The Deal

I had been warned that the only thing I would ever be able to do with a music degree was to teach but I had other ideas in my mind as I sat across the table from Mr Clarke, the careers officer.

At 14 years old, I had set my heart on playing in a world class orchestra and travelling the world to perform great masterpieces to halls of appreciative audiences. Why would I think of a career in teaching, if I was to spend my days jet setting and living out of a suitcase, in the most exciting cities of the world?

I practised everyday - for hours at a time. I passed my exams with great marks and secured a place at college in Manchester to do a degree in 'Band Musicianship'. It was all very exciting in 1989 - the 'Madchester' music scene had taken off and as friends took up places at more elite institutions in London, my route was straight up the M6 - where I moved into a bedsit in Salford and discovered the joys of the Hacienda, Stone Roses and bowl-head haircuts.

I also discovered that it was very difficult to enjoy the delights of a blossoming social life and keep up the practice regime that I had so diligently followed in pursuit of my northern escape. Somehow I emerged from those 3 years with a second class honours degree and then sat in the pub on the day of my final tutorial with the words of Mr Clarke ringing in my ears.

In 1992, I waved many of my peers off as they went to do a Post-Grad in teaching. I went to the job centre and found a position in retail. It was music retail, so I managed to appease my folks that it was at least somehow related and well worth the massive student loans I had taken out to support my (Ahemm) ...musical career...

Don't get me wrong here - some of my friends went on to have very successful careers as musicians.

I worked for HMV. And then I caved in at the thought of having to work on Christmas Eve and New Years Day for the rest of my life and decided to train to be a teacher. For me it seemed, Mr Clarke was correct.

And now it is 2015. My teaching days are over for now at least, as I have spent many years in an advisory role. I don't use my music knowledge at all - in fact I haven't played for 15 years.

But I loved teaching the very youngest children when I was in school. There is something so magical about the child who is convinced that they have the skills of spiderman or the exuberant nature of a four year old that tells you with such passion that they are going to be a scientist, a footballer or a ballet dancer.

'Why not?' I would say. After all, I am not Mr Clarke.

Amidst all of the reading, writing, scientific enquiry and a curriculum that is bursting at the seams - there is one objective that is planned for every single day in the Nursery class. As teachers of young children, we are required to explore the concept of 'fair' and 'unfair'.

We all grow up with an expectation that things should be fair. From our earliest days in the Nursery class (just like the one I taught in), we are conditioned to spot when things are not fair. We are aptly trained along the way, to identify when we or someone else is getting a poor deal and we want to fix it in some way.

From who has the biggest slice of cake to how somebody jumped the queue in the post office - we spot it straight away and if we are confident then we try to correct it.

Children especially are the first to call out that something is 'not fair'. They become experts at bargaining and negotiating from a very young age and like adults, there are always a few that find it difficult to shift their thinking and be less selfish.

But actually, right here in my new normal, I have felt compelled lately to insist that it would be far more useful to explore the concept that some things in life just aren't fair. I have reflected on this greatly and decided that as a child, it would have been more useful to grow up with the understanding that sometimes the concept of fairness just doesn't apply.

Sometimes, when you experience an earth shattering loss - like I did when my world came crumbled around me, there is no amount of adjustment, bargaining or negotiating that will alter the situation to one which is 'fair'.

As stupid as it may sound, it is the mind blowing unfairness that my husband died so young that has been probably the most difficult part of my situation to try and come to terms with. I stopped short of using the word resolve because there will never be a conclusion.

I am clever enough, despite my 'mickey mouse music degree' (as the lovely Mr Clarke put it), to realise as an adult that life is not fair. Bad things happen to good people right?

It isn't fair that Bebe died.
It isn't fair that he died just as he was reaching a point where things were going well for him in every single aspect of his life.
It isn't fair that his parent's had to see their only son die, just as they had begun to enjoy a more mature and adult relationship with him.
It stinks that his sisters have lost their brother, and their children have been robbed of their uncle.
It isn't fair that someone who only ever thought of other people and who never put themselves first for anything, winds up with cancer.

It isn't fair that I have to pick myself up from all of this and carve a new life out that I didn't plan and I didn't choose. If I sound bitter, then it is because I am. It is softening with time but it still tastes sharp.

When children see an injustice, they speak up straight away. They put up their hand or they call out. Or they run over to an adult to complain that things aren't as they should be and the adult sorts it out.

I am not a child, I am a forty-five year old woman. I call out in the middle of the night and all I am met with is silence. There is no-one to fix this violation.

So what do I take from this? What would I like others to take from this?

I didn't choose for any of this to happen. But I can choose how I react to it.

Firstly, I accept that I have struggled because I have been conditioned to think that everything in life should be fair and I have had a personal and brutal awakening that clearly this can not and does not happen.

Secondly, although it seems that life has been hideously unjust to Bebe and all who loved him, we are a grain of sand in the sea of horrible things that happen the world over on a daily basis. It is important to realise this because otherwise the mind can wander to thinking that 'evil just got personal' and that is not the absolute truth.

Thirdly, I must stop comparing my life to that of others who are enjoying their own 'highs' right now. The new job, the new house, the birth of a new baby in the family, the planning of a wedding, the joy of a loving relationship and fabulous travels together. We experienced all of those. Life was more than fair to us then and a million times over, we believed we were the luckiest and happiest people on earth.

It is okay for me to accept that what happened is grossly unfair. This is a very important aspect for me to accept and it is rather more helpful for me to view it this way than to look for some kind of supernatural or spiritual reason for my loss. I refuse to somehow negotiate with life and all it's complexities in order to 'let it off the hook' or 'forgive it' in some way. I accepted when life was good to us, so I shall accept that it dealt us the crap.

Have I come to terms with my loss? I am a work in progress.
Have I accepted that my loss was unfair? Yes.

Life is not fair.
Life can be cruel.
But I know that life can be beautiful. It was once and it will be again.

For Bebe: If I had not met you, I would not have realised just how beautiful life can be! It is more than okay for me to moan about how unfair things were - because they were. But I also know that it would drive you mad if I didn't accept the unfairness of it all and then move forward.

The Sandwich Filler

In the beginning, all I wanted was for time to be behind me. I read with such envy, the accounts of other widows who were 3,6 or 12 months down the line. I was desperate for time to pass and for me to somehow emerge through the pain and enter into the light of the other side of the tunnel I was in.

I am ashamed to say that I was envious - after all, these people whom I had met in the new normal, all had their own heartbreaking and tragic stories of loss but I couldn't help but be jealous that they had survived and gotten to a place where I could not imagine.

That early grief was so intensely raw for me, that every minute - literally every minute, passed by so very slowly that I honestly do not know how I got to the place where I am today.

I wanted to believe others when they offered the advice to take one moment at a time, but the moments brought such extreme emotional pain that I feared I could not take it anymore.

My grief also manifested itself with hideous symptoms of anxiety that came with physical pain and frightening sensations. I actually convinced myself that I was unable to swallow and could not raise myself to stand up because my legs were numb and the more I thought about it, the worse it got.

And nearly always, this would happen in the middle of the night when the rest of the world was asleep and I was in the depth of despair, all alone. It is difficult to explain to the uninitiated, just what that level of terror can do to your psyche but I learned that grieving is as hard physically as it is emotionally.

During those earliest days and weeks, I had an overwhelming fear that I would be feeling this depth of pain - in my heart and my body - for eternity. I voiced my fears to those to whom I was closest, that Bebe's pain had ceased but I now lived in a world where my pain would last forever. It is no wonder that so many people - catapulted into this frightening early stages of the new world, consider wanting to end their life. Suicidal thoughts are common amongst new widows it seems and I was no exception.

I explored the idea that I may be depressed. I read up on it and sought advice from 'google'. The information on grief and the link with depression threw back more than a million pages for me to ponder, all with a hefty dose of inconsistency.

From the highest order of academic dissertations on the subject to the gutter press accounts of 'How I nearly topped myself', I wasn't short of information to self diagnose. Google may not always be the most helpful of friends when you are wracked with anxiety but is is however, a friend that is available at 4am when the rest of the world is sleeping.

I was living on a diet of prawn mayonnaise sandwich fillers at the time. It is funny the things that you remember looking back but as I scooped out the pot with a teaspoon, wondering how to end it all, I suddenly had a streak of black humour that this couldn't surely be all there was to my 'last supper'.

I had consulted my doctor already about my mental state. He was sensitive and showed great empathy fortunately and primarily because he had followed my journey at close quarters from Bebe's diagnosis, last days at home and in the aftermath of his passing. He had attended our house on several occasions and was first on the scene to confirm the finality of death.

He listened to me. He carried out basic blood tests. He took my blood pressure and also tested my reflexes. His diagnosis was anxiety caused by grief. And he refused to prescribe me anything but asked me to return everyday to give him an update.

I asked him for a cure. I pleaded that surely there was something he could do to take my pain away. 'I can't swallow',  I told him. 'I can't feel my hands!'

Yet I trusted what he said. 'The only cure for grief, is grieving', he said. Now I know that he was right.

I turned again to the stories of those virtual friends from my new normal world. The widows that were further down the line from me. The people that I had envied.

Some of them really had experienced depression. They spoke openly about what their depression felt like and how they had taken medication. For some people, medication was the only way that they had got through their journey to date and I was grateful to hear their honesty.

Others had been on medication and had stopped taking it because it either had not worked or for some reason, it hadn't agreed with them.

And then there were other widows who had, for their own personal reasons and circumstances, decided that they were not going to accept any pharmaceutical help.

I realised that it didn't matter what other people had done or chosen. It soon became apparent that like the Google search, the experiences returned to me were potentially a million fold and all relative to the individual situation.  I had to make a choice about my situation.

I am not playing things down here. I wanted to die. I had told my mother this - much to her distress. You see, with Bebe gone and no children to care for, I thought in the drowsy depths of despair that I 'may as well go out on a high'.

I told my Dad 'if this was a film, then now would be an ideal time for an ice-cream and an interval'. What I meant was, 'I'm done with it - and to make this a happy ending then I will go with Bebe'.

I am sorry if this sounds tough to hear. But this is where I was.

I am not there now. Thankfully.

Maybe it was the family members on 'suicide watch' or the stories I had read from people further down the line that life did get easier if I just clung on, I don't know.

Maybe it was the thought that Bebe had been determined to live and fight the final curtain despite the odds that he was dealt.

Maybe it was the memory of him fighting for every last breath and his words to me that I must carry on and live the life that he would have appreciated.

In truth, it was most likely a combination of them all that led me to fight for myself and my own life now.

I will be honest, those dark thoughts did not lift over night. It took a while - a couple of months at least before the fog began to clear. I did as I was told. I kept breathing, I kept taking each moment as it arrived and I kept connected with the people who were further on than me.

If you want to survive, then surround yourself with survivors. Believe what they say. 
I don't envy them now. I am so very thankful that they are there.

For Bebe: Your biggest fear for me was that I would lose my spark for life as a result of you leaving. I cannot pretend that in the early days, I did not fear that spark was extinguished and I know that this would have deeply upset you. I will strive to be a credit to you by appreciating that I am living and make an effort to appreciate the world around me, knowing how much you loved life. I have come this far and I resolve to go further in your memory.

The Sandcastle

Nobody can ever imagine what it is like to lose your love but I cannot ignore the elephant in the room if I am going to blog my journey.

So I have chosen to share my experience through an analogy. It is rather a long analogy but I hope you will bear with me as I try to paint a picture of my loss by telling you a story I have written…

One day, a little girl was playing on the beach and decided to build a sandcastle. She only had one bucket and she knew that although it was possible to build a castle with her bucket, she had far bigger plans.

You see, this girl didn’t want to just settle for the kind of sandcastle that appears after a few firm taps on the bottom of the bucket because she had bigger ideas. She wanted turrets, and a fortress wall and a drawbridge and a moat and well…the list goes on.

Anyway, she gets to work on it. She spends a bit of time carefully mapping out the boundaries and deciding how she is going to build this masterpiece and uses her finger to draw an outline in the sand where she will make the walls.

A little boy has noticed what she is doing. He is all alone, just like she is and although he is shy, he plucks up the courage to ask her if he can join in. She likes the look of him and also on a practical note, she sees that he has a bucket too and she agrees that they will work together and make this lovely castle.

All afternoon, they play together on the beach and craft the most wonderful castle. They dig out the moat and squeal with laughter as they run back and forth to the sea with water and try to fill it up.

Later on, as the sun goes down, both of them know that the end of their fun is nearing as they will be called back to their family to be told that it is time to go home. And so quickly, they both use the shells they have gathered to put the finishing touches on their castle and without noticing that the tide is coming in, they stand back and admire their construction.

It is quite simply the best castle that anyone could ever make and they are both so proud that they built it together.

But suddenly, from nowhere or so it seems, a massive wave comes crashing over it and in one mighty swipe, the castle has gone.

It is absolutely obliterated.

The little girl looks on in horror. She feels an overwhelming sense of disbelief as her whole body feels like it has gone into shock. She couldn’t see that coming and there was nothing she could do about it.

She stares at what was once the castle. That beautiful castle that she had been crafting so lovingly with her mate in what felt to her like a lifetime. 

She can just about make out the boundaries of it but the walls and the turrets and the drawbridge have all gone. The shells are scattered all over the place – just fragments of a reminder that just moments ago, things had been so very different.

And now she starts to shiver and cry. She turns for comfort to her mate.

But he has gone.

She falls to her knees and scrambles around trying to pick up a tiny shell. And holding it in her hand, she knows already that as small as it may be, it will serve as a reminder of what once was.

At that moment in time, the whole day just seems wasted. All of that effort to be left with nothing and no-one that will ever truly understand just how magnificent that castle was.

She vows to tell people about that castle. And the day on the beach with her mate who helped her build it. But she knows that they will never really understand. They will never really get it.

For Bebe. I can’t rebuild the castle without you.

I will build another castle. It won’t be the same but it will still be magnificent.