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.