Figure it out

 This week was my mother in law's birthday, I called her and asked how she was and what she was doing to mark the occasion (she lives in France, so we can't be there for her), she said she was working on the garden, burying her sorrows in the ground.

Burying...the way same she has done with her own husband and her son Julien. I feel the sadness for her and for me, because I can't console her, this is true for every occasion. Birthdays and Christmas are not the same, we busy ourselves to feel less pain.

I can't even bring myself to spend Christmas in France with her nor have I spent any Christmas in my house since 2020.

Every time I mark my own birthday I am acutely aware that Julien will never reach my age, I was a year older. I have lived 5 more years than him.

Every celebration, marks what has not been achieved, he will never see his daughter turning 8 or his son turning 11. He will never grow old.

Me on the other hand, have more white hairs and wrinkles, I am ageing. Ageing feels frightening and a relieve, I hope to get old and wrinkly so I can raise my children, but I am terrified of the loneliness, because getting old was meant to be a joint venture, this is what I signed up for, not widowhood...Right?

I should have asked to read the small print of my life contract, the one that says nothing is guaranteed and you will be widowed on the wrong side of 50, I was 41 when my husband died, my son was 7 and my daughter was 4. You do the maths, it doesn't add up.

I am mainly writing about the primary losses, but I have touched  briefly on the secondary losses; of friends (read here), of income, of security, of support. I could write for a long while on the other losses. Every day can be isolating when you are making decisions without your partner's input.

Only recently, one of my son's rugby coaches died of cancer (that plague), tomorrow we will mark his passing with one minute silence, one minute for a family who has had their lives irrevocably changed. I am not even sure I can manage this with the composure needed, the problem is, I know too well of the pain and suffering they are experiencing. I know everyone will crack on, and his poor widow will try to figure it out.

Figure it out if the world can just stop so she can get out, figure it out how to carry on without the person that helped her make sense of the world.

There is no figuring out, a life that is taken too soon will never make sense.