8 months
It’s 8 months today.
On 21 June Michael died at home.
On 27 June I went to the funeral home to help wash his body and dress him. The girls came to meet me in the chapel. Michael was there in his coffin, waiting for us, so the girls could see him one last time and say goodbye.
On 31 June I gave the eulogy at his funeral.
On 26 October we put his ashes in the ground.
Today will be a hard day.
But I have plans.
I’ve asked Eva to help me prune some of the camellias in the back yard. We might get out the ladder. We will definitely play with Ali’s and Dale's electric chopper thingy.
Annie is coming down in the afternoon. We'll visit Mum, or I might have a nap. In the evening we plan to check out a new wine bar that’s opened in Balgownie, or maybe go into town to have tapas in Crown Lane. We'll have a drink and make a toast to Michael.
But I can feel it, roiling around in my chest. Hello, my grief.
I remember when Denise died the ‘Five Stages of Grief' was in vogue. Poor Michael - I was 22 and chased him around the house, earnestly trying to get him to talk about his feelings. He was pretty good at talking about one of his feelings - anger. I expected bargaining, depression and acceptance to follow in a neat and linear fashion. They did not.
Today we have a much kinder understanding - the dual process model of coping with bereavement. According to this theory healthy grieving means, 'engaging in a dynamic process of oscillating between loss-oriented and restoration-oriented coping. A griever will oscillate between confronting the loss and avoiding the loss... - coping with our grief at times and seeking respite at times.'
Curtin University says that 'grief swings on a pendulum' between feeling the loss and trying to move forward. 'The time on each side of the pendulum can be minutes, hours, days, or months.'
Well if I step back and look at my days and weeks, I can see the pendulum swing. But minute by minute, it’s not so simple.
I try to move forward.
I go to the movies with my friend Melissa. I sit down to watch the film and instantly want to stand up and run out of the cinema.
I go to yoga. During savasana I stifle the sobs that come up and shake my body, so I don’t freak out the newbies. My ears fill up with my tears.
I go out to lunch with Dale. It’s lovely. I’m there. But I’m not all there.
Friends say I’m doing really well.
Some minutes, I laugh with Julia on the phone. Other minutes, it feels like my grief is a wild creature inside my body, trying to claw its way out through my chest.
Some minutes, I go into town and buy Irish Soda Bread at the farmers’ markets. Other minutes, I want to run away and hide in a cave.
Some minutes, I give Isabella a long hug. Other minutes, I feel like I’m going to fly apart into a million pieces.
Not so much a pendulum, but the ocean. Sometimes churning, sometimes calm. Sometimes I float on the waves, sometimes I get dumped - but the force is always there.
Maybe this is why I called this site ‘washing up.’
The washing up water can get murky and we can’t always see what’s under the suds. The sink can get grotty. The water can be too hot or too cold.
The washing up is work that never gets finished. It's repetitive. It’s not glamorous. It’s vital.
If I can pay attention when I do the washing up, I can be in the present. I want to explore this idea - paying attention to the small moments, the wonder and beauty of everyday life.
Maybe this is my version of mindfulness. I can’t sit in meditation - that’s way too hard. But I can make a saucepan shine.
