These entries begin two days after Anna’s funeral and cremation in July 2016. They are based on text messages, email and journal entries.
October 10, 2016:
IT was a flat weekend. I cried on Saturday and Sunday. Just short cries, but it was enough to take the wind out of my sails. I never really got motivated. Had to force myself to see the good things – the new curtains look good downstairs, the new light bulbs in the bathroom are nice and bright. (I am trying to reclaim the house, make it my house not Anna’s and mine. Anna hated curtains, I wanted light curtains. I always wanted the house to be filled with light – even if it was just brighter bulbs).
October 12 : The last few days have been a teary blur. Monday was bad, it would have been Anna and mine 34th wedding anniversary. I cried and felt so flat that I had to have nap at lunchtime. I really wanted to get drunk, but didn’t.
October 13: Woke at 4.30am. My mind was ablaze. How do I tackle the grief that my parts of brain cannot deal with? My Male Psychologist says it will come in time. My mind will make do things I enjoy and love rather than endure the pain and misery that comes with “dealing with the situation”. (There I go again, “Deal with the situation”, I would have said “deal with Anna’s death”.)
As part of my grief I am doing a spring clean. Over the last three months I’ve tried twice to “put manners” on the garage.
It had been the dumping ground for storage boxes and furniture in the months before Anna died. Occasionally, I would clear a path through them, but then The Boxes when re-assert control and it would fall into a mess. This time I was determined to succeed.
I closed the book, put away the box, had a cry, got a cup of tea and a biscuit, pulled myself together … and went back to tidying the garage
Conal Healy, grief survivor
It was all going well until I hit Anna’s Celebration Box.
About 12 months earlier, Anna decided to detail her cancer battle (2014-2016). Back then she had survived lung and breast cancer.
She had assembled drawings, sketches, photos, note books, journals and letters with the plan to compile them into a scrap book or an art montage.
I had known about the project, but had forgotten about it too. Then I was confronted by the Celebration Box as I tidied the garage.
The photos were great. Then I opened one of her journals, saw her handwriting, I read her words … and grief overwhelmed me. I was reduced to tears.
I closed the book, put away the box, had a cry, got a cup of tea and a biscuit, pulled myself together … and returned to tidying the garage.
I also added to Anna’s Celebration Box. At this stage there is enough material to fill a small wing of an art gallery: her paints, her brushes, her boards, her work uniform … and a dozen other things.
There were things I threw out, other things that I couldn’t let go.
The spring clean took up most of the day and left me emotionally and physically exhausted – I was flat.
Sunday, I woke up still flat. And I still had to do the Saturday chores to do – washing, shopping and cooking. And again I cried.
Monday dawned and I knew it was going to be a bad day. It would have been our 34th wedding anniversary. I emailed my boss and told him I was working from home.
The day started badly and got worse. I remembered the wedding day, and the fun we had after the registry office ceremony. And I cried because I missed Anna.
The morning was so bad that at lunchtime I climbed into bed and slept for an hour. All that did was take the edge off the misery. I won’t detail the rest of the day. I wanted to open a bottle of red wine and drink all of it. Didn’t.
***
On the Tuesday, at 7.30am the carpet cleaners arrived. I’d been up since 5am to get the house ready.
I’d picked the carpet cleaning company at random, when they arrived they remembered they’d cleaned the house before – “You guys have a room of books upstairs!”. (We did.)
And they remembered Anna. So I had to tell them (briefly) about her final months. They were sorry.
Interestingly, they were unable to remove (fully) the two stains (tea and coffee) that were Anna’s farewell to us. I wasn’t too concerned when they couldn’t.
(In the days after Anna’s death, a few things happened in the house; a cup of coffee flew off the table onto the carpet for no obvious reason, something similar happened with a pot of tea. Both left stains on the carpet. We figured that was Anna saying farewell to us … in her own way. She was going into the afterlife, but with tea and coffee in hand.)
I’ll be honest, they did a good job of cleaning the carpet. It came up really good.
There was no point in re-assembling the house as the Bug Man was coming on the Thursday (7.30am) to spray the house for ants, spiders and cockroaches, so we kept it minimal.
The man who came to spray our house for spiders and cockroaches knew Anna as well. His daughter went to the local school and every day they used Anna’s Crossing. Anna was a lolly-pop lady at a local school. Even now people are still asking about Anna. Last week I got a beautiful hand-drawn card from one families. It reduced me to tears.
Are you grieving? Or depressed?
The symptoms of grief and depression are similar. Signs that you could be depressed include:
- You don’t start to feel better as time passes.
- You have ongoing difficulty with eating or sleeping.
- Your feelings begin to disrupt your daily life.
- You rely on drugs or alcohol to cope.
- You start to think about hurting yourself or others.
If you feel like you’re having trouble dealing with your emotions, ask for help.
