DEATH AND BEYOND

and most emotionally draining experience of all. It is not surprising that time has a strange dragging feel and you have no motivation or keenness for what has to be done. This is combined with uncertainty and misgivings in all your thinking. This is not the time to take risks but just to keep life ticking over. The time of adjustment is a time to conserve your energy, look after yourself, and simplify life as far as possible. It is good to keep to routines even if you have to force yourself. It is so easy to let personal things slip.

Make sure your bed is changed, your clothes laundered, take showers at regular times and have proper meals. Get your hair done regularly so that, to the outside world at least, you keep a good appearance. This will help you too, but admittedly it does take effort. Some people use the phrase ‘working through grief.’ This is a little of what it means. Although the mind and body work at their own pace in healing, you have to make some conscious efforts too. All through this time keep talking to the people you have come to trust and share what is happening in your life.

It is in these days that you need to begin to say goodbye. Maybe the clothes that you wore at the funeral are still hung up behind the bedroom door. Do they need to be? Why not have them dry-cleaned, and then put them away in the back of the wardrobe? The coat you wore to the hospital every day is still there. Is it time to take it to a charity shop and get yourself something new. Why are you holding on to it? The calendar is still hanging up, with all the last details of the illness.

Is it time to destroy it and leave those memories for time to take care of? Are you still writing letters of complaint? Have they achieved anything? Why not let it go? All the torrents of angry words and sharing with other angry people can now only begin to damage you and make you a bitter person who will one day be isolated and friendless.

It is still hard to come back to an empty house, but one day that photograph on the side has a different look. The very solemn man has changed to having a wry twinkle in his eye. You had not noticed it before. Everything was coloured by your own grief. The tears come yet again but this time mixed with a soft smile, as another group of memories comes to the surface. But then the exhaustion returns. Keep reminiscing and talking to yourself, or your diary, about everything that comes into your mind. Gradually your mind is re-organising itself and recovering from the shock of loss. The emotional wounds are healing. Always remember that you are uniquely you, and how someone else copes is not your experience.

This is the time to sever the emotional ties with the one you have loved. You may never have had meals with rice because your partner did not like it. Now you can choose other alternatives. You always wanted a holiday to laze in the sun but your spouse wanted an activity holiday. There is no need now to continue these patterns. It does, however, require a conscious effort to move on to a new way of life.

There is comfort in always growing pansies by the back door because he always did this, but you may like to have primroses for a change!

Always remember to make any changes gradually in a way that you will feel easy with. Healing does not take place in a day. You cannot spring clean or re-decorate away years of commitment and love for someone.

It may be that you have had lurking worries, perhaps

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