The current period is a difficult one to describe. I suppose that in some way we're moving from a year of acute grief and loss into a period of - merely - chronic pain. At least that's how it feels. The grief that I feel has lost its sense of "first-timeness" and now feels more "settled". I use quotes here because all of these words are approximations to the truth. An example probably is more illustrative:
I was sitting in the car driving home this evening, contemplating fate, as I find myself doing too often these days. I have already said in this blog that, if I were confronted with a situation where I had to fight for my life, these days I feel that I would just rather give up and choose to go to Kay. My thoughts took a different turn this evening. On the way home I was confronted by a truck that had taken a corner too wide and ended up heading directly towards me, on my side of the road. I had to take the necessary evasive action but afterwards my nowadays fatalistic thinking started reviewing the event. I thought that actually I wouldn't want to die in fear, wouldn't want the last thing to go through my mind to be terror or even just plain panic. And then my mind made one of those horrible leaps that it tends to make these days. It asked me if Kay died in fear?
I have to say that for all intents and purposes I think she did. At least by my definition. To me Kay passed away the moment that she entered a coma and the following two weeks were not really part of her life. In the hours before she entered the coma she was terrified. She was having out of body experiences and was frightened, seeing herself standing next to her bed. She was fighting for every breath and was terrified of losing. She was scared of the procedure that would put her into the coma. She was shouting at the doctors to hurry up, she slapped me in the face when I told her to try to be calm. She certainly didn't die quietly, in peace and she didn't face it with my explicit support because I wasn't even compos-mentis enough to know what was going down. Thus, to my mind, Kay died in fear.
I was shocked to the core by this thought. It's the first time that it has occurred to me. My child died in fear. What a terrible realization. What a terrible thing. I'm horrified. I'm sitting here now with tears in my eyes and an awful feeling in my chest. Oh how I would that it could be different. I want neutrinos to travel faster than light so that I can hope to go back in time and change things. To make a different reality...
And this is how the days go, these days. I'm ploughing along through the sh*t of "normal" daily living like the rest of us, trying to deal with global news depression, European debt, Greece laziness, Philips cutbacks and all the rest of the miserable fodder of modern life, when I suddenly get struck by a mental lightening bolt, by a memory of Kay or a thought about Kay. These moments are so difficult to deal with now.
Last "Kay year" acute grief meant that I was constantly on my guard for being mentally ambushed by terrible or painful thoughts. But in this new "Kay year" my guard has softened. The result is that when I am ambushed the damage seems to hurt so much more. But equally it feels like there's less "space" for me to be floored by it. By this I mean that I feel that now, if someone found me at my desk in tears, they probably wouldn't have quite the understanding that they would have had a year ago. At least, that's how I feel.
I was driving somewhere with Nattie on Sunday afternoon. She'd been kicking her heels all weekend because we had been painting the lounge. So I took her out to help me pick up the boat. I commented to her that she'd been bored all weekend and she replied quite simply that that had happened often since Kay was gone. A spear ran through my heart, a cold rod of steel pierced me from front to back.
And so I have absolutely no idea how to describe these days except to say that we're still living in hell, but maybe it doesn't feel quite so hot. Until the fires flare up, that is.
Thursday, 20 October 2011
Saturday, 1 October 2011
Confused
I've not managed to write anything since the 19th because, frankly, I've not been able to get a grip on my feelings. On the plus side, there is a sense of relief that a year has passed and that we have now seen the complete cycle of grief, in time at least. I have a vague and guilty feeling that the period of mourning should now be over. Stiff upper lip, stomach in, chest out, time to march onwards. (Only I guess that no-one would notice if I tried to pull my stomach in these days). Also, I do indeed feel a lightening of the load, if only because the second time around has to be easier than the first time. Many peripheral problems and effects have disappeared or decreased. I don't need any medication, except the odd paracetamol to help me sleep. I'm not being drowned by waves of inconsolable grief quite so often as before. To some extent its easier to get out of bed and face the day.
And yet it seems as if all these improvements only amplify my underlying pain and grief. Like rock revealed by the retreating tide, day by day the details of our loss, my loss, are uncovered. So it is that more memories of Kay come back, not in any technicolour sense, but flashes of laughter, glimpses of moments, echos of what once was. I remember how much she liked to hold my hands, climb up my legs and chest until either she was sat on my shoulders or could do a backward roll onto the floor again. She would laugh so much and cry "Again, Daddy, Again". Like a church bell clanging, these memories remind me of what I loved so much, of what I didn't value enough, of what is now lost to me.
There is an almost visible hole in the world where Kay is not. I can feel it, it hovers just out of sight. It is delineated by silence where there should be loud noisy shouting, quiet where there should be children arguing (Kay was always arguing), emptiness where there should be a warm body. These things are becoming clearer, more identifiable as the tide of shock retreats.
Another thing is that I still can't believe that she has gone, in a sense. I know she has gone, I know she's not coming back. But although it sounds contradictory, I still can't believe that the world has been so cruel to us that it's taken Kay away. I mean, what kind of justice is that for all that we went through, for how hard Kay fought, how tough she was, how much we loved her, how much of ourselves we put into saving her? It just doesn't seem fair. In fact it still seems like the antithesis of fair, it seems malevolent.
I'm also noticing a fundamental shift in my feelings towards life in general. There's a perpetually sad fatalistic tint crept into the way that I view things. I have always looked at the world as if it were a sweet shop full of wonderful things to do, challenges to be met, places to go, people to meet. But it now feels to me as if the best days are in the past. Now I really care very little about wonderful things to do or challenges to be met. It's all meaningless. The things that you do turn turn into memories, is all. They condense down to just stories to be recanted over a glass of wine. The things that matter are the people around you. Now I just wish that I had my Kay. I would trade in all my flying and skiing and windsurfing and business successes and everything else that amounts to mere vanity to have my Kay by my side. That would be more than enough for me.
I was sitting on the sofa last night with Nattie snuggled up against me and I thought that there are no finer moments in life than when there's a small warm child bathing in their parent's love. But Nattie is 9 and soon those moments will become less frequent as she grows up and starts to do more of her own thing. And it feels to me now that that will happen far too quickly, that I have been robbed of my Kay cuddles and that there are not enough Nattie or Lauren cuddles to make up for it. Again, it seems that most of the golden moments, most of the cuddles and snuggles were in the past and the future is relatively bare of them.
And so I sit here and continue to struggle with loss and the ramifications of loss. How does one move forward? How does one reconcile all these things and find a new balance? How does one find value in the future and not just look back with regret? I wish I knew.
And yet it seems as if all these improvements only amplify my underlying pain and grief. Like rock revealed by the retreating tide, day by day the details of our loss, my loss, are uncovered. So it is that more memories of Kay come back, not in any technicolour sense, but flashes of laughter, glimpses of moments, echos of what once was. I remember how much she liked to hold my hands, climb up my legs and chest until either she was sat on my shoulders or could do a backward roll onto the floor again. She would laugh so much and cry "Again, Daddy, Again". Like a church bell clanging, these memories remind me of what I loved so much, of what I didn't value enough, of what is now lost to me.
There is an almost visible hole in the world where Kay is not. I can feel it, it hovers just out of sight. It is delineated by silence where there should be loud noisy shouting, quiet where there should be children arguing (Kay was always arguing), emptiness where there should be a warm body. These things are becoming clearer, more identifiable as the tide of shock retreats.
Another thing is that I still can't believe that she has gone, in a sense. I know she has gone, I know she's not coming back. But although it sounds contradictory, I still can't believe that the world has been so cruel to us that it's taken Kay away. I mean, what kind of justice is that for all that we went through, for how hard Kay fought, how tough she was, how much we loved her, how much of ourselves we put into saving her? It just doesn't seem fair. In fact it still seems like the antithesis of fair, it seems malevolent.
I'm also noticing a fundamental shift in my feelings towards life in general. There's a perpetually sad fatalistic tint crept into the way that I view things. I have always looked at the world as if it were a sweet shop full of wonderful things to do, challenges to be met, places to go, people to meet. But it now feels to me as if the best days are in the past. Now I really care very little about wonderful things to do or challenges to be met. It's all meaningless. The things that you do turn turn into memories, is all. They condense down to just stories to be recanted over a glass of wine. The things that matter are the people around you. Now I just wish that I had my Kay. I would trade in all my flying and skiing and windsurfing and business successes and everything else that amounts to mere vanity to have my Kay by my side. That would be more than enough for me.
I was sitting on the sofa last night with Nattie snuggled up against me and I thought that there are no finer moments in life than when there's a small warm child bathing in their parent's love. But Nattie is 9 and soon those moments will become less frequent as she grows up and starts to do more of her own thing. And it feels to me now that that will happen far too quickly, that I have been robbed of my Kay cuddles and that there are not enough Nattie or Lauren cuddles to make up for it. Again, it seems that most of the golden moments, most of the cuddles and snuggles were in the past and the future is relatively bare of them.
And so I sit here and continue to struggle with loss and the ramifications of loss. How does one move forward? How does one reconcile all these things and find a new balance? How does one find value in the future and not just look back with regret? I wish I knew.
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