Wish you were here...

I can't begin to tell you how much I miss you, Kay. These days every beat of my heart carries an echo that reminds me that you're not here, not going to walk in the door, not going to hug me, not going run and jump into my arms. The list of things that I miss is so long that it seems endless, full of sights and sounds and smells and feelings that are no more. I keep thinking that I'm able to deal with losing you. But then there's always something around the corner that makes me realise that I don't think I will ever be able to deal with it, accept it, come to terms with it. My arms ache with the need to hug you.

I know that I loved you as much as I could and I know that you know how much I love you still. But it doesn't seem like enough. I keep thinking of all those moments when I just accepted my family, my children at face value. When I didn't treasure them, 'grok' them, bury my face in them and absorb every atom of joy that they brought to my life. It's so easy to live with the people we love most without truly appreciating them. If I had the chance to go back and re-live the ten years of your life, I would do it slowly. I would savour every moment, treasure every second, inhale every sight, sound, smell and touch. I would bathe myself in the richness of that life. 

But now that richness has been forever diminished. And I will forever feel like a complete fool for not having realised just how lucky I was to have three such varied, beautiful and wonderful children. Now I have just two beautiful and wonderful children and try as I might, the richness of what I still have is tainted by what I have lost.

Kay, my darling. I miss you so so so much. I would move heaven and earth to hold you in my arms again, to hear you laughing, to catch you cheating at Monopoly. This life is worth so much less without you. 

Your loving Daddy, forever.

Health Report

After another sleepiness night I checked in with the GP this morning. Everything seems ok, at least from a physical point of view, BP normal, HR my usual low figure. Doc says that it's pure stress and that the best medicine is sport. I guess that these are the moments that I have to be glad that I don't smoke, don't drink (much), I'm not overweight (much) and that I occasionally get round to being active. Now I just need to recover from a horrible night. My head is buzzing with tiredness and I feel like hell. So what to do?

More on Sleep

I thought that I was winning the sleep problem but yet again I'm sat here at 2:30am, unable to sleep though desperately tired. Last Sunday night was hell, Monday I was exhausted enough to sleep through a world war, Tuesday was again horrible. Wednesday was a little better and since Thursday I've been doing OK - until now, that is.


I talked to our Homeopath on Monday and she suggested stopping some medication that I'd been taking for weeks to get rid of lingering flu symptoms. When I thought about it, this made sense - my sleep problems started shortly after starting this medication. She was fairly sure that my sleep problem was an over effect and thought that within 3 days or so, once the medication was out of my system, I would lose the sleep problem. It seems pretty much that that is what happened.


However another component of the problem is stress, I guess. I've mentioned before that I've been experiencing tension in my chest and that I find that my heart also seems to beat too hard on these occasions (not too fast, but thumps in my chest). The solution to this is exercise. For instance, last week I went on the cross trainer every other day for 30 mins, which had the effect of greatly decreasing the tension in my chest.


It's this problem that's keeping me awake tonight. I guess that this is my fault. Usually I'll do a  30 - 40km trip on my mountain bike in the weekend. I'd planned to take part in an organised ride today but after 2.5km I got a flat tyre and ended up missing the ride. I was so fed up that when I got home, without thinking, I didn't do anything to fill in the gap and so I missed out on my weekend exercise. Earlier this evening I noticed, without really noticing, that I could feel my heart beating. But it was only when I went to bed that I really noticed that it was thumping quite hard. I started to worry then, which only made the situation worse and guess what? Here I am.


I don't know what to do about it now. The problem is that the whole cycle from last week could start to repeat itself. So I need to get on the cross trainer first thing in the morning. But at this rate I'll be exhausted in the morning. 


I used to think that I could absorb stress fairly easily but since Kay became sick I seem to be pretty stress intolerant. Or rather, I think that most of my capacity to absorb stress has been taken up by the loss of Kay and I have very little room left to deal with normal things.


There have been lots of tears in our house in the last few days. Preparations for christmas are bringing our pain to the fore. I bumped into the last photos of Kay yesterday and that has really been hard to take, although I know that like many things, they have to be faced. Marion said today that she still has the feeling that Kay will come running in the door any second and that's a feeling that I share too. Again she's incredibly present by her absence. There's a Kay-shaped hole in my life that is almost tangible. 


I can't find any enthusiasm for christmas, it seems so meaningless. Thinking about gifts for people, it supposedly being a happy time of the year, etc, when my heart feels so empty. The only point of it for me is to make it nice for Lauren and Nattie and to enjoy some good company. I could easily leave the tree, the lights and all the other symbols of something I just don't feel. 


But there's one big highlight in the coming days: Lauren comes home on Wednesday. She was last home at the beginning of September, which seems like an age ago. I can't wait to see her. So I guess that for now I'll try to focus on that and see if I can eventually get some sleep.   

The last photos

Was roaming around my photo library and I bumped into the last few photos that I have of Kay before she went into intensive care.

What's happening?

I'm desperate. For the life of me, I can't sleep. It's a disaster and I have no idea what's behind it this time. Slowly across a period of weeks I've been losing the ability to sleep properly. It started out 3-4 week ago when I found myself waking up around 5am. Then slowly it became earlier until it was 4am. This was not so much of a problem because I had to particular problem falling asleep and I was getting some core rest. But about 4-5 nights ago I started having nightmares or very bad quality sleep and that has now progressed until it seems like it's impossible to get to sleep. 


Saturday night was hell. It took a long time but initially I dosed off only to find myself in a nightmare where I was having a knife fight with someone and was forced to cut their fingers off... It was a very short 'sleep' and I woke with a pounding heart which didn't calm down. I followed this up during the course of the night with a sleep inducing tablet (no effect), then later two paracetamol (which also acts as a relaxant, but to no effect) and finally ended up putting a light jazz mix on my iPhone and trying to sleep with a headset on. This worked to an extent, but not brilliantly. I've been a walking zombie all day. I've not had the energy to get on my mountain bike, which means I'm lacking exercise, which means that I'm probably only making things worse - a real downward spiral.


This evening I decided to be proactive so I took a sleep inducer and two paracetamol before I went to bed. When I found that I still couldn't sleep I put on an audio book in the hope that listening to a story would relax me. This sort of worked, but not completely. I found myself fading in and out of the story, neither sleeping nor completely following what was going on. In the end I gave up and now I'm downstairs, writing this and working on a glass of port as the last resort.


The problem is that I've been here before, earlier in the year, and it was hell. It took ages before I managed to get through it. At that time I was being plagued by serious, acute grief and therefore I could relate my sleeping problem to that directly. However this time I have absolutely no idea what's causing my insomnia. I would suggest that the grief is not as acute as 9 months ago, though we're not having the easiest period. I would also argue that work is maybe a little less worrying than it has been - we had a very good week last week and secured a big order. Prospects for the short-medium term look fair. So what the hell is going on?


This is extremely worrying, which itself makes sleeping more difficult. I just don't feel like I have the strength to battle through days or weeks of insomnia. Sitting here thinking about it has me on the verge of tears. I have important work to do, work that requires me to be able to concentrate and not sleeping destroys my ability to concentrate. I'm so desperate I'm even thinking of taking one of the full blown sleeping tablets that I have, but this will cause a whole raft of other problems, as I learnt at the start of the year.


Help!

Man, This is Hard

I think that you can probably tell from the reduced frequency of these blog entries that we did OK in October. But in the last weeks, and certainly the last days, grief has been weighing on me more and more. I have a load of things that I planned to do today but they have been pushed aside by the overwhelming sense of loss that I yet again feel. I walk past Kay's picture on the wall, the picture that so perfectly captures her, and it seems impossible that she's not here. I know that I've said these things over and again and that repeating them has little value, but I still feel a sense of incredulity every time I realise that she's not here to be hugged, to give me a hug.


I just keep thinking that Kay was so full of life, so fit, so energetic. She wasn't a complainer, she got on with doing stuff, whatever it was that was on her mind. She lived her short life to the full, awake early and immediately busy. The whole day long doing things until she fell asleep, often even before her bedtime out cold on the sofa. She always fought her corner, always wanted to win (even if that meant changing the rules), was always determined. She had so many setbacks but she never complained about her lot, she just got on with doing her best. How can it be that such a wonderful child can lose their life? Why on earth have we not been allowed to see how she would grow up, what she would do with her life?


As time goes by this is one of the main themes that plays in my head. I'm so sure that Kay would have become successful at some kind of sport, hockey probably. She had the physical make-up and fitness for it, the mental drive and determination. Whenever I'm at the hockey club or playing tennis I feel her loss so intensely, I feel that I've lost an entire future that would of been a joy to behold. Even more so because of my three children, Kay was the most different from me. I've never been good at sport, I've never been (and still am not) a gregarious social animal, I've never been so full of the kind of energy and drive that Kay had, that she got from Marion. I recognise myself in Lauren & Nattie, but I could recognise so little of myself in Kay and therefore she was always so interesting and surprising to me. It is of course difficult to know anything about how one's children will turn out, what they are likely to do with their lives, but I feel that I have an idea about Lauren & Nattie, whereas Kay could have done anything. 


I saw a child the other day, a girl with long thick red hair, just like Kay's. I so remember the times that I buried my face in Kay's hair and was amazed by the rich thickness of it, by the colour, by the length. I remember feeling a sense of wonder that a child with such hair could be my child and wondering where she came from. When I saw that child the other day, I wanted to come home and find Kay's hair - I think that when it fell out curing Chemo, Marion put it away somewhere - and I wanted to bury my face in it. I miss her so terribly, painfully, mind numbingly, awfully, inconceivably, infinitely much. I don't know where she came from and I don't know where she's gone. I only know that she's left behind a hole in my life that is simply huge, that she's left behind a father who loves her more than can be described and that the combination of these things is the definition of a broken heart.

Annoying...

Apologies for the silence. Last week, during a largely sleepless night, I sat down and wrote what I felt was a good blog entry. Unfortunately when I attempted to save it something crashed and I lost the lot. I was so disappointed that I couldn't bring myself to try to reproduce it. Also when I'd finished it was 3:30am so I decided to make another attempt to sleep, which worked - kind of.

Last week we recommenced our tennis lessons after a break of two years. I'd forgotten how much I enjoyed making a hash of basic shots on an outside court at 9pm on a cold winter's evening. But my enjoyment was severely coloured by the flood of memories that being on a tennis court again brought back. The last time I played tennis I had a complete family...  Kay loved tennis and won her club spring youngsters championship just before her bone marrow transplant... The bloody minded determination with which she struck every ball...

The past weeks the grief has been easier to bear - the change from acute to chronic, I suppose. It's just there all the time, rather like Kay's bedroom. And like Kay's bedroom, one is left wondering what to do about it or whether indeed anything can be done about it at all. I don't know.

That said in the last days the ache has resumed. I have been missing her so much again, longing to feel her lightweight frame snuggled up against me, longing to hear her laugh or her shouts of outrage when something wasn't going her way. 

I've been extremely busy at the office recently, and we're all under a hell of a lot of pressure for one reason or another. The stress has built up to the point where I'm walking around with a more or less constant pain of tension in my chest. This has been worrying me - which only makes the symptom worse, I have to say - I have not idea what a budding heart attack feels like and I really don't want to know. But last week when this pain was at a peak I started wondering if I should get check out by the GP. But then I thought sprung into my head, along the lines of, "What the hell, if I'm going to have a heart attack, bring it on. I'd rather be with Kay than continue to struggle on like this anyway". 

Of course, my "normalization circuits" cut in and I dismissed the thought. But it did indicate to me that I'm still very far from living a life of reasonable quality.