These entries begin shortly after Anna’s funeral and cremation in July 2016. They are based on text messages, email and journal entries. Anna and Conal had been together since 1978.
September 7, 2016: Last night I had a BIG cry. My first one in three weeks. I’d posted a photo of an empty seat at Rainbow Bay, our favourite spot, on Instagram. The cry left me feeling sad, deflated, empty. Life is shit, life goes on.
September 8: Wake up with the flu. I’d call in sick, but I have so little sick leave left.
September 9: Work from the office, for the first time since mid-January (2016). That seems like three lifetimes ago.
So far away.
Earlier this year I said I was living so fast I swear I could the heart beating of a humming bird. I was the Hare in the story of the Hare and the Tortoise. Now the roles are reversed.
It feels like I hit a brick wall when Anna died.
Slowly I am picking myself up. Rebuilding myself.
It is RUOK Day. Somebody asked: “Are you okay?
I replied: “I am not okay … but I am getting there”.
And I am. My life is a blank canvas. My future is uncharted.
It is up to me to shape my new destiny. Slowly I am building what I call my reality.
September 10: Going back to the office wasn’t big and dramatic. I had no problem, no anxiety about going there. The fact I was suffering from flu didn’t help matters. I was welcomed back, there was no celebration, no morning tea. People – the few people who still work there – greeted me. And I went to work at my old desk.
The main reason it took this long to get back to the office was more related to my domestic situation.
Two months ago (in July) I was a blubbering mess most days.
A month ago I was feeling very anti-social, it was as though all my Sensitivity Filters had been switched off and I could say anything to anybody and not give a fuck how they reacted.
In those days my eyes could project laser bolts of sadness that could wound people. I was living in my own personal world of pain. But since then I’ve learned to cope more.
The main reason I didn’t want to go back to the office was simple – working from home meant I could do my household chores. I’d throw my clothes washing into the machine when I started work at 8.30am. Hang them out on the line at Morning tea (10.30am).
By lunch time the kitchen would be clean from breakfast, I’d have lunch and throw something into the slow cooker for dinner that evening. I was there to welcome My Son home from school (3.30pm) and finish work at 5pm and take the clothes off the line.
Working from the office meant I came home at 5pm – and still had to tidy the kitchen from breakfast and hound son to do the chores he’d promised to do … but never did. And then make a start on dinner. (This is a lie. I hounded Son, got him pissed off at me … then I took flu drugs and climbed into bed. There was Freezer Surprise* defrosting in the mircrowave for dinner that hit the table at 8pm.)
(*Freezer Surprise is a meal that was thrown – unmarked – into the household freezer weeks, possibly months, earlier, to be eaten at a later date. Could be a curry, could be a casserole, or a bolognaise sauce. It was a surprise until the dish was thawed out. Whatever it was, the dish was usually a disappointment.)
My life is a blank canvas. My future is uncharted. It is up to me to shape my new destiny. Slowly I am building what I call my reality.
Conal Healy, Grief Survivor
***
What will the next few months have in store for me? I think I will continue to work from home three days a week, and work at the office the other two days. When Son is doing his end-of-school High School Certificate (HSC) exams I want to keep an eye on him, to make sure he gets to have a good breakfast each morning of his exams – to help him concentrate.
The plan is for Son to do his HSC, go to uni and probably move away. Me? I have to move on with the next part of my life.
I’ll be honest and say Anna and myself (back in 2014) had made started to make plans for 2017 – the year we would become Empty Nesters.
It was not to be, cancer and death has a way of changing plans. As somebody told me: Life is a bitch.
***
Okay, back to Anna. I do miss her. I have photos on the corkboard so she smiles at me every day.
As long as I don’t think about her too long, I am fine.
I am learning to adjust. After 30 years of sleeping at the side of the bed, my body has adjusted to sleeping in the centre of the mattress.
There is still paperwork to be completed – this week I had to call the phone company to have Anna’s name removed from our account. This week I completed Anna’s tax return for 2015-16.
When I dropped the paperwork to my tax accountant, Brian.
I explained about Anna dying. He was dumbfounded. Shocked.
Anna had only met Brian twice a year, for the past six years, but her strength and spirit had made a strong impression on him. He last saw Anna 12 months ago and figured that she looked so well that Anna looked like she had beaten cancer.
“We all believed that” I told him. And we did.
As I said before, there are some parts of my mind that I can’t visit – too upsetting.
For example, I can’t bring myself to process any of the photos/video that were shot at the funeral. I can’t delete the images of Anna’s final month from the digital card on my camera. So I went out and bought new cards, and tucked those camera cards into an envelope and put them in a safe location.
I am slowly packing stuff away. For example, I am storing/donating/throwing out the books Anna used for her degree. But keeping her university notes. Her clothes, I’ve donated to charity. I’ve also donated a lot of my clothes too. Shirts I will never wear again. Really, it has been a big Spring Clean.
***
The world seems less brighter now. My life is so much emptier now. It also feels like a huge weight has been lifted from my shoulders. I still have plenty to live for.
I am still taking photos, and loading them to the internet (on Instagram). At the last count 127,000 people have clicked a little button beside my photo saying that they Liked my photo – and that has only been since January.
***
Celebrating death
Mourning rituals celebrate the dead through carnival-like revelry. Among the ancient Greeks and Romans, for example, the deceased were honored with lavish feasts and funeral games.
Such practices continue today in many cultures. In Ethiopia, members of the Dorze ethnic community sing and dance before, during and after funerary rites in communal ceremonies meant to defeat death and avenge the deceased.
In Tanzania, the burial traditions of the Nyakyusa people initially focus on wailing but then include feasts. They also require that participants dance and flirt at the funeral, confronting death with an affirmation of life.
Similar assertions of life in the midst of death are expressed in the example of the traditional Irish “merry wake,” a mixture of mourning and celebration that honors the deceased.
The African-American “jazz funeral” processions in New Orleans also combine sadness and festivity, as the solemn parade for the deceased transforms into dance, music and a party-like atmosphere.
These lively funerals are expressions of sorrow and laughter, communal catharsis and commemoration that honor the life of the departed.
- theconversation.com
