Community & Connection

This little five-letter word “grief” we all know and recognise.  For some that word grief - like a distant country - is impersonal and unknown.  For others it is closer - a place visited, left, and now remembered.  And for some it is a new home - a place where their old home was ravaged never to be the same ever again.  For me this word “grief” is becoming an irrelevancy now that I’m with and without Mandy.  It is becoming someone else’s label and explanation like so many words we use (and which mean something completely different to others). Not only is it a blanket description for how we usually feel about death - it is also now an expert’s label - an expert who has been trained in helping grieving others heal from death.

After twenty-months of “grief” I find this is just a word, just a process, just a label with an explanation increasingly alien to me now that I am living both with and without Mandy.

Death and grief is part of my living.  I think that is true for almost anyone who reached adulthood.  For me it was fish and hamsters. Then an ex-friend from school.  Then grandparents.  Then a brother, a father and mother-in-law, then our mum and then dad, one brother-in-law, then another brother, and another brother-in-law, as well as distant-er family and close/distant-er friends.  Death is part of my living as it is for most, and grief I have visited many times.  I know grief.  We knew grief.

And then Mandy died.  

Nothing can prepare anyone for that moment and what followed.  Nothing.  The very air in our home changed.  The food I ate changed.  My sleep disappeared.  And my sanity.  And my life.  Our lives.  And then the outside crept in.  Our younger daughter coped not with grief but with PTSD.  Both our daughters struggled with allowing their own children out of their sight just in case.  Our younger daughter has been able to track my phone ever since just in case.  The same daughter who suggested we text each other goodnight and good morning just in case.  We still do.  Twenty-one months later and still counting.

Nothing in my sixty-six years could have prepared me for this.  Nothing.  We breathed the same air in our home.  We ate together, slept together, created four lives together, fought together, made-up together, split-up together and got back together again.  We grew-up together over four decades.  Mandy eighteen years old and a little pregnant, me twenty-six years old and ready to settle down. We thought we knew it all without ever realising we knew so little.  Mandy and I were.  Always and forever we just were.  We grew up together.  Became mum and dad together.  Moved and bought homes together.  Faced hardship and tragedy together.  Grew our own traditions and lifestyle together.  Mandy and I were.  Always and forever.  Together always.  Apart of together we were always together.

Remember I said I thought we knew death and grief?  That’s why I know this wasn’t and still isn’t. This isn’t and wasn’t just a bigger and worse version of grief.  This came without anything known, experienced, learned or ever imagined.  This had and has no neat orderly planned prepared-for anything – I had no control over anything “normal” and even the reality that there is no end in sight was too big to understand.  Everything was in the moment. And that is where I found the infinite and eternity.  In each of those moments.  Elastic time I came to call it.  Along with learning the relief of not being able to cry for a few short eternities if I pointed the showerhead right at my face. Showers were my go-to back then.  I learned so much back then.  All of it useless in our normal life before Mandy.