Damn, I thought I was doing ok. But this morning I suddenly realised that one year ago this was the last week of Kay's conscious life. I took her to hospital for the last time one year ago, this Thursday. She entered a coma on Saturday... The end of her life for all practical purposes.
I have been either in tears or close to tears all day. If only I had known, if only I had been prepared. I could have held her closer, longer, tighter, never let go for a second. My KayKay.
It all seems so surreal now. And I'm terrified about the rest of the week. I thought that these days would be easier to cope with than her birthday, but right now they seem far, far worse. Oh, oh, oh.
My Kay. I love you, I miss you so very very much, my darling.
Monday 29 August 2011
Wednesday 17 August 2011
Homeopathy Rules!
I felt terrible yesterday, really bad. A blanket of heavy, grey, woolly depression hung over my head. Difficult to concentrate again, memory like a sieve, didn't feel like doing anything at all. And I have to say that I was pretty worried, I had no idea how to cope with this ongoing feel.
Fortunately I had my first appointment with the homeopathist (is that a word?) and spent 30 minutes describing how I felt to her. She rummaged through her books and came up with something that she reckoned would work. Two pills to be take 30 mins before/after eating or drinking anything else. I still apply my rules of scepticism to homeopathy. That is I do what I'm told and don't pay any further attention to it, much as I would do if given medication by the GP. So I got home, swallowed the tablets and moved on with the evening.
However, around bedtime it suddenly occurred to me that I felt somewhat lighter of spirit, the grey, heavy veil seemed to less grey and less heavy. This morning I woke up feeling mentally considerably better. I would say that maybe 60% of what I felt yesterday has gone. The treatment involves continuing to drink water laced with another dose of the same medication and as I have done so I have felt better through the day.
I have no explanation for this, except causality: there's been no real improvement in my mental state for almost a week, in spite of exercise and deflection. I take the homeopathic medication and within hours feel better than I've felt in +7 days. You work it out. I have to say that not every homeopathic treatment that I've been given has worked but I would say that more than half have worked. Add to that that I'm a born skeptic, physicist by education and software engineer by career and one has to think that there really is something to homeopathy.
Fortunately I had my first appointment with the homeopathist (is that a word?) and spent 30 minutes describing how I felt to her. She rummaged through her books and came up with something that she reckoned would work. Two pills to be take 30 mins before/after eating or drinking anything else. I still apply my rules of scepticism to homeopathy. That is I do what I'm told and don't pay any further attention to it, much as I would do if given medication by the GP. So I got home, swallowed the tablets and moved on with the evening.
However, around bedtime it suddenly occurred to me that I felt somewhat lighter of spirit, the grey, heavy veil seemed to less grey and less heavy. This morning I woke up feeling mentally considerably better. I would say that maybe 60% of what I felt yesterday has gone. The treatment involves continuing to drink water laced with another dose of the same medication and as I have done so I have felt better through the day.
I have no explanation for this, except causality: there's been no real improvement in my mental state for almost a week, in spite of exercise and deflection. I take the homeopathic medication and within hours feel better than I've felt in +7 days. You work it out. I have to say that not every homeopathic treatment that I've been given has worked but I would say that more than half have worked. Add to that that I'm a born skeptic, physicist by education and software engineer by career and one has to think that there really is something to homeopathy.
Monday 15 August 2011
Sailing to Sleep
I ended up getting out of bed at lunchtime on Wednesday, mostly because I'd got meetings at the office in the afternoon. This highlights the benefit of work in this process: the obligation/reponsibility is strong enough to force me into action even when I absolutely do not feel like it. On Thursday I forced myself to cycle to work since exercise is usually the best antidote to the blues. It helped and on Saturday I did a proper 50km ride, with the same goal in mind. I've also been keeping myself busy, one way or another. But in spite of all this I'm still struggling, though not as badly as on Wednesday.
Actually I have to admit that I feel kind of unwell. It's hard to describe quite how I feel, but things in my head aren't working properly. I seem to have problems recalling simple things, like people's names. And I constantly have the feeling that I've forgotten something. I can concentrate, but only with a relatively narrow focus and concentrating is quite hard work. But mostly I'm extremely tired. I'm starting to wonder if going on holiday was such a good idea. For a few weeks life weighed less heavily and returning to the "normality" of our post-Kay lives seems to be almost unbearable.
However I have done one thing in the last week that has given me a lot of joy: editing up a video of our sailing holiday. This turned out to be a huge amount of work. I'm no expert in video editing - I prefer photography - but I'd got some good material during the holiday using my GoPro sports camera and decided to try and make something of it. I started out 10 days ago using iMovie on the Mac, but rapidly learned that I couldn't do what I wanted with it. So I bought a copy of Adobe Premiere Elements and reconstructed what I'd done with iMovie. Premiere would let me do what I wanted but it works very badly on the Mac and is rather difficult to use for a beginner. In the end I gave up a bought a copy of Apple Final Cut Pro X and this turned out to be great: fast, easy to use and able to do what I had in mind fairly easily.
I have spent a stupid number of hours editing 5 minutes of video, but just looking at the various clips and photos and experimenting putting them together in a fun sequence has kept me busy and smiling and thinking about how much fun we had sailing. I've gone to bed thinking about sailing and video editing, slept fairly well and woken up with new ideas in my head and a desire to save up my pennies and buy a yacht. For those interested (or who haven't seen it on Facebook), you can find the video here.
I guess that another thing that's affecting me is some kind of post-birthday-season reaction. I have been so worried about getting through the various birthdays, Kay's in particular, that it now seems strange to be largely on the other side. Or rather, my reaction is possibly a realization of just how hard I have had to work to maintain an equilibrium during the last weeks/months. Possibly the symptoms described above are indicative of mental exhaustion. I guess that would make sense. But if so, I have absolutely no idea how to deal with it.
We have now seen all the red letter days, bar one. We're almost through the dreaded first year. And in some way this depresses me too. I haven't managed to put my finger on why, yet. The last year has been a complete nightmare and so I would of thought that I'd feel relieved to have seen the worst of it. But really I'm so terribly, terribly tired of living in a world in which hope and joy seem to have been largely extinguished. The idea of having to live another year like the last one, albeit a repeat and hopefully diminished experience, is too dreadful to contemplate.
Anyway, I'm extremely tired and one thing I learned earlier this year is that going to bed early helps, as much as I dislike shortening the day. On the other hand, I'll play the video, remember the holiday and hopefully go to sleep with sailing on my mind.
Actually I have to admit that I feel kind of unwell. It's hard to describe quite how I feel, but things in my head aren't working properly. I seem to have problems recalling simple things, like people's names. And I constantly have the feeling that I've forgotten something. I can concentrate, but only with a relatively narrow focus and concentrating is quite hard work. But mostly I'm extremely tired. I'm starting to wonder if going on holiday was such a good idea. For a few weeks life weighed less heavily and returning to the "normality" of our post-Kay lives seems to be almost unbearable.
However I have done one thing in the last week that has given me a lot of joy: editing up a video of our sailing holiday. This turned out to be a huge amount of work. I'm no expert in video editing - I prefer photography - but I'd got some good material during the holiday using my GoPro sports camera and decided to try and make something of it. I started out 10 days ago using iMovie on the Mac, but rapidly learned that I couldn't do what I wanted with it. So I bought a copy of Adobe Premiere Elements and reconstructed what I'd done with iMovie. Premiere would let me do what I wanted but it works very badly on the Mac and is rather difficult to use for a beginner. In the end I gave up a bought a copy of Apple Final Cut Pro X and this turned out to be great: fast, easy to use and able to do what I had in mind fairly easily.
I have spent a stupid number of hours editing 5 minutes of video, but just looking at the various clips and photos and experimenting putting them together in a fun sequence has kept me busy and smiling and thinking about how much fun we had sailing. I've gone to bed thinking about sailing and video editing, slept fairly well and woken up with new ideas in my head and a desire to save up my pennies and buy a yacht. For those interested (or who haven't seen it on Facebook), you can find the video here.
I guess that another thing that's affecting me is some kind of post-birthday-season reaction. I have been so worried about getting through the various birthdays, Kay's in particular, that it now seems strange to be largely on the other side. Or rather, my reaction is possibly a realization of just how hard I have had to work to maintain an equilibrium during the last weeks/months. Possibly the symptoms described above are indicative of mental exhaustion. I guess that would make sense. But if so, I have absolutely no idea how to deal with it.
We have now seen all the red letter days, bar one. We're almost through the dreaded first year. And in some way this depresses me too. I haven't managed to put my finger on why, yet. The last year has been a complete nightmare and so I would of thought that I'd feel relieved to have seen the worst of it. But really I'm so terribly, terribly tired of living in a world in which hope and joy seem to have been largely extinguished. The idea of having to live another year like the last one, albeit a repeat and hopefully diminished experience, is too dreadful to contemplate.
Anyway, I'm extremely tired and one thing I learned earlier this year is that going to bed early helps, as much as I dislike shortening the day. On the other hand, I'll play the video, remember the holiday and hopefully go to sleep with sailing on my mind.
Wednesday 10 August 2011
Fickle Me
Yesterday I was telling someone how I thought that we/I had done well on holiday, how I could imagine that I was beginning to heal in some way. In this new, nasty world it seems that no optimistic thought goes unpunished: this morning I woke up under a dark, heavy blanket of depression. Depression that after a while turned to a flood of tears, the first for a while.
I'm still in bed and I just feel like pulling the covers over my head and retreating to the darkest corner I can find. I guess that the antidote is exercise, I should get out and get on my bike and pump some of this blackness out of my body. But you know what? I feel too damned miserable to move.
I'm still in bed and I just feel like pulling the covers over my head and retreating to the darkest corner I can find. I guess that the antidote is exercise, I should get out and get on my bike and pump some of this blackness out of my body. But you know what? I feel too damned miserable to move.
Saturday 6 August 2011
Back Home
We got through Kay's birthday reasonably, I suppose, though not without the necessary tears and pain. This is largely due to the calls, SMS's and other messages that we had from family and friends. And of course keeping ourselves busy. The day at Marineland was excellent. The Orca and Dolphin shows were very enjoyable and informative, and to cap it all a baby Orca had been born at Marineland in April. This really would have been Kay's thing, she would have loved the baby.
We spent the evening eating with some friends and ended up getting home after midnight, so we really did pack the day out with activities. I guess that we can put a tick in another box, we got through another red letter day. I suppose that there is now only one left - 19th of September. But I think I'll leave that one aside for the time being.
I have really focused on keeping myself busy this holiday, primarily with Lauren and Nattie. It helps that they are both two years older than the last time we went on holiday and are now interested in and capable of doing more fun stuff. As a result we have spent 4 days down on the beach (a record for us!), with me teaching them windsurfing and sailing a Hobie with them. They have both taken to windsurfing and have made good progress, able to sail back & forth and make simple turns. I have thoroughly enjoyed my water-rats. Nattie is probably part fish and seems to have total confidence with any water based activity.
The only problem with all this is that I have been aware that Marion has been left out. She's not much into holiday sports and certainly not watersports, the latter being something that she shares with Kay. The fact that I have been running around with Lauren & Nat so much only goes to highlight Marion's feeling that she's lost her playmate. We each feel Kay's loss so personally and so differently.
We got up at 3am this morning to avoid the rush of traffic and I've only had a few hours sleep since, so I'm sat here at the moment feeling very tired and fatigued. Think I'll put my feet up for the evening and contemplate the holiday.
We spent the evening eating with some friends and ended up getting home after midnight, so we really did pack the day out with activities. I guess that we can put a tick in another box, we got through another red letter day. I suppose that there is now only one left - 19th of September. But I think I'll leave that one aside for the time being.
I have really focused on keeping myself busy this holiday, primarily with Lauren and Nattie. It helps that they are both two years older than the last time we went on holiday and are now interested in and capable of doing more fun stuff. As a result we have spent 4 days down on the beach (a record for us!), with me teaching them windsurfing and sailing a Hobie with them. They have both taken to windsurfing and have made good progress, able to sail back & forth and make simple turns. I have thoroughly enjoyed my water-rats. Nattie is probably part fish and seems to have total confidence with any water based activity.
The only problem with all this is that I have been aware that Marion has been left out. She's not much into holiday sports and certainly not watersports, the latter being something that she shares with Kay. The fact that I have been running around with Lauren & Nat so much only goes to highlight Marion's feeling that she's lost her playmate. We each feel Kay's loss so personally and so differently.
We got up at 3am this morning to avoid the rush of traffic and I've only had a few hours sleep since, so I'm sat here at the moment feeling very tired and fatigued. Think I'll put my feet up for the evening and contemplate the holiday.
Tuesday 2 August 2011
Monday 1 August 2011
Dont't know
I slept badly last night and have woken up this morning feeling very tired and sick in my stomach. The effort of trying to control the building flood of grief, I think. Eleven years ago this morning Marion's water broke, kicking off a whole long story about how Kay came into the world, including us signing all the papers for our new house in the delivery room of the hospital.
I'm trying my very best to control my feelings, stay on top of my pain, but it's so very difficult. We're going down the beach today to get the girls some more windsurfing lessons and maybe sail the Hobie again. This evening Alex and Roland are coming over. Hopefully by staying busy the grief can be kept at bay.
I'm trying my very best to control my feelings, stay on top of my pain, but it's so very difficult. We're going down the beach today to get the girls some more windsurfing lessons and maybe sail the Hobie again. This evening Alex and Roland are coming over. Hopefully by staying busy the grief can be kept at bay.
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