First published on The House of Correction blog in November 2018
I've just bought a new shredder, and now my office carpet looks like it's been hit by a cellulose snowstorm. I'm going through a huge box of papers and getting rid of anything older than five years. There's a satisfaction of pushing sheets of paper into its tooth-lined maw, and filling paper sacks with shreddings for recycling. It is making me think of things that are no more. Cars, houses, cats, jobs. And marriages. There's a lot of Tim's paperwork in here. Payslips, bank statements, bills, receipts, car documentation. And always the challenge of seeing his writing. I can't keep it all but there is part of me that feels guilty getting rid of it, as if I am erasing him. There are some things I'm keeping, though. An old driving license. His invitation to his cousin's 21st birthday party. The receipt from a wonderful; holiday in the Loire Valley. Notes that he left on my desk. It's a balance between preservation and decluttering, and the most valuable things there are I still have. My memories of him.
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I've always had a bit of a wry sense of humour, and a somewhat cynical view of the world. I was worried that I had lost my sense of humour, along with my rather dirty laugh, after Tim died. They both did come back, but my sense of humour is now somewhat darker.
Dark humour is a coping mechanism. It's a distraction and a way of accepting the situation. It can also be used to bring people in the same situation together – I've seen it in doctors, nurses, ambulance crew and police. I have used dark humour about my sexuality when telling other queer people and allies about experiences of biphobia. An incident in a local pub: "You are marrying a woman? But you used to be married to a man, and he's dead? Your husband knew you liked women? Did you sleep with women while you were married to your husband?" I have also used dark humour to tell other widows about dealing with muggles (people who haven't been bereaved). A woman rang up, wanting to talk to Tim, who used to be a bookseller. She launched into a stream of explanation about books she wanted to sell. I finally managed to break in to explain that he had died. She paused imperceptibly and then asked me if I still wanted to buy the books. I said that I wasn't involved in the shop and she rang off. About five minutes later, the same woman, the same explanation. I broke in, this time to say, "You've already spoken to me and he's still dead." She responded to say, "I didn't – I dialled another number…" and I put the phone down. Comedians and writers who have used humour to handle widowhood include Kat Lister, Tawny Platis (founder of Death is Hilarious) and Sandra E Manning. It's important to remember that dark humour can be disconcerting for people outside of the community that you are in. I made a dark widow humour comment on a Zoom writing workshop about one bonus of his death being that I could finally get rid of his grandmother's coffee tables, and there was a moment of dead air followed by some nervous laughter. Tim's death was so sudden, I found it hard to accept. It didn't feel real. Every time I heard the door from his shop to our flat click, it was him coming upstairs to show me something, rant about a customer, or pass on a bit of news. When I saw his car outside, for just a split second I'd think he was home. Gradually, it became real as the rawness of the shock wore off, and I became very low. I was accepting it.
I didn't want to adjust. I didn't want to change anything or move anything. I lived within a very small space, moving between my office and my chair. My chair became a nest, with books and crafts around it all within arm's length. Friends helped, but I just needed to be inside my grief. Slowly, I started to sort things out. I started to get rid of things – some of his things, some of my things – and to tidy, clean and decorate the house. Creating a home for me. I started to adjust. In the early days of grief, achieving just meant getting out of bed. Cleaning my teeth. Showering. Eating a piece of fruit. Grief is a rollercoaster, and sometimes in the later days of grief, these were achievements too. When things got very dark, simply being alive was an achievement. As I moved forward through grief, I was able to work, go out, go to the theatre alone, eat better. Write. Go back to university and study. I was achieving. This is my story. It's important to remember that everyone's grief journey is different. Accepting, adjusting and achieving will have unique meanings for each and every widow. I've known that I was attracted to both men and women since my 20s. Actually… the crushes on a couple of truly awesome female teachers in my teens might mean I knew it before, but didn't realise what it meant. The first time I came out as bi to a lesbian friend, she told me that bisexuality is just a phase, and I should pick a side. Consequently, I didn't tell anyone else for a long time.
I married Paul at 24, which now seems impossibly young. Over a decade our marriage fell apart. Tim, who I'd known for many years, helped me through depression and a divorce, and we drifted from being very close friends to falling in love. While I spent this period of my life 'straight passing', I was still bisexual. Tim knew about my sexuality and loved me all the same. He died suddenly at 50, after we'd only been married nine years, and my life crumbled. Some friends had known that I was bi, but I wasn't really out. Even before Tim died I'd been feeling that I was somehow living a lie, and betraying who I was. As I started to build another life, I became more open about what I was. And when I started seeing a woman, I couldn't really hide any more. The responses to me coming out, as well as 'picking a side', ranged from total acceptance and 'when I met you, my gaydar pinged, but I assumed that I was wrong – I see now', to 'I don't understand – you used to be married to a man but he's dead' and 'does that mean you were sleeping with women when you were married to your husband?' Now I am married to a woman, I guess I'm 'lesbian passing', and I suspect that many people think I have made a major lifestyle change, finally picked a team, or only just realised I'm gay. This isn't helped by bi erasure, and by the media and entertainment tropes about bisexuals showing them (us) as cheating, confused, greedy, promiscuous, villainous, unable to stay faithful, or just bi-curious. And that's just the women. The bisexual men are much less visible. However – I am proudly and defiantly queer. I am bisexual, from the pink and purple in my hair down to my awesome Pride Converse. Have a wonderful Celebrate Bisexuality Day! #CelebrateBisexualityDay #BisexualPrideDay #BiVisibilityDay In my other life, I'm a medical writer, and I sometimes travel to for work. A few months after Tim died I went to Germany to write a report on a meeting. Whenever I went away, I'd always tell Tim that I was heading off to spend time with my people – doctors, scientists, researchers – and going to the conference was a little slice of normality after his death turned my life upside down. I love flying and the excitement of the journey kept me going, but arriving at the hotel brought me back down with a bump, as we'd message when I arrived safely and I'd send him pictures of the hotel room and the view out of the window. The conference went well, and I found moments of happiness talking about the science that I love. The journey home was hard, with a long delay in a late-night European airport, but a fellow widow kept me going by chatting on Messenger, and for that I'm still grateful.
Four and a half years on and I'm going to Grenoble to chair a panel at a medical devices conference, and my journey starts in Hope, at a rural railway station in the dawn light. I am living a whole new life – before I left I kissed my new wife and my new puppy goodbye – but I still carry Tim with me as I head out to see my people. Sometimes I feel that I'm living two parallel lives. There's the life that changed abruptly when Tim died, and the other that carried on, where we are still married and he is still in his bookshop downstairs.
I've had a birthday this week.
My birthday has long been a bittersweet day. My first husband's mother died suddenly and unexpectedly on my 24th birthday, nine months before we got married. He rang me just as I was getting up, and I knew as soon as he spoke that something was wrong. That was the first death close to me. Roll on a couple of decades, and Tim and I married on my birthday. Everyone sang happy birthday to me at the reception. It seemed like a lovely thing to do at the time. But after Tim died, this left me with two milestones on one day. A birthday in September is associated with a change of the seasons, and I think my brain and body subconsciously mark the approach of the date with the smells, sounds, temperature and day length of oncoming autumn, even before I realise that the date is approaching. My birthday rolls into the milestones. Tim's birthday in December. Christmas, which was often a time just for the two of us. New Year, where we saw the people we've partied with since our early twenties. And then his death date, 24 February. And so, I find this time of year tough, and often have to surf a wave of depression around now. Which means I need to try to take my own advice. I'm going to be kind to myself. Sit through the grief attacks. And know that the depression wave will lift. There are so many 'what ifs' after we lose someone
I've looked back over some old posts of mine on the Widowed and Young Facebook forums (WOC is short for the Widowed and Young Without Children group). I have managed to avoid the what ifs so far. Coming up to 14 weeks, they are fighting their way in. He was tired and sometimes out of breath but he was doing a lot of lifting and carrying - what if that was early signs of heart failure and not just him overdoing it. What if the rough night on that last night wasn't just one of his frequent stomach bugs and was the early signs of his heart stopping. What if... 23 May 2018 -14 weeks after his death Having a bit of a wobbly week. Struggling with an upsurge in the guilt and what ifs about Tim's death - what if I had noticed he was more tired, what if I had insisted that we got more help moving books from one storage to another. Nov 2018 – nine months after his death Can I have a WOC hug, please? Doing a lot of clearing out at the moment. Been shredding paperwork and this morning it was Tim's medical paperwork from some years back. He had hyperlipidaemia and type II diabetes and had an angiogram some years ago. It's brought back the few months before he died, when he was starting to get tired. At the time I though he was just working too hard (we were moving books from one storage unit to another) but now I see that it was the beginning of his heart failure. I am hypersensitive at the moment as I am just a few weeks away from his second anniversary, but I am having major attacks of 'what if...' Feb 2020 – two years after his death My mental and health physical health weren't good in the few months before Tim died. What if that was the reason he didn't tell me he felt ill, or the reason I missed it? Or what if being ill meant that I made his last few months unhappy?
Coping with the what ifs I believe that we get these feelings because our brain is trying to explain things, and attempting to deal with our feelings of helplessness. A fellow WOC said to me "what ifs are like demons on the shoulders of our grief, whispering in our ears at times when we are most vulnerable". What comforts me is that Tim and I loved each other, and that he died at my side. When we get what ifs, it's important to remember that hindsight is 20/20, and what-ifs are generally completely unrealistic. It's like looking at a puzzle – when you first glance at it, it seems unfathomable, but once you have the answers it seems so obvious. When you get caught in what ifs and if onlys:
I remember so clearly packing your bag for the last time. Pants and socks. A clean white shirt – I think it was the one you wore when we got married in. The shoes you wore the last time you acted, in Sue Hawkins' All the Lonely People. Your favourite tie. The suit that you joked had seen more funerals than weddings, your Jaguar keyring in your inside pocket, the one you got in the Secret Santa just two months before, and a ticket to the Goodwood Members' Meeting in your top pocket. The race meeting we'd been planning for months. The one that started the day we buried you.
The last time I packed your bag. I've shared my story on the WAY Widowed and Young website. "I was widowed at 50 when Tim, who I expected would be my happy-ever-after following a marriage break-up, died suddenly from heart failure linked to his type 2 diabetes. Although we'd known each other since our early 20s, we’d been married less than ten years. I was fortunate to find WAY Widowed and Young and the subgroup WAYWOCs (Widowed and Young WithOut Children) just a few days after I was widowed. I can honestly say that I couldn't have got through the past four years without this incredible bunch of young widows, male and female, cis and trans, straight and queer. We have shared (virtually and face-to-face) our tragedies, our successes, our tears, our laughter, and any number of truly bad puns and Marmite-related comestibles. I’m bisexual, I’ve known since my 20s but been married and divorced and then married and widowed, each time to a man, had me hiding in plain sight. I’m now in a same-sex relationship with an amazing woman called Dee and we’re getting married in August. It’s important to me that I am a bisexual woman, and that I am still me, whoever I’m in a relationship with. Getting involved in queer communities has helped me explore who I am. The amazing WAY LGBTQ+ group allowed me to be out in a safe space, where I felt supported and listened to. These amazing people looked out for me as I came out to my family, and told them that I had a new partner. The LGBTQ+ group is a little glittery place of fabulousness filled with people who are looking after each other and shouting out for each other. We celebrate the good days and the successes, support each other through the bad days, make each other laugh, talk about frocks and lipstick and films, rant, and send each other virtual hugs. I have been fortunate that, apart from some rare occasions, I’ve seen nothing but acceptance. My family, friends and village have fully accepted my partner, which is fantastic. But I know that the WAY LGBTQ+ group would have been there for me if it hadn’t been like that." |
AuthorI was widowed at 50 when Tim, who I expected would be my happy-ever-after following a marriage break-up, died suddenly from heart failure linked to his type 2 diabetes. Though we'd known each other since our early 20s, we'd been married less than ten years. Archives
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