It's Been A Tough Week

God it’s been a tough week. 

I've tried everything imaginable to make it anything but tough.  But no matter how hard I tried, it stayed tough. 

They told me it would be like this.  ‘They’ being the wise and experienced others who have been here before and the frustratingly hopeless counselor I have had.  They were right.  At the most unexpected times and places some memory, or thought, or sight, or smell, or noise, or person would immediately remind me and send waves of grief through me, like an electric shock, throughout the whole body but most powerfully through the heart.

It is so unpredictable which makes it unavoidable which in turn makes it momentarily unbearable.

When it happens I try so very hard to bring out all the tools and mind games to make it go away, to shelve it, or to at least soften the impact, but have yet to get them into action quickly enough.  It is a case of stopping and just letting it flow away when it is ready.  And it does.  Certainly more quickly than it did only a few weeks ago.  Therefore I tell myself that I am improving and that things are moving forward.    But it’s something I cannot speed up, no matter how hard I try.  After all, it is only twelve weeks now.  Just twelve weeks.

It has its humorous side.

And I am living proof that an entire bag of jelly beans does not cheer you up.  No matter what orange or red coloured ones you eat.  Nor does the entire box of chocolates that was devoured before the jelly bean bag was opened.

Tonight it was a bunch of lamingtons.  Wonder what will be at arms reach tomorrow night? Maybe tomorrow night it will have passed, this inability to handle grief thing.

Winning Lotto?  Yep, that could do it.  I’ll work on that. 

The good thing about all this grief is that I am finding the only way I can dodge the huge depth of pain so much is to make myself as busy as possible.

That has its down side.  Came back from Ohakune feeling that maybe the week of self-imposed depressional grief will have taken me many steps further down the bereavement track and that I could dust the mourning clothing off for a while and become immersed in life and living and be a far more positive person to be around.

So I threw myself into everything and every invitation I received.  Well, that didn't work.  One and a bit weeks down the track and I found I had made so many commitments that I wasn't able to focus on any particular one very well.  I hate doing that.  So closing up shop this next week, with the odd break for Pilates or swimming or a run.  Closed up the shop a couple of days ago actually, therefore have managed to achieve much in 36 hours and get on top of some promises I had made.  But it’s the chicken and the egg situation that ended up throwing me back into sadness again because I suddenly have had too much time to think.  What a screwed up person I have become!

Still, not to be deterred, am allocating out my time a little more wisely for the next period, focusing on the really important jobs to be done (thankfully that excludes vacuuming, lawn mowing and dumb things like that) and ensuring that everything I do is going to benefit someone else, whilst keeping me sane.

Had a lovely friend take me aside last week and tell me that I needed to “let go”.  She was quite right, I do need to let go.  I was very pleased, and touched, that she felt she needed to have the conversation with me.  ‘Letting go’ is something I confess to having had difficulty doing.  It’s because I find it too hard to confront the fact that Tony has actually died, that I no longer have the greatest love of my life around to share my days with.  The thought of that in those first two, three or four weeks after he died had me on the verge of not wanting to go on.  The pain I felt was so great, so unbearable.  It still is.  But there is that tiny bit of something inside me which tells me that now is not an appropriate time to toss it all in.  That staying in bed all day and willing myself to be with Tony in the spirit world – however or whatever that may be – is merely an easy way out of my self-responsibility.   I need to be that strong woman that so many people tell me I am.  What those same people do not realise is that I never actually have been that strong.  That’s why I loved Tony so much.  He knew that and was the one who held me when I needed it in the times of vulnerability and weakness, yet admired my ability to carry the strong image that others saw.   In our partnership Tony was the strong one, I lent on him for strength.  This is why I am having so much trouble now in finding the strength to make it through each day.

But I am conscious of the ‘letting go’.  Every time I had one of those horrid moments this past week, when grief came flooding over me I would stop and think to myself, let go.  It is helping.  But am not quite ready to fully let go.  It has to come naturally. 

Maybe another packet of jelly beans might to the trick?  Or the rest of the lamington pack?  Giant licorice all-sorts, a packet of those will definitely give me strength!