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.
October 18:
A forensic technician has recovered data from old computer hard drives. One drive has 54,238 photos. The other 107,000 files. A lot of these are family photos and images of Anna dating back to 1978. It will be interesting to look at these again.
October 26: Woke up flat. Get dressed go for a walk by the ocean. I started walking at my now-normal Zombie pace and sped up as my mood improved.
October 29: What happens now? I am now off The Plan. A few years ago Anna and I were working in getting our son to the end-of-school Higher School Certificate. We were determined nothing was going to get in the way of giving our son as much support as we could. It was a good plan. A grand plan.
Of course, Anna getting brain cancers wasn’t part of the plan. Neither was her dying. My son will finish school and in five weeks he will become 18. He will be classed as an adult.
My days of a being a parent are numbered, in weeks. So – after 27.5 years – I will be no longer a parent, merely a father.
October 29: It’s election day. Wandered up to the polling officer to tell them Anna won’t be voting today. Why, they asked? “She’s dead” … and I walked away.
November 2: There has been something bothering me for the past few weeks, months if I am being honest. And I know it has been kicking around my sub-conscious and my conscious too.
So, at 7.30am this morning I jumped into the car and headed to the local Tweed Valley Cemetery at Environ and visit Anna’s plot. I hadn’t been there since July … so I was overdue. I had no idea what I was hoping to achieve there … but my mind told me to go. So I did.
Maybe I wanted to drop off some emotional baggage?
Maybe tick another item off my To-Do list.
I was driving through the early morning traffic, watching the clouds hang over the landscape. It was lovely.
The car music was on random, it had 350 tracks to choose from (on a plug-in flash drive).
And then the universe intervened.
On came a song by the Brisbane band, The Go-Between. It was their song, “Five Words”.
If you have never heard the tune, the opening lines are: “It starts with a birth stone, and ends with a tombstone”.
Well, those word piqued my interest, then the chorus kicked in: “Bury them, don’t keep them”.
That almost made me pull over at the side of the road. The words resonated. (“Bury them, don’t keep them”)
They hit me between the eyes. I drove to cemetery knowing the universe had my back. And was sending me a message – “Let go. Move on.” (Click on the link below.)
The visit went well, left a rose from the garden … and went to work.
Feel a lot better now. Feel relieved.
Grief: Myth versus fact
MYTH: The pain will go away faster – if you ignore it.
Fact: Trying to ignore your pain or keep it from surfacing will only make it worse in the long run. For real healing it is necessary to face your grief and actively deal with it.
MYTH: It’s important to be “be strong” in the face of loss.
Fact: Feeling sad, frightened or lonely is a normal reaction to loss. Crying doesn’t mean you are weak. You don’t need to “protect” your family or friends by putting on a brave front. Showing your true feelings can help them and you.
MYTH: If you don’t cry, it means you aren’t sorry about the loss.
Fact: Crying is a normal response to sadness, but it’s not the only one. Those who don’t cry may feel the pain just as deeply as others. They may simply have other ways of showing it.
MYTH: Grief should last about a year.
Fact: There is no right or wrong time frame for grieving. How long it takes can differ from person to person.
www.caredimensions.org
