Open Writing

I had been to the doctor to get my repeat prescription when my friend walked in. She poured herself a cup of coffee, sat down and said, “Well did he give you the pep talk?”

“What?”

“The pep talk, you know about grief?”

“Oh yes,” I said, “he means well but he hasn’t a clue.”

“Hasn’t been there,” my friend said and we both knew what we were talking about.

What were we talking about? Three years ago, just after Christmas, my friend’s husband, who was also my husband’s closest friend, died suddenly while undergoing minor surgery for routine tests, something and nothing really, but he didn’t come round. It hit us all like a ton of bricks and my friend was left alone, with her family far away and involved in their own lives. My friend was alone but all around her was this great support network of a small town and her church and us, for we are like family to her. We supported V and helped her to scatter Geoff’s ashes under his favourite oak tree.

V seems to be fine, she is very busy, meals on wheels, choirs and playing the organ and working in her home and garden. Every Friday night we share a meal at one or the other of our homes and “act daft,” sing the old songs round the piano and even do a bit of Highland dancing, but there are days when V can’t cope. She tries never to be alone but sometimes she needs to be so that she can cry in private. The doctor thinks all is well, we know that it is still, after three years, just one day at a time.

Why am I telling you this? Some of you will have read my article “We are such stuff as dreams are made of,” and some of you may have wondered what has happened to “Kiwi Konexions”. The end of my story came on Boxing Day at 1.00am, 14 months after it began. The doctors had told us that our daughter had between 9 and 18 months to live and each day we walked her path with her, through radiation, chemotherapy and the false hopes and denial. On the other end of the phone, she in Australia, we in New Zealand, we talked for hours, listening to her plans to travel to Greece and through the Middle East, encouraging her and knowing her dreams would never come true. How I longed to be with her all the time but circumstances in Australia denied us that right, so we clung to the phone and kept her company in her loneliness and she was very lonely and alone for much of the time.

Towards the end, when the results of the last MRI scan showed she had little time left, I knew it was time to go back. My daughter was very afraid and she needed her mum, regardless of the situation in Australia, so I boarded the plane to Canberra.

We had four wonderful days together, when she was her old loveable self, then she lost her sight, her balance and her mind. My husband had been right, “If you are going go now.” Her sight came back but not her balance and her mind slipped in and out of lucidity. I longed to stay to the end, to bring her home where we could care for her, but I knew it wasn’t possible, so I nursed her, loved her and cried in private until it was time for me to leave. The week after I left she was admitted to hospital and then to the hospice, where she couldn’t have had better care.

My doctor had been good when he saw me on my three monthly visits. “It won’t be as bad when she dies as when you first heard,” he said. I remember the shaking horror, unable to hold anything, utterly numb. “You are coping very well. “ He didn’t know of the endless tears and the extra wine, he didn’t see us looking bewildered and helpless, nor know of the hours and hours on the phone. How could he?

The Cancer Society dropped off books on “Grief and Grieving,” offered help and they were kind, but they say you have to walk a mile in someone’s moccasins to know how they feel, so it was a few close friends and our vicar and V who helped us through those months, then on Boxing Day we hit the wall again, just as big and just as hard as the first one.

The funeral was over before we had a chance to go, so we held a special Memorial Service for our daughter. The church was packed, the cards, flowers and phone calls rolled in and, in a way, it all helped. What do they call it? Closure. Only it doesn’t close does it? Many of you out there will know exactly what I am saying, we have our public face, we have our private face. The average person in the street doesn’t want your problems; they don’t need to know, so we put on our public face. You’re not sick so you don’t need a doctor. But there is this aching loneliness and sadness which won’t go away. The hole it has left will never be filled but somehow we must go on, just one day at a time with “a little help from our friends,” and those who have been there too.

We are back in Golden Bay, with six weeks to try and pick up the pieces of our shattered lives. We swim, we walk, we chat, we have the odd treat, a meal at a nice restaurant, but the hole is still there and only time will help us to deal with it. I am hoping that writing this will be cathartic and that I will be able to write again.

All the text books in the world and all the theories will never be able to solve grief. It is just part of being a human being. Some folk get off lightly, others have more than their fair share, but one way or another we all have to cope with it at some time in our lives and one way or another we find a way. The loss will never go away but we have no choice, we have to go on. I cling to the happiness and joy which our daughter gave us and to the pride we have in all she achieved in her too short life, we try to hold on to the good things. It is early days yet, but, “with a little help from our friends,” we will get there.