Three years on...

 
I don't have any exciting writing news to impart, I'm afraid... things seem to have gone a little quiet on that front, though I am still putting fingers to keyboard, even if somewhat intermittently. Those of you who follow this blog will be only too aware that my ability to write is directly bound up with the ebb and flow of my grief following the death of my wife, the first year of which I documented in my memoir 'Precious Dreams and Living Nightmares' (still available on Amazon or direct from me if you'd like to read it... link here).

I have just passed through the third anniversary of her death, and was prompted to listen again to a piece I had  recorded on my phone a year ago, immediately after the second anniversary. Those who have read the aforementioned memoir will know that it takes the form of recordings I made during that first year (effectively a journal) annotated with my reflections on those recordings from the position of hindsight. I had initially intended to stop making them after the first year was up, but have continued, sporadically, when I felt I  had something - thoughts, feelings, impressions - that I needed to set down. Listening back to that second anniversary recording, I was struck by how similar my feelings were a year ago to those I have just been experiencing. Hardly anything has changed - what I recorded then could just as easily have been recorded yesterday - and I have come to realise that there is a grim inevitability about this. While it is true that everyone responds to and deals with grief in their own way, and the extent of your grief is, in the main, dependent upon the depth of emotional attachment you shared with the person you have lost - not to mention the manner of their death, which can have a profound effect on a person's experience of grief -  there are commonalities, one of which is the recognition that grief does not go away. Life may expand around it, but it is always there, and it is this inescapable fact that we need, somehow, to come to terms with.

I say in my book that I have never been sure whether what I have been feeling is depression or just grief wearing a mask. It is often too close to call. Things that once seemed so important have evaporated, become meaningless. I am treading water, but for what purpose, to what end, I have no idea.Though something I will say is that as the years go by it has  become easier to present the 'I'm fine, no need to worry about me' face to the wider world. Second nature, in fact.

So I thought I would share with you the transcript of the recording in question. For those who have read the book, you will recognise the deliberately unedited style of the following passage, set down exactly as recorded, with only the frequent 'ums' and 'ers' taken out. For those who haven't... well, perhaps it will pique your interest. At the very least it will give you a window into where I am with my grief, three years on.

24th April 2025 10:52

Here I am, moving towards the end of April, having got through all the horrible... anniversaries. Second year of getting through these anniversaries and... I don't know, in many ways it feels harder than the first. Certainly I've sunk back into that lack of motivation where even just getting myself up out of the chair to do something is a real feat. I had no idea it would still be this bad two years on... and... I mean... my emotions are so close to the surface... if I watch anything on TV that's even vaguely related to someone losing someone I'm just in floods of tears. I just... oh gosh it's so hard still. For all those people who say 'time's a great healer, things will get better'... well, yeah... huh... this is how it is.

Three years on... outwardly managing, inside still a mess.

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