The Season?

As I sit here attempting to distance myself from last week by writing about it I feel a sudden upwelling of pain and a tidal wave of tears heading for my eyes. It's been a hard week, mostly for Marion but with knock-on effects for me. 

On Tuesday evening, when I got home from work, I found Marion is a very poor state. I have no idea really what specifically caused it, but minutes after I arrived home she dissolved into inconsolable sobbing. She kept repeating that she didn't understand why Kay had died, didn't understand what had happened. These days I have nothing left to say to her, everything has been said and we're no closer to any answers than we were on the 19th of September. So I just held her.

She pulled herself together long enough to serve up the food she'd been cooking but she didn't get half way through her portion before she broke loose again. I pulled her close to me and tried to comfort her but there's really no comfort to be offered, there's only the pain of our loss. Things just got worse. I asked Nattie to help and we made a "cuddle sandwich" with Marion in the middle. To no avail. I started to feel a creeping sense of desperation. Something new was happening, it was like Marion had sprung a leak and grief was flowing uncontrollably. I started wondering if the entire dam was going to give way. For more than 90 minutes Marion's sobbing continued. She grasped at memories, asked unanswerable questions, cried her heart out.


But there were also secondary effects. Marion was pulling me closer and closer to the edge of reason, closer and closer to my own meltdown. And I was worried about Nattie. Was she able to deal with Marion's sorrow, with cuddling her poor Mum? And what would happen to Nattie if I lost it as well? My desperation turned to panic and in the end I decided to call our GP. She came round immediately and for the second time in two days. I departed the scene with Nattie, took her to bed and read to her from "Ten Tall Tales". In between stories I asked her if she was OK, whether she was worried about Mama. Her reply was "A bit". But soon enough she fell asleep in our bed and I lay there for a while staring at the moving wallpaper.


Once the sounds from downstairs started to sound like normal conversation I dared to stick my head down the stairs. Marion and our GP were sitting drinking tea and chatting, so I headed down to get myself a cup, relieved that Marion had made it through another crisis. Later, around 11pm, a friend turned up and took Marion for a walk in the woods. I retired to bed feeling exhausted and emotionally beaten.

Marion has remained extremely fragile and tearful the whole week. I guess that it's the time of the year and the inevitable emotional confrontations that we have to face. Today is the day that "Sint" distributes presents to Dutch kids, normally a day of much excitement in our house. But this year is different from last, by one child exactly.


I'm able to lose myself in work for 7 or 8 hours per day, time when thoughts of Kay or thoughts of avoiding thoughts of Kay are not dominant in my mind. But Tuesday's battle left me feeling seriously emotionally destabilized for the rest of the week. Unfortunately Marion is struggling so much to simply function that I think my needs passed her by in the last days. On Wednesday evening we were due to go to friends for a birthday drink. I didn't feel up being in public, I didn't feel emotionally well at all. So I said this to Marion and decided to stay at home. Marion said that she'd only be gone for a short while, but in the event she wasn't home until midnight. I had a bad evening on my own and a worse time when I went to bed. I really didn't and don't want to be on my own these days.


On Friday Marion was still clearly really having a hard time, the misery and pain could be read off her face. For the last months Marion's Mum and her Aunt have come over on Fridays to give Marion a hand round the house. But this Friday her Mum called to say that they were worried about the weather and wouldn't be coming. I knew that Marion had rather a lot to do and would miss the help and support so I called her after lunch and offered to come home and do some jobs for her. She was out for a couple of hours in the afternoon so I was on my own in the house, pottering around doing stuff. The emptiness hit me very hard and I felt a wave of grief rising in my chest. No wonder that Marion's struggling. My sticking plaster was to turn on some very loud music to fill in the space and to create some energy. And also to stick my head into the jobs I had to do. 


All this evasion goes only so far. It seems that one builds up an emotion head of steam that has to be let out at some point. I'd rather be controlled about the letting, it seems less painful that way. Maybe the integral is the same, one can either get rid of 'excess' grief shortly and sharply or over a longer period at lower intensity. I choose for the latter, I'm a coward like that. Yesterday evening I made some tea for us - we had friends round - and I used a mug with a photo of Kay on it for myself. When I noticed what I'd done I was blasted by a sudden sense of loss and I dissolved into tears. My turn this time.


Today I feel like the weather. It's dark, miserable, colourless, cold, bitter. Ten centimetres of snow is being washed away by rain. Not a day to go outside, not a day to do anything and I'm certainly being successful at that. I'd intended, as usual, to do some cycling (on the simulator in this weather). But I'm drained, lifeless and empty except for sadness and grief, for waves of tears that threaten to make themselves visible. 

Oh how I miss Kay. Everything else is a function of that feeling, that need, that absence, that hole. As Marion has said so many times this week, I just want to hear her, feel her, touch her, smell her.


If you see Kay...