Denial

Everyone grieves differently - but it is widely acknowledged that there are 5 stages that run as a common thread to those recently bereaved. These 5 stages are;

1. Denial
2. Anger
3. Bargaining
4. Depression
5. Acceptance

Not everyone will experience all of these or even, on each occasion of individual grief - you have different people within your life who will die at different stages of their lives, causing you to grieve differently for them !

Also, many will experience these stages in different orders and some stages may come back more than once, to hit you sometimes years after that beloved person has died. 

I did not fully discover the theoretical impact of grief until I finished my degree, 17 years after Mark had died ..... and then, many, many things began to make sense and fell into place !

I know now, for me, that those first few days were dominated by denial, but this is so difficult to explain. Of course I knew the facts - I knew he was dead and not coming back so it wasn't a concious denial. However, as I mentioned in a previous post, it is almost as if the brain is protecting the heart ..... allowing only a slip of information through at a time, so that it doesn't all hit you at once. 

This denial holds you in a bubble - a hazy world, where everything is happening around you and even with you ..... but you don't feel connected.

Some of the practical processes of bereavement help deal with it, in a drip-feed manner. 

I was in denial - yet I cried a lot ..... I was in denial - yet I phoned all the friends and family to tell them the news. 

That Thursday morning was so hard - but I was on automatic pilot - someone (most likely my Mum) had stated that "we will have to let other people know" ... Mark's friends and mine, wider family members and those who had worked with Mark.

So I picked up the phone and just started dialling ...... number after number ..... friend after friend. 

I have a HUGE apology to make here because in fact, I had no sense of time or place. I had no realisation of the impact the news would have on our friends and family and was literally just phoning many of them ...even those who were at work ......what an awful thing to do ...... dropping that bombshell on someone when they are working - but that is Denial - not really thinking it through - just acting automatically.

On calling one friend (the one who's birthday it had been on the Wednesday), she immediately came over with her partner and took the children to the park, allowing me the time to do the rest of the phone calls - she recognised that this was not something you can do with a 4 year old and 2 year old running around .......... and that was the how my wonderful friends and family progressed and acted throughout the next few years - maybe not everyone thought they knew what to say or do but they all just instinctively did what was needed at the time!

Yet this practical aspect of ringing round was part of the drip-feed process - of repeating the same statement ...... getting the horror of what has just happened through to me.

Another practical aspect is identifying the body. I actually cannot remember even being asked to identify him and I think perhaps the police thought it best if I didn't because I was young, with 3 little ones, and probably looked a bit fragile. OR maybe I was asked and just blanked this from my thoughts/memory, as not being able to cope with this part of the process

Mark's Dad identified him and for several years afterwards I yo-yo'd between being angry that it wasn't me, upset that someone else had done this and grateful that I didn't have to do it. I am settled now on the grateful part and realise how hard this must have been for his Dad. 

So, without having to identify the body and leave the flat,  Mum and I spent the day cocooned - in our bubble world - in a state of shock and also limbo ..... I could not think further than the next 15 minutes and I don't think Mum could either !

The drip feeding continued throughout the day - seeing the crash reported on the news and a tiny article ("hold the press" - with very little information at this point) in the local paper.

Denial - being faced with a fact that is too uncomfortable to accept so you reject it instead, not wanting to believe it - despite the overwhelming evidence. 

That was me - not wanting to even begin to believe it - because then it would be true ..... and Mark would be dead and I would actually have to start to deal with that.

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 ..............