Nine Feet Underground

Next week would have been E's birthday. Her first birthday since she died. Every day is the birthday of millions of people, living and dead. I'm wrestling with how to commemorate this day.  The date is still the day of her birth; however, she is not physically here to have her birthday celebrated. If someone is no longer here, should you celebrate their birthday? In remembering, we are commemorating.  It's not something that can be forgotten (not that I want to), not this close to her death, but perhaps it's about how I and our sons and her brother feel inside. For me, it feels wrong to celebrate the day, especially now. As her illness progressed, each birthday had less and less to celebrate. We always marked the day. More or less, even though it became impossible to do the things we would have done, since E couldn't leave the house. I have spoken to my sons about this upcoming date to see if they would like to do something special to mark the occasion.  So far, th...

I have been swimming deeply in the sea of life, often miles from land, and there hasn't been space to write. Have you ever tried writing whilst immersed in the sea? Much has been going on externally and internally. Getting engaged to Q in July has necessitated some early planning, starting with where and when we'll be getting married.  We have a date and a location.  Based on the date of the wedding we've booked a venue for the party.  These two dates being agreed upon, we've sent out initial invitations: this is especially important for most of Q's family as they will be travelling from a land down under, namely Australia. Most of August was taken up with this planning, mentally if not physically. As wedding-related activities have started to crystallise, I have begun to realise that everything has been leading towards the big day next year. Destiny. I've also found it hard to write here for a couple of different reasons. A bee flew into my bonnet and took up r...

A post before July ends! Amazing! July has been incredibly busy socially and has sown seeds for the remainder of my life, hopefully.  I have long harboured an ambition to become a writer.  Writing always comes second to living life, so I don't think I have what it takes. It's not an all-consuming passion.  It's never too late (?) Q and I spent ten days in Italy early in the month.  The original plan was a week's holiday split between Venice and Florence, returning to Bologna (where we started) for an NGO conference that Q had to attend for a week.  Sadly, Q's actual job needed her back at work earlier, so we left Bologna early on Wednesday morning of the second week. I had travelled to Italy intending to ask Q to marry me, to which end I had purchased a temporary ring to seal the deal.  Where and when to propose? I had Venice in mind as I love the city and think it's a romantic place to propose. On the assumption I would propose there, I had a few places in...

June is underway and my bonce is still not back to normal.  I'm getting there, but one of the current drawbacks is that I need a lot of sleep. Don't get me wrong, it's feeling way better, I'd just hoped it would be as before by now.  Apart from pain, which I'm ignoring from now on, my emotions are out of control.  Probably a combination of lack of suppression now I'm drug-free and the aftershocks of February's event. Naively, I had assumed that the years of loss and grieving for that loss, alongside the therapy and counselling, would have made the final process easier.  I now feel that that was unrealistic.  Grief is a powerful emotion, and there are no straightforward laws or rules that govern how an individual might experience it.  That'll learn ya. Never content to deal with one major problem at a time, I've also been experiencing worse back pain (with consequences for my stability/balance).  I have seen a physio about it.   On the one han...

I'm back again. My head is still not back to the state which I call normality.  I'm still getting headaches daily.  I'm not sure if it's the bang on my head or SSRI withdrawal or a toxic combination of both.  Next week, I may get a chance to be investigated by my GP, if nothing has changed. In the meantime, I am competing for the record of becoming the largest consumer of paracetamol and ibuprofen. It's not ideal, but there have to be positives. Life goes on, as it must and I've a few big topics on my mind, aside from the above.  Planning for the future and deciding what that will look like is one of these topics. Thankfully, this one takes two to plan and Q and I have had several conversations as we discern a plan emerging from the fog of possibilities. Working out the layout of my new library/music room is another consideration.  The sofa-bed has been delivered and looks good. Sofa-r, so good.  Having the sofa in place calls into question where every...

M'aider! m'aider! m'aider! (The above only fully makes sense on the 1st May, however, for reasons that will unfold below, a post on the first was not possible.) I was feeling positive and optimistic on the 30th April and in this euphoric state managed to hit my head very hard on a metal bar of my new shed.   I've hit my head on many occasions, so I never consider it to be a big deal.  This bit of headbanging was different.  I developed a powerful headache and started feeling nauseous.  Son #1 went through the checklist of things of serious concern, and I didn't really tick any of the boxes. Off to bed after taking some painkillers.  At 4am on May Day, I woke with a helluva headache and feeling distinctly unwell.  I woke son #1 up and we got a taxi to A&E.  Turns out I don't have any obvious signs of brain damage but do have a concussion.  The solution: painkillers and rest.  No caffeine. No alcohol.  No driving. No screen time. ...

T.S. Eliot's poem 'The Waste Land' opens with the line 'April is the cruellest month...', a line with deep meaning in context, contrasting as it does, the renewal and rebirth associated with Spring set against new life emerging from grief and loss.  This seems very appropriate, and April has been a busy month full of change and joy. The month began with the scattering of E's ashes in North Wales.  This was both a sad and joyous occasion, which we all took part in. Since then, I have transformed the back garden into something that E would have loved and almost completed the transformation of the garage into a music room, library and guest bedroom.  As I write, it's being painted, and the final fix items are being done. I'm not sure what E would have made of it.  Moving my books out of the main house and separating my music listening from everyone else would have been popular.  Having yet another room to myself (I have an office too), less so. Life is for ...

After a long period of stasis, I have just completed the first step in changing our house and garden to meet the needs of us all.  The first step is converting our garden into a usable space for socialising and hosting gatherings (maybe with food if guests are lucky!) I'm on the verge of starting a project to convert our garage into a combined music room, library, and guest bedroom. It's long been a dream of mine to have a library and a music room, and this dream is now almost a reality.   You might ask why I didn't start this sooner? The overarching reason is that being E's carer, with all that entailed, it was almost impossible (for a long time) to muster the energy or positivity needed to make such big changes. Not only that, some of these changes would have been impossible whilst E was in her hospital bed. Getting to the point where I could even imagine there was a future for me was a very long process involving pain, upheaval, and a lot of counselling.  I need t...

Life has changed a lot since I last wrote here, but there's only one thing I can actually write about. About a month ago, E died after a long illness.  Although it had been expected for a long time, it still came as quite a shock.  There wasn't any warning, and the carers discovered her body in the morning. Although my three sons and I had been grieving for the loss of a mum and a wife for a long time, the finality of this was deeply upsetting. As one of my sons said, "I was just used to her being there all the time". Overall, it was a relief because E had suffered so much in the past few months. This was very unpleasant for her, obviously, but also very hard to watch and hear.  After E's death, there has been lots to do.  Last week, we had a wake/celebration of her life, which was attended by around 60 people from across her life, ranging from her childhood to friends she'd made amongst the mums who had children at school at the same time as our youngest. The...