Tag: widow at 52

So life goes on, but not how you knew it. I feel like I’m living in a crap, never ending episode of Cold Feet or a really bad drama on Channel 5, that no one would want to watch. It still feels like I’m living someone else’s life, looking from the outside in. It truly feels like “this cannot be happening?” I wake up in the morning (usually after a really bad nights sleep) and for a split second life feels ‘normal’, expect one side of the bed is cold and empty and that’s exactly how my entire life currently feels…

The biggest shock when Mike died, was that not only had I lost my soul mate and partner of almost 18 years, I’d lost my future. The sudden and abrupt way this was taken from m, has left me reeling. All of a sudden, it was ‘what the fuck?..’ how is this happening? Trying to compute this, after three months still feels impossible. His shoes are still in the hall, his clothes are still everywhere (though not as strewn about, as if he was still here, even I couldn’t leave his jeans and random black socks on the floor for 3 months…). I just cannot pack him away, I just cannot say goodbye. If his things are still visible then he’s still here… and believe me I really need that… for him to be here…

So, I chose to start this blog, as I used to love writing. Still do, but life just got in the way. And I am the master of procrastination… Then lockdown, then 2020 just appeared to be one long queuing system and Zoom calls…. 2021 arrived and….

March 24th, we both left for work and only one of us returned home. The worst day of my life, it took Mike from me, no warning, no idea, just an urgent call from the hospital, an urgent dash to the hospital, to arrive too late… “I’m sorry but…”

Here I am 3 months later and the reality of what’s happened still feels like its happening to someone else. My life has become this strange, unreal, reality. I feel like I am living another life and watching this one from somewhere else. How can you compute what has happened when there were no signs, no warning, no conversation, no real end…too many things left unsaid, too many unknowns, too many unfulfilled plans… too many what ifs?

I didn’t plan on becoming a widow at 52…no one does, but it doesn’t ‘fit’ the life plans, there is no manual of what to do next. No one can tell you how things will work out, as Mike’s death has shown me, that you cannot plan with any certainty, there should always be a caveat, a ‘something else’ in brackets. I’m just not certain what that looks like… that ‘something else’…

#grief