2 years

 I miss freedom, the freedom of not having a world of responsibility on my shoulders, of actually staying in bed if you are unwell, of having a shower lasting longer than 10 minutes, of not having to look at the news and feel frightened because now you are alone.  

The only way I can describe widowhood to those looking on from the outside is this; widowhood is much like being in a Earthquake, when you are a couple there is  mutual support, but once you lose them, any uncertainties and difficulties you now face go up the richter scale, amplified and harder to navigate.

Finding our feet on a trip to Brazil

It is very easy to become overwhelmed, when you don't have your life partner to share stresses with, your resilience cup becomes fuller quickly and then it spills, you anger more easily and the sadness lingers for longer.

My cup of resilience is already partially full; full of my grief,  full of my loss, and in my case, my children's grief too. Sometimes we are quite aware of this grief, but other times there is this undercurrent mood, and I cannot quite pinpoint why the mood is low; I remind myself that my cup is possibly filling up quicker than I can empty it.

What I have learned in the two years since my husband died, is just how overwhelming  the experience is when you are raising small children. A journey that started together and continues solo, only adds to the feeling that it should not be like this, that birthdays, Christmases, Easter, weekends should be cherished in a unit of 4 and not as a fragmented family of 3 (read more here).

There is an endless frustration of doing the same things over and over again without any respite, support or praise. I, sometimes, feel trapped in the recesses of my own mind, thoughts spiraling over children, life, job, the state of affairs, only now I don't have the resounding board that my partner provided, filtering the excesses and helping reframe my thoughts into more useful stuff.

 I wish I had less responsibilities resting on my shoulders. I miss the time when I wasn't the only person who would cook dinner for the kids or take the children to football. Now this is my sole responsibility, the same way that is now my "responsibility" not to get sick, otherwise the household would fall down like a house of cards.

I miss the time when if I were sick, I would have someone making me tea, and that being sick wouldn't upset my poor children, if mummy is sick who will look after them? And if she is sick, will she get better? Once you lose someone, loss is not a distant thought, it happens (because shit happens and it happened to you).

 I miss being blissfully ignorant and assuming the world is a more benign place, that Disney like feeling that everything has a happy ending. Once the protective bubble has been perforated by loss, your view becomes less rosy. I talk about hard and biting feelings because the nature of grief is gritty and grey, and it would be wrong to assume that because a widow is striving for joy that she does not feel pain and sorrow. 

I miss the unbridled joy of sharing: the good, the bad and the ugly, as cliché as it sounds. 

I wrote about all the frustrating part , but I want to add a disclaimer that I am not a pessimist, bitter, sad person, on the contrary. I do savour life a lot more because I know just how fragile it is. I wrote about here.

I have also noticed that I talk less about grief, and where words would flow with ease, I now struggle to write about loss. Perhaps because two years on, my grief package has become more manageable. I feel the sadness but it no longer engulfs me, partly because I strived really hard to make a life bigger for myself, if life was bigger then grief would be more manageable, smaller. I owed it to Julien to try.

I am beginning to think that I should write more about our adventures as a family of three, a life of joy that would make Julien proud. That is what I wanted from the beginning, to ensure that my children's childhood wasn't defined by loss and sadness, I feel now that we are edging closer to this vision, with bumps on the road.