Episode 8: Days of the Long Cry

These entries begin two days after Anna’s funeral and cremation in June 2016. They are based on text messages, email and journal entries written at the time. Anna and Conal had been together since 1978.

August 19, 2016: I pay a neighbour to clear out the back yard – it had become a jungle. The garden was always Anna’s domain. I had ignored it for months. Reckon I had lost half of the garden to plants and weeds. The neighbour performs an intervention (with a chainsaw) to secure the back yard.

Months earlier I had stood at the back door and addressed the plants: “Your are on your own now. She’s not coming back to look after you”.

A few hours of hard work and the jungle in the garden has been tamed. I feel I can now go out there and enjoy the sunshine.

In other news, Anna driver’s license has been cancelled. Anna will have to see a doctor to get her license back … if she returns from the grave.

This morning I am washed out. Drained. Almost empty. The recovery from Terrible Thursday (See Episode 6: The acid tears that burn) has begun.

Now begins the job of recalling yesterday for my journal. The prospect of writing about the emotions from yesterday, almost brought me to tears this morning as I lay in bed.

How do I do this? If this computer had a microphone I could talk to it and it would transcribe my spoken words into the printed form.

Really it would be simply a stream of consciousness – a spew of words, sentences, whispered, shouted full of substance but lacking form.

Six weeks ago that vocal expression of grief, sorrow and loss might have been cathartic. It might have captured the white-hot emotions that were coursing through my then-addled body and mind. That was then, this is now.

Back then – 50 days ago – I had very little control of what was happening to me. There was a tidal wave of emotions – a tsunami of tears – wracking my existence. Anna was dead.

(Even now it is hard to write that sentence. It has reduced me to tears. I carry on.)

We had her funeral. We then started to live in a world without Anna.

It was hard. Keeping busy kept back the tears, in the same way a coastal seawall keeps out a rising tide.

And – like that seawall – there were times over the last 50 days when the storm of emotion exploded over my defenses leaving me overwhelmed.

I knew yesterday was coming. There had been warnings. I had kept count of the days when I cried, those were the days when a rogue wave hit the seawall. A month ago there were Five Cry Days, down from Seven Cry Days when Anna died.

It was like a stock market report: “Conal started the day in negative territory but rallied to close even by the end of trade”.

The days of the Long Cries were dreadful.

The tears seemed to be pouring out of my very soul.

They left me empty. In pain. Out of control.

Under attack. Short of breath.

Unable to talk. And physically tired.

Many times I would crawl to bed for a lunchtime nap, trying to sleep off a Crying Migraine.

The sleeping helped, but I’d wake feeling more drained than refreshed. These salty tears triggered my body’s natural defences. Hormones were released to get me through the day. Or until the next wave of tears hit.

My mind started developing coping mechanisms – to keep the tears at bay. If I didn’t think of Anna, my brain stayed clear. As soon as I talked, of thought, of Anna, I became a blubbering mess.

Over the weeks, my tolerance to the pain of grief began to increase. My brain found ways of thinking – and talking – about the events leading up to Anna’s death where I wasn’t reduced to tears. I was working around by pain, rather than going straight through it.

The days of the Long Cries were dreadful. The tears seemed to be pouring out of my very soul. They left me empty. In pain. Out of control. Under attack. Short of breath. Unable to talk. And physically tired.

Conal Healy, Grief survivor

Really it was a mental minefield. The strategy didn’t always work. I’d stumble and be enveloped by the burning tears of grief.

Soon the acid tears of grief began to stop.

They were replaced by the sad tears of loss: these I could almost control. I could feel the emotions welling up inside me, sense the lump building in my throat … but instead of going for the flow, I could take a deep breath.

I could think of something else. Distract myself. And the sobbing could subside. These might be three second cries – come quick, go quick, life goes on.

Or break over me – double strength – and engulf me with feeling of loss and impotence.

Two weeks ago, I began to have No Cry Days, it made me feel positive. I had passed a milestone. The pain was still there. As long as I stayed on the path my brain had traced through the Mind-field, then my psyche was fine.

Last week was a two-cry day.