). She felt that her feelings were not acknowledged (oops - that would have included me) and yet now ...even though my feelings are not as great as hers obviously were .... I can also see that we don't acknowledge this chapter of our lives very well. She worked in a school and was a part timer so had a lot of time with her children (sounds familiar) and her sense of identity was wrapped up in them so her loneliness on coming home from her work was very strong. 

I too can identify with that - I have worked part-time and even when the kids have not been around I would have plenty to do just picking up after them and felt their "presence" all around the house. This has decreased as now it is only Dan (well ...and Greg) who leave their stuff all over the place ... and yet even that is diminished as Dan has become a little tidier and more aware of putting his stuff at least in his room !

The one thing I can gladly say I did not identify with, was her concerns about her children in the "Big Wide World". Whether her concerns were linked to her depression and anxiety I cannot say as I am no medical practitioner BUT she was constantly worried that they would not cope with life - financially, emotionally and practically - that they would "fail" and it would be a reflection on her somehow ...... As far as I know they were perfectly fine and one thing I can say is that I believe I was pretty tough with my 3 in preparing them for independence - they all had allowances at a young age to learn how to manage their money and they all had chores and responsibilities that hopefully gave them some idea of managing themselves (OK - so I never really taught them to cook .... my bad !)

But maybe the biggest challenge is to embrace it - to accept that you are going to have times where you just miss them being around - and to establish a different type of relationship with your child ...... NOW finally you can dislodge the parenting mantle (it will never leave completely) and enter that stage of friendship and respect for your child, accepting that the choices they make will more than likely be different to yours but that they are now adults and simply CAN make them.

On the positive side - boy do I have free time on my hands - I realise why I was so skinny when younger as I was always running around after them ! I have not yet fully discovered what to do with the free time and that is part of my new challenge.

So yes - I am occasionally sad when I look at a picture or sort out some old stuff that has my children's handiwork in it ..... but I am happy for them .... as I should be ... and I can acknowledge that I need to make adjustments to my life in the new role as Nana rather than Mum .... and just accept those moments of loss and look forward to the increase in "me" time, time with Greg and time to do what I REALLY want to do (Which I still haven't figured out yet - but will keep you posted) !