Episode 17: Loneliness? Or freedom?

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.

November 12, 2016:

SAW my GP, Dr K. I pass my mental health test (the DASS-42). I am shocked. “But I still feel fucked in the head!” I tell her. “Conal, most people are fucked in the head” Dr K replied. (The DASS-42 is a 42 item self-report scale designed to measure the negative emotional states of depression, anxiety and stress.) I walk away from the appointment feeling relieved.

I am making progress. 

Dr K understands and appreciates my approach to grief and asks me: “Is it loneliness? Or freedom?”.

After years of high octane living I have got what I have asked for: Boredom and tedium.

And it is true. My life is simpler, I don’t have to care for Anna. I no longer have to be aware of her bi-polar moods, her anxiety, her need to be the centre of attention.

These borrowed words speak for me at a time when I couldn’t communicate, when the cyclone of grief that stormed my brain, raged across my hemispheres effectively shutting down my brain.

Conal Healy, Grief Survivor

I no longer have to factor Anna into most decisions. I am slowly finding my own pace, my own rhythm.

I am adjusting to having more ‘space’, more freedom. Eg I wanted to get curtains for the bedroom window. Anna said “No, I hate them”, so no curtains.

Two months ago, I bought sheer curtains. I’ve got what I wanted. And I appreciate it.

I am about to start the final one-third of my life without Anna. There is little either Anna or I could have done to change past events.

November 13: Time to get back into circulation: Go to the movies, by myself, after dinner. It feels strange to be sitting by myself. Enjoyed the film.

November 15: I have been feeling better since last Friday. The realization that boredom is my new reality seems to have struck a chord. I haven’t welled up (tears) in days. The rawness is still there –  it is like have a tooth pulled I’m just not prodding the hole with my tongue.

November 16:  Words matter. I’m confronted by words. It is my job. Since Anna died my brain has been absorbing words, phrases, to see if they could help me to articulate the inarticulate. To make sense of what I am experiencing. Snatches of poetry – “Pull down the Stars” (WH Auden), “Pushing an elephant up the stairs” (REM) and hundreds of internet memes, which I print out an add to my journal.

Some resonate with my conscious,  a lot don’t. A lot of the time the snatches of syntax are applicable to that moment in time, how I felt that moment.

These borrowed words speak for me at a time when I couldn’t communicate, when the cyclone of grief that stormed my brain, raged across my hemispheres effectively shutting down my brain.

Sometimes they spoke for me, sometimes they spoke about me. Or spoke about Anna. Really it is like code breaking, these random phrases would act like a cypher, unlocking the hurricane of words and emotion swirling around my brain.

Sometimes the snatched sentences worked. I could make sense of some of the small things, the bridging words of what my mind was trying to communicate. To quote the Waterboys: “I saw the crescent, you saw the whole of the moon”.

Last week I came across a description of grief by Gwen Flowers that said Grief wasn’t something to complete but rather a new definition of self.

What I have been through in the past 12 months has changed me. And will continue to change me. Just like it has changed Daughter and Son. In what ways? I don’t know. I hope the effects of having a their mother die early in their lives isn’t as bad as when Anna’s father died when she was a teenager.

November 16 : Have booked my mini-holiday to Melbourne in March. Somewhere new. Something to look forward to.