Support & Healing

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.