Hi, this will be my second attempt to post something on this forum. My first ended in a bout of tears so bad I couldn’t see my screen or key board, and that was after just a few lines.
I hadn’t expected that to happen, even though I have been moved to tears reading some of the other posts. I also got the pounding heart that seems to want to burst out of my stomach for some reason, and the feelings of panic I thought had passed.
My wife died 10 weeks ago yesterday, or as my calendar now reads ‘the day my world ended’. She was 65 years old (I’m 66) and we had been married for 44 years, but together for 51. We met at school (she was 14 and I was 15) and were together ever since. I don’t think it ever occurred to either of us to look for anyone else – it just seemed so natural for us to be with each other – and that was all we ever wanted from life.
We saved up and got our first house when we got married, and a few years later moved to our current house, my current house. We’ve lived here for over 30 years and loved it. Occasionally when we were sitting on the sofa of an evening, perhaps watching television or reading, Lin (my wife) would turn to me and say ‘this is enough for us isn’t it?’, and knowing exactly what she meant I would say ‘yes it is’. We both knew how lucky we were to have found each other so early.
Goodness, how corny this all sounds now.
We were always able to talk to each other, about anything and everything. It never ceased to amaze me how, after so long a time there were always things to discuss and share – I so miss talking with her. Now, in the main, conversation is chatting to my next door neighbour for an hour or so once a week when I go around for coffee after she gets home from school (she’s a teacher), and my friend Paul who is an ex work colleague with whom we’ve always kept in touch. We meet on Thursday lunchtimes and go for a drink – something we’ve been doing for a good many years, even when we were still at work. When Lin and I took early retirement (Paul, Lin and myself all worked at the same place) the three of us made a point to carry on meeting, I’m so glad we did. Paul lives with his wife and family on one side of Birmingham (England) and I live on the other, which makes meeting up something that needs to be planned. He’s been such a good friend – and has become, strangely, the one person I can be most ‘open’ with. He puts up with me being moved to tears trying to tell him things, and tells me not to worry about feeling embarrassed and not to apologise, he says it’s my grief and it will take whatever course it takes. I was never this type of person, what has happened to me? And, if I’m honest, there’s really only one person I want to talk to.
Another thing I really miss is holding my wife’s hand. She remembered on our first date I’d said to her ‘shall we hold hands and pretend we’re together’, which she thought was pretty smooth for a 15 year old back in the day – we’d been holding hands ever since – right up to the moment she died. I miss her so much. The first time I ventured out by myself I automatically put my hand down to reach for hers, something I hadn’t realised I did – but of course, for the first time ever, it wasn’t there. I try not to go out any more than I can avoid now. I don’t know if this is ‘normal’, but I can’t understand how or why the world seems to carry on the way it always has. It seems my world has changed so deeply – but perhaps that’s it, ‘my world’.
In my world now, I don’t use the vacuum cleaner and I don’t change the sheets on the bed, because that may remove any last traces of her. I still come across the odd hair of hers – I save them in a trinket box in the dining room. At the last moment I cancelled the interment of her ashes knowing that every time I passed I would have to go and ‘see’ her. The ashes are now with me at home, and I carry them up to our bedroom each night and bring them down with me each morning. I know this will seem weird to a lot of people but at the moment it gets me by. Perversely, the one thought that keeps me going is that suicide will always remain an option. Thank you for listening.