295 Days Gone
This is how it feels to go on without you.
Sometimes I am fine. Sometimes I can look to the future.
I throw myself into work, and fix things in my home that have been broken far too long. I make time for my family, because I understand now how lucky I am to have them. I feel grateful for my friends, whose many acts of kindness can reduce me to tears. I work too much and drink too much and do not read enough books. But I exercise. I cook for myself. I take the dog for walks, and feel guilty they’re not longer, but there is no time, for I have things to do. I need to make sure each day is just a tiny bit better than the one before.
I have aches and pains, which I worry might signify something, but I refuse to see a doctor. I unthinkingly avoid the street with the house we were buying together. I see my therapist each Tuesday morning.
In my head, I still hear you. When things go well, you gently mock the swelling of my ego. When things go wrong, I feel how you would have held my hand. I flirt, and hear your comments on my choices. I smile at the joy you’d have taken from a news story, remember how you always had the inside track, imagine what you’d say about some drama among our friends.
I almost grab a newspaper so we can do the crossword. For half a second I wonder what you might need from the shops. On the edge of sleep, the world where you’re still here feels so close I can almost smell your perfume.
And several times a day, when I know no one will hear, I say your name. I’ve no idea why.
Sometimes, everything is hopeless. Little things throw me off course, like a satellite tapped gently out of orbit now spiralling into the cold. Disappointments and embarrassments are magnified by your absence, so that one small failure can blot out the sun.
Then the broken things remain broken. Things do not get better with each day.
And sometimes it is worse than hopeless. Sometimes something breaks, and I am mad. A sense of panic overtakes me that you’re really, actually gone and there can be no going back. Sometimes, the idea that I could cope seems absurd.
Then, I run away from people, desperate to be alone. I hear myself mutter: I can’t do this, I’m not okay, I’m all on my own. You and I have furious, tearful rows about how unfair and unreasonable you were to leave me behind. I sob so loud and hug the dog so tight it might scare him, but in the darkest of depths he is the thing I want more than anything, because he’s not just my dog, but our dog, a symbol of everything we were and everything we were building.
He cannot hope to understand this. Because he is, all the same, a dog.
In this state the aches and pains become a comfort, a reminder that I can’t last forever and that this too shall pass. Our friends, I feel sure, must hate me. I go to bed for 14 hours. I do not leave the house for three whole days.
I do know, even in the depths of hysteria, what is happening. That this panic and paranoia is just my grief transformed, the price paid for the days when I cope. That today I am not well, but tomorrow may be different, and if not tomorrow then soon. But in the moment, my knowing ceases to matter. It just pushes things to one remove; makes me feel I am watching myself act in a play about grief. I observe, with interest, that I can’t stop crying; I wonder, distantly, how I will phrase this when I come to write it down.
This, too, does pass. Our dog never freaks out, and he never seems scared: he hugs me back, and licks my hand, and cares that I am sad, even if he can’t understand why. My friends do not hate me. They text me back with love and concern. I cry, some more. But they’re a different sort of tears.
And the emotional fragility works both ways. Some small good news, some tiny success, can raise my spirits and make me look to the future once again. It may take an hour. It may take a month. But some time, the waters recede. I can breathe and start to fix things once again.
All I need is for tomorrow to be a tiny bit better than today.
Sometimes, for a while, I can ignore the hole in the world you left behind. Sometimes, I can almost imagine what it is to live without you.