4am……..Grief holds its hours tightly (originally published late 2021)
4am
This grief comes out of nowhere but my grief also holds it’s hours tightly. I wake at 4am to hollowed howling ... it catches me before I can distract myself.
4am this time last week I had been called into the hospice with urgent “ get here” message from staff and was sitting on an uncomfortable chair wedged as close to the bed as possible as I braced myself just as I had done nearly every day for the past three months / for the past three years. Bracing myself for the crash where one of us would not survive. By 4pm that afternoon Sandra Richardson woke up and asked “ what time is it? Are you sure it’s not 4am ? Why are you here crying ?” By 8pm a circle of friends and family had gathered round a bed pushed outside to watch the sunset in a death bed party. San gave everyone instructions and made hysterical declarations. She wasn’t finished yet . I was trying to hold myself together ... she caught my eye amid the madness and mouthed “ I can’t bare to leave you” and I had to pull every bit of steel in my spine to not crumble into a million pieces.
It’s 4am now. We often used to wake at 4am if one or both of us where anxious. I would tell some funny story or sing to diffuse the stress or Sandra would play 50 Reasons which was her own unique brand of therapy. It involves her listing the 50 reasons why it was perfectly legitimate for me to be stressed and in fact what a miracle it was that I wasn’t more stressed given life’s fragile web and often the amount of cranks in the world who we had no control over their ridiculousness. By 35 reasons we would both be hysterical and somehow feel much better about the world. At this point Sandra would offer to go make a healing witchy cup of herbal brew for me which could be translated as “i want to go have a sly cigarette out of the back door” or for particularly stressful situations she would offer to go get a pen and a large sheet of paper and draw an organisational plan the ultimate way to solve all of life’s great dilemmas. But usually before any of this could happen we would fall asleep again laughing to ourselves and feeling lucky we had each other with Sandra declaring “it’s bloody dawn you know”
4am. It’s 4am. It’s bloody dawn. I write these words to remind myself. To ease the howling. To share some of our life together. To let you know some of what is deeply lost and some of what can never be lost when we remember.
Dawn by Sandra Richardson
my deluded
sense of all
falls
to ground
to know
deserving love
without reason
this day brings
a different kind
of freedom
my vulnerability
my pain
call for the brave
call for the strong
call for the moment
that is this bloody dawn
A Beloved Grief … diary entries and writing by Clare Jasmine Beloved after the death of her wife, Sandra Richardson from metastatic secondary breast cancer.
You can find other writings from Clare about grief and loss here
Links to Secondary Breast Cancer charities we support https://www.secondary1st.org.uk and https://www.make2ndscount.co.uk Macmillan Cancer Support Helpline : 0808 808 00 00. Marie Curie support and info : https://www.mariecurie.org.uk
Sandra Richardson REST IN POWER & POETRY 13.2.64 - 25.8.21
Originally published late 2021