Content warning: this post talks openly about death, grief and depression. It may be triggering for some readers.
You’ve been gone from this world for one week, but you left mine long ago. It’s months since we were in touch, years since we spoke, and longer since I last feasted my eyes on you. Yet I feel your absence every second.
Mindlessly scrolling through messages before my son reappears from class. Suddenly, I’m stumbling backwards into the corner, screaming it can’t be true. Not knowing what to do, or where to go. On the walk home, I stop to retch in the bushes. The shock, unbearable. I phone friends who knew you; an attempt to cling to something, anything, connected to you.
Six weeks later and this grief feels terminal; catching me at every turn. Triggers are omnipresent and menacing. This morning’s alarm clock reminds me of the one we had on our travels, rousing us for our next adventure in the pre-smart phone era. The occasional memory brings a smile to my eye. The time we’d set it wrong, not realising we were in a new time zone. The bus came to our door honking loudly – a hundred plus passengers annoyed we’d held them up. Blurry eyed, we tripped over each other in the pre-dawn darkness. Now the shadows pay no attention to the sun’s rising and falling motions. Leaving me to trip on all that is left; grief.
Time heals. They say.
Maybe. If life unfolded in monosyllables, single act shows and one course meals. But life does not. It unravels in a thousand ways. Polysyllabic words spill from untrained mouths, fighting to be heard. It unfurls like an unwieldy play without a plot; opening out in front of you, resembling an all you can eat buffet, encouraging you to take more than you should.
Life does not give and take. Then pause. For you to adjust. Life layers grief upon trauma, disappointment and anger. Building a fortress, impervious to joy or happiness.
With death, the deceased takes centre stage. All actors from their life gathering forth. Those you knew, never met and wished to forget. Sharing their version of the one you loved. Shaking your memories. Challenging the person you knew. Reminding us people are complex and multiface(te)d. One event: different viewpoints. Occurrences you can’t imagine, questioning what you thought you knew. Placing the departed under the stark, bright light of an interrogator, with all opportunities to respond removed. Shining a beautiful, elucidating glow upon their being, highlighting each and every glorious quality; illuminating angles you’d never seen before. Qualities now immune from human failings, for they are human no more. Their being transformed into memories living on in others. Interpreted and regurgitated how the rememberer sees fit. Their very being, malleable now to what others say.
Yet more than memories, they are what they have taught us. The feelings they left us with, influencing who we are today; their legacy. Those who knew him tell me to take comfort in that. Yet the grief swells like a balloon inside my brain. With each breath it expands further, joining forces with the other elements of darkness. Colonising every precious thought and memory.
This grief, a curved bowling ball running amok inside my brain, knocking down any remaining pins of happiness. Squashing out all possibilities; pushing away friendships, and leaving me alone.
Time does not always heal.
Time bolsters grief’s roots and accords it space to bloom. To lay upon its brothers and sisters, and build a patchwork wall of pain, grief and trauma. A dangerous cocktail that pushes me to the edge. The edge; a fireworks show of feelings. Emotions explode, tears erupt. Yet in many ways that’s preferable to what comes next. The downward fall, sucking me to depths unknown, surrounded by the only other creatures able to exist in such extremes. Feelings are minimal, exhaustion is high. Survival is key. It’s no way to live. Teetering on the edge, there remains a chance I could be saved. Someone could reach in, pull me back. Yet my best hope of that is gone. This sea of darkness is living hell.
I hold the baby and cry. So.much.crying.
A pattern repeating itself. The early days of my first born, marked by the loss of my husband to psychosis. Pulling myself out of that hole nearly killed me, but eventually I reached the top, sunk my claws into the earth and hauled my body out. Yet all too soon I was pushed back down by the challenges of pregnancy, birth and early motherhood, mixed with redundancy proceedings. A temporary blip I said. Slowly, I was pulling myself up again. This time the claws sunk deeper, this time I’d haul my entire being out.
Then this. The loss of a dear friend.
Two men. Both my world at different times. One divorced, the other dead.
I’m not sure I can do this again; another scene of rock bottom, another act of dragging myself up. Darkness is the worst way to live. Stumbling, falling, flailing around. Surviving and coping, the best I can hope for when I know, like you, that life has so much to offer and so little time to give it.
One day I may rise again, but at what cost? The intervening days/ weeks/ months/ years spent in a perpetual conflict with darkness. A darkness I never invited in. A darkness that exhausts me; pushing me into an incessant hangover of the soul making me hunger for a life not mine. Was the feast I once had supposed to sustain me infinitely? I still yearn to live a life I enjoy, but that’s not in the plot I’ve been given. Instead I carry on fighting this suffocating darkness I’ve been given. Using every morsel of energy just to smile at my boys in the morning, leaving little for anything more they ask of me.
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If you liked this post you may also be interested in reading about mental health campaigns and inside my mind. As well as my post for The Mighty on ending therapy.