Growth & Moving Forward

If you have the stamina, time and a large mug of something handy - maybe even a couple of bikkies ... Here was my 21 months of this new life (now 24 months and counting) - as always it is totally me and no one else (so if it offends or causes pain, my apologies - please walk away)

That word grief after nearly twenty-one months ….

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.  

Just a new fact for me.  Anyone in a long-term solid loving relationship – spouse, significant other, partner – will have this happen.  All of these relationships will experience the loss of a spouse, wife/husband, partner.  Half will die whether expected or not.  And then the half left behind will find that everything “we knew about grief” will go straight in the bin.  Because “grief” is not the right word - nor has any connection with the “learning” of death and grieving of others outside that relationship.

We knew death, we knew grief, Mandy and I.  We had forty years together of others’ life and death.  We had forty years of marriage, children, and grandchildren … a home and financial stability … usual physical grumbles of growing older but good health the norm … we had (after many years of not) a nice considered will … we had neatly arranged affairs … we had discussed and planned ahead for our deaths with our (just in case) sanitised and ordered preparation.  We knew death and grief.  I thought.    

And then Mandy died.

Mandy and I kissed goodbye at 5.00am one ordinary dark and cold January morning in 2024. Mandy going back to sleep in our bed (then in the spare room while our new en-suite still had another week of work to be finished).  Me joking and chatting with our eldest daughter who drove me to the airport for my flight to an out-of-season-get-together-week with our long-time friends in Turkey. Another out of season week that Mandy agreed was good for me, but not for her as there is no sun or sunbeds in January.  Just another ordinary January/February break we had done a few times – me there and Mandy here.  And as usual we Whatsapp’d through the normal ordinary day and evening sharing our different Saturday in the UK (freezing) and Turkey (less freezing).  Me in Turkey three hours ahead at that time of year. Mandy on our sofa tucked up warm and bingeing on a Netflix series.  Nothing unusual.  Nothing out of the ordinary.

Other than that call just twenty-seven hours after we kissed goodbye.  The same eldest daughter who drove me to the airport finally got hold of me in a remote Turkish village.  Sometime after my phone had just enough signal for me to see the many earlier missed calls.  And then that call from me to them.  Something bad but what …?  And then nothing “bad”.  Bad is a word.  Bad is a moment.  Bad can be fixed.  But this ….

Hearing the words through both our tears.  Mum is dead. The immediate refusal to accept that in my brain.  Whaaaaaatttttttt ….. ??????  And with the tearful repetition time stopped and the primal scream went on for ever.  I think that was me.  The truth – the reality - was too big to comprehend.  My memory?  Just those three words and that horrific scream.  On a quiet sleepy street in a silent remote Turkish village.  The worst, shittiest, three words I had never ever heard before.  Mum is dead.

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.    

That was coming up to twenty-one months ago.  One year and nine months ago.  Six hundred and thirty-five days ago.  Lots and lots of seconds ago.  So many eternities - another intellectual detached concept then made part of my everyday life.  And all those numbers, all that counting, all that time … it is a simple “before Mandy” and “since Mandy”.  That what this is all about.   Instead of “grief” something was more relevant: this phrase we all use that is three ordinary words we have made a mantra … “never say never”.   Bollocks.  Never say never said ”never” with another three ordinary words: “Mum is dead”.

I have learned you can survive on one hour’s sleep a night.  I have learned that money is really important.  That almost no one else understands.  That we all think “grief” - whereas this is and was so much bigger.  I have learned that love really is stronger than death.  I have come to love Mandy’s present presence.  I have been honoured to learn a love more pure and distilled than I ever knew – than Mandy and I ever knew.  I have learned that, wherever Mandy is, she overlaps here as well.  And I am learning that language, laws of “physics”, all that we think we know and control is not everything. That there is a different new language, there are different new “laws”.  And only by relinquishing my “normal” control and understanding can I even sense this newness.  I am learning that this newness is a language and laws that overlap ours if I allow (and having no control in the eternity after Mandy helped that “allowing” like never before).  I am learning (very very slowly) to accept the “overlap” – that the usual language and laws here are my first language, and this new overlap is a hard-earned second language.  Still a stumbling an bumbling few words for me – along with an awe at the fluency with which Mandy now speaks it).

That acceptance is hard because I default to our “first language” – miss Mandy and I both speaking our first language.  Living with our known laws.  Because this “second tongue” isn’t usually physical.  Which means that companionship is so very different.  That “before Mandy” constant contentment of breathing the same air.  The constant physical as well as emotional-spiritual presence … the touch of skin, the smell of a body in need of a shower and just freshly showered, the sharing a bed, sharing a meal, sharing so many decisions, the finances, the jobs of daily living, the hopes and fears, ambitions and plans, problems and successes … that kind of “physical”.  That before Mandy of forty years never to be ever mine-ours again on this earth.  Grief cannot contain and constrain all of this “never say never” and every choice that continues after the “never” happens without choice.  Because I have also learned that – as well as a new language and laws – the choices of every second and each day remain an every-present.  And I have to choose in every second and each day – I have no choice in choosing whether to or not.  Because any refusal is a choice and because “never say never” also returns as soon as the “never” has happened.

Grief intimates choosing “the dark” because there is no choice.  But there is choice as the eternities merge into one long eternity.  There is a choice as the new language and laws whisper from wherever Mandy now is. There is choice as the new normal becomes slowly normal.  I have had choices to make ever since Mandy died – ever since I heard those three words.  And I am learning to make them for me – not to “honour Mandy”.  Not to live the life Mandy stopped living.  Not out of gratitude or any other platitude I have heard.  I have had to learn that I live for me and no one else.  I have had to learn that I choose to live or I choose to not live.  I like my choice to see each morning and each evening more than I like the thought of not seeing them.  I am learning that sadness will always part of each day and night – but it always has been – before and since Mandy.  I am learning happiness again and guilt and fear and contentment and peace and everything that was normal before Mandy.  That’s the other thing that grates now – just how long does “grief” last?  It seems form my own experiences … as long as I want it to last.  And I am not sure that the open-ended nature of this word is healthy for me or anyone else. 

Perhaps – a personal view – is that this word “grief” might be used as an excuse long after the trauma has been and gone.  Which is why I decided to drop the word grief from my mindset (other than when I am feeling really sorry for myself – obviously) and begin accepting “life and living” as we all accept that life is not fair and fair, life is both happy and sad, life is so many opposites.  And learning to live a full life has to embrace all of those opposites all of the time.  Especially now.  Especially after Mandy.  Which is just another choice to be made as always in the before Mandy, the during Mandy, and now in the since Mandy.  Never say never now that “never” happened – but now I always ask “what choice did I make there and then?” Because even making no choice is making a choice.      

And having said all of that … 

Time since Mandy doesn’t heal.  I am not healing, Mandy was not an illness or an amputation.  I have nothing to heal from.  Just like a child, a toddler, a teenager, a young person, a young married man, a new father, a new everything I have never experienced before … I am just a “new since Mandy”.  And I have learned how easy it is to live in the eternity of a moment.  The infinite and forever that being in the moment can seem.  And because I now know eternity and the infinite I needed “an opposite” to combat being stuck in a place that ripped me apart all the time.  And that “opposite” went though much evolution and finally emerged as a never-ending series of “phases”.  Phases are simply finite chunks of eternity.  Named usually once something has changed - named when something seems impossible – named when caught in a moment of happiness (“this too will end”).  A never-ending stream of acknowledged phases to contain the eternal infinite of the moment.  Happy phases. Confused phases. Hopeless phases.  Hope-filled phases. Tear-filled phases.  Quiet phases. Catastrophic phases.  Whatever the moment brings – I now make it a named phase.  All rolling on and on without pause.  Every new day following every new night following every previously new day.  Never ending never pausing.  I have learned - had to learn - that nothing in this new life is forever.  Everything is just a phase.  The infinite has its opposite – the finite.  Both are necessary.

Words here cannot describe how that word and mindset of “phases” has helped save me from eternal grief and despair.  In those first few “infinite eternal moments” since Mandy, it was an chaos more seismic and devastating than my imagination, life experience or rational thought could have ever encompassed.  My mind and brain and soul worked so hard just to stay afloat.  Madness, despair, giving-up … all beckon with a whisper or a scream.  I have clung onto to that word “phases” as a drowning man clings to a lifebelt.  And now it is simply another new since Mandy fact.  As ordinary as the sun coming up each day. Whenever I need a new phase – I acknowledge a new phase or the extension of the same phase.  Never say never – but never say for ever either.  Say “this is just a phase – just a phase.”  

Gratitude helps.  Phases help.  Imagery helps.  People who “sit with you in the dark” without any attempt at “I will fix you” help.  Being in a bubble helps.  And after loads of phases the world calls “a few months”, widows and widowers support groups help, and the same for counselling.  I recommend paying for counselling if you can.  It allowed me to state my parameters: no counsellor book learning, no grief book learning, no fixing me, no telling me, that kind of thing.  It was a “control” both need as well as empowering.  Because it was the only control I had since Mandy.  And that counselling space, that counselling room, just me and my counsellor – THAT was the only space in my entire universe in which I could say anything-everything without any consequence whatsoever.

>>> Everyone I knew … my family, extended family, close friends, extended friends, colleagues, contacts at work, neighbours near and far, the window cleaner, the garage for our car, the fried chicken take-away … everyone in my world knew Mandy.  She was one of the Mandys everyone knew – the “Mandy Mum Nana” Mandy.  And that meant that every time I share my inside “me” it is always to those who know (or think they know) “us”.  And that means that every sharing has consequences.  And that means filtering, pruning, adapting, being a chameleon.  Because everyone is either grieving Mandy Mum Nana or has an opinion about us and about Mandy Mum Nana.  And that meant that every sharing of words needed to acknowledge and allow others. And that constrained me and still does.   So that counselling space with my counsellor was my only safe space with another. A “Mandy and me” closed space.  Safe.  Confidential.  Supportive.  Massively important.  With hindsight it has been - still is - more important than I realised or imagined. Each time in this space I “spill me” from the inside – and my counsellor can only see my spilling from the outside – and can only reflect back “the inside from the outside”.  Which allows me to see that “outside” I can’t see - and connect with my all-consuming “inside” in a new and safe way – and all without consequence (other than to me).  And that was and still is massive!!

Financial stability.  Also massive.  In our case available and in place – and by accident rather than design.  A valid will.  Massively massive.  Again in our case both available and in place - again by accident rather than design.  Unconditionally supportive workplace.  Massive.  And my found and evolved “phases”.  In short – more “by accident rather than design” An evolution and stumbling - a crashing around and a despair of tears - finding ways to let go and sob without being carted away in a strait-jacket.  And something “rational” as well.  Recognition that in a very short time no one will be in the same place as me - not even sons, daughters, and grandchildren.  But without those accidental foundations of stable relationship, finances, paperwork and work … I have no idea whether I would have survived this far.

At almost twenty-one months since Mandy I am no longer surviving.  I am developing a new relationship with Mandy and with the two of us.  I am developing a new relationship with me - learning again to be content in our home in which the air is still different but once again becoming more normal.  Learning that the new-old Mandy leaves me scents and fragrances around our home … offers words of something and/or nothing (but always with unconditional non-transactional eternal love), seems able to bloom a particular house pot-plant when she chooses (“I am excited about(that) as well you know.”).  And I am slowly learning to be me first and then second a dad-grandad.  Those self-assigned labels when we Mandy and I were “two” no longer fit or apply.  And my horizons have shrunk – they no longer extend beyond my own mortality as they did when we were two and Mandy was probably going to outlive me by years.  And my hopes and fears of my own death are no longer the same - I know now that death is not the end.

So I am changed. Mandy’s death changed all of us.  So I am changed.  Which is why – nearly twenty-one months on - this new life is not of grief.

This new life is meeting stuff for the first time and having no frame of reference other than the deepest parts of my own soul.  It is a life I never expected at this part of my living.  A time of re-inventing, re-learning, re-examining, resetting everything - and then starting all over again – and again and again.  As with any life my learning and changing never ends so long as I choose.  And knowing all that I have learned, I now intentionally seek a similar peaceful contentment which both Mandy and I had found together by accident and some design.  And I am optimistic that will again be my life again so long as I allow.  Allow the phases to continue.  Allow the infinite and eternal to be constrained when needed.  Allow life in a sorrow and despair out.  Allow life to be both fair and unfair as it always must.  Allow gratitude.  Allow me.  Allow us.

No grief required.