Why I've been away - it's been complicated - The Widow's Handbook: winner of the Helen Bailey Award 2022

Why I've been away - it's been complicated

6/4/2023

Things have been quiet here for a while. And it's… complicated. Just as I was settling down for Christmas, I got flu. Thankfully it wasn't as bad as it could have been, as I'd been vaccinated, but it wiped out Christmas and a couple of weeks afterwards.

I've been having a lot of work done on the house. It's very old (potentially one of the oldest in the village) and everything went wrong at once. A ceiling needed repairing. A section of roof needed replacing. Damp needed sorting.

Over Christmas, my wife and I decided that it was time to think about buying somewhere together, as she has been living in what was mine and Tim's house. This was a tough decision for me, but it is the right thing to do. It's part of moving forward, and Tim will come to the new house with me. Because he is always there. As part of this process, I'm selling Tim's books, and that's bittersweet.

February was the five-year anniversary of Tim's death, but also the day I discovered that Tim's father was dying. And so I've been to another funeral.

And finally – I have ADHD. This makes me very easily distracted. And all of the above have been pretty distracting. But I am now back. Thank you for bearing with me.

1 Comment

Chris

6/10/2023 15:40:29

Just found your blog a couple of weeks ago. I'm catching up on some of your posts. This one struck a chord with me as I had a similar experience.

My wife collapsed at the house which began a 12 week crisis ending in her death due to an extremely rare autoimmune disease. Covid restrictions restricted me from being with her through everything she suffered until the last 2 days when she was unresponsive at a hospice facility. I too sold our house and moved into a house we were building as an eventual retirement home. I had to get away from the memory of her collapse at the house and nights spent there in deep anguish.

It has been a tough year. My nephew died in his sleep the same day as my wife died. My aunt died 3 weeks before they did after voluntarily starving herself to death. Finally my mother passed months later. So I moved into a shell of a house and built it out alone. Probably it was a good decision since I only had time to digest what happened in small pieces.

Like you, I got rid of a lot of her stuff but I kept what I felt was important in my memory of her. I'm hoping that the items will allow me to keep the good memories in my mind and push the memory of what's happened into the very back of my mind.

Why I've been away - it's been complicated

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