Underestimating grief (originally published late 2021)
My friend Haylie who has recently lost her beloved dad messaged me yesterday.
“I underestimated grief”
It hit me.
It was the comment I’ve most identified with so far from anything anyone has said to me so far.
I thought about it all day as I flounded about trying to balance feeling a little of my immense feelings and then trying to stop them so I could function a little in the world … cross the road, listen to someone speak, have a cup of tea.
I later shared how poignant those words were with my friend Gill who has lost not only her mum recently but shortly after her dad. She said something that took me even deeper…
“I don’t even think grief is estimated- let alone underestimated. It is not even contemplated really. I feel as if everyone falls into one of two clubs those in grief and those who aren’t yet”
The last few days have been some of the worst I have experienced in my life so far. I walk around looking quite normal and functioning on a very low level but inside I feel i’ve been thrown out of the lifeboat miles from any land and i’m gasping for each breath. I don’t share this for sympathy - I don’t want that. I have immense privilege. I have somewhere to live, good friends, food to eat, a garden, enough money to get through the month… I know some people are in grief and worrying about having to leave their home.. their countries … having nothing at all… I think about this a lot … the trauma of this and then the utter heartlessness they are met with.I took a post down the other week I thought it was too self indulgent and maybe it was. Then someone came up to me and said “I feel like I can breathe after reading that post … no one talks about this stuff. I haven’t been able to articulate my grief but I feel not so alone in it” I put the post up again. It still feels self indulgent but its what I teach… to share our stories, to speak even if its misunderstood … to tell it like it is …even if it’s awkward and I misunderstand myself in that.
When Sandra was in the hospice, suffering so many losses and in pain, it was very hard to witness, almost unbearable at times and my heart was breaking apart. I was caught between two worlds almost walking towards death with her and standing on the edge of that place and the world - not able to be fully part of either place but hovering aimlessly. I often felt like I was in a small boat holding on to Sandras hand for as long as I could while she was swept into another ocean. I shared with a few people that maybe this was the worst part. Maybe when she died I would at least be able to morn her and in some way return to the world and begin to heal. I have spoken to others who have shared how they also felt this when caring for someone at end of life. I realise now how utterly absurd this is from here where I am now but maybe it was the only way I could cope. I was wrong. This isn’t how it was going to be at all.
The first few weeks after Sandra died I was on automatic pilot I had things to do, funeral to plan, decisions to make, paperwork to do… people were around me asking things-checking in and connecting. I was in shock and this looked like someone who was doing brilliantly and coping.
Then the tsunami started, wave after wave of the most immense feelings Ive ever experienced. there was nothing to hold onto. I had incredible friends around me throwing me life rafts and sometimes I could catch hold of them and be pulled along for a while and then a wave would knock me out. One after another.
I was listening to Rev Richard Cole talk about his grief for his husband on a podcast the other day. The interviewer said “you are 18 months in … that’s very raw and new for grief”
I thought bloody hell.
I thought here are people who know.
Here are people navigating new worlds and that takes big time.
I underestimated so much about grief.
I didn’t even begin to contemplate how much I was about to loose.
I was focussed entirely on how I was loosing Sandra and how she was loosing her life.
I didn’t let myself think that I was also about to loose the life I knew and myself as I knew me and it was never coming back.
I underestimated grief.
How it would take the ‘me’ that I had known so far in my life… with it.
How the me that I had taken years to love and grow and bloom would be washed away with the outgoing tide.
I didn’t think how the home I… we… had created, nourished and built and which had been my total sanctuary from the world, my safe space, my holy ground…each corner a shrine of magic and solace …would become an overwhelming landscape of painful memories and hurt. I didn’t even imagine that was possible but this is what happened. I haven’t been able to spend a night there alone since Sandra died and as soon as anyone whose visiting goes I am on my knees and find it just too much. People who haven’t experienced this try to offer solutions but I have felt most reassured by others who have lost a partner who say it is really normal don’t torture yourself and do what you need to do to survive.
I didn’t think I wouldn’t be able to go in my art studio, my happy place …how that would hurt me… all Sandras beautiful paintings still up on the wall for her exhibition, Her desk set up with her glasses next to her writing journal ( ah that’s where the glasses where) How I would not have the energy to pick up my art supplies, my way of healing so far in the world. How utterly lonely this place we created would feel without her.
I didn’t think about my work… my identity …the processes and magic and life force that has sustained me since I was in my twenties would lie out of reach from me for god knows how long. I realised early on that I would be in no place to create , facilitate and hold space for others which was my thing … bit I didn’t realise how much of “me” was in there that I could no longer access yet.
I didn’t think that all the places which made up my world would become no go areas. I didn’t think the whole familiar landscape would shift and all the places we adored and loved would spin and transform and loose their magic. I didn’t think the fucking map of my world would become scary and obsolete.
Five weeks after Sans death I sat in the Quarter Cafe, one of our favourite hang outs, familiar, safe, very us…..it broke me. I tried to hold it together. The staff were lovely and very kind saying it was gorgeous to see me again which made me choke up. Then a steady stream of people I knew walked past. This was always the great thing about sitting outside on Falkner Street watching the world go by and saying hi , feeling part of something. Now it was these very people paused and standing in front of me, tilted heads, not knowing quite what to say so making awkward small talk… I didn’t answer when people asked how I was and just wanted the floor to swallow me up. I just wanted to sit with my cup of tea and toast and have as normal a moment as I could. Sandras friend who was with me said “I bet you feel like your the exhibition now… people looking at you like your a tragic painting” she nailed it. It is no ones fault. I have been the same with friends whose partners have died. Me and Sandra once took someone a cactus … a fucking cactus to a friend whose wife had died. I said don’t get flowers, who has got the energy to look after flowers and watch them die when you’ve just lost your world… San agreed and we left a pretty cactus and a card on the doorstep. What the actual fuck. NO one knows the right thing to do- there is no one thing you can do to take it all away … some people just walk right beside you and that’s what’s saved me.
I underestimated grief.
I underestimated how it was not only Sandra that was dying, but life as I knew it, up to that point and me... the me I bloody loved.
I underestimated how it would obliterate everything I knew and treasured so far and all the dreams we held for the future.
How everything that had comforted, soothed and helped so far in my life was no longer available in the form it had been …I would have to find new things and I was too fucking tired to find them right now.
I didn’t think crossing the road, going into a supermarket, making decisions would all feel like massive wobbly fragile moments.
You will probably want to say something comforting. I would.
People say all the time
“ Sandra would want you to be happy”
I have said similar to people.
I now feel it ridiculous thing to say.
I will try to never say it to anyone again.
The actress Sheila Hancock, in her book about loosing John Thorpe, talks about how many people said to her what John would have wanted her to do … when in reality he had no idea the world she was about to be plunged into.
San had no idea of the grief I would be in or what was ahead for me, she had never experienced the trauma of loosing the love of her life to cancer. Just like I could never know how absolutely devastating it was to facing the end of your life. We were on different journeys. I often play over and over in my head how she would have coped , how she would have been feeling and what she would have done had I had gone first. Going first by the way is now I believe the best deal if you have someone by your side who absolutely adores you … I didn’t feel this before. More about that another time.
I didn’t want or need Sandra to be “happy” in the hospice. I just wanted her to be as safe as possible and just to know she wasn’t alone and I was right beside her whatever was happening. I think she would just want me to feel the same and not expect anything of me that was trite. Sandra had no idea our home, our garden, our magic tree, our places would hurt me so deeply right now…. no idea that life would not keep turning for me just as it had stopped turning for her. Sandra would want me to hold on, but Sandra would never expect me to be happy right now. This is what the people who I have huddled close to me have not expected of me and in doing so they’ve kept me alive these last few weeks… just gently walked beside, kept me safe and witnessed and not asked anything of me.
I like to think Sandra would remind me of her favourite way of soothing me and making me laugh, which was sitting holding me tight and talking me through the 50 reasons why I was totally right to be feeling what I was feeling in that moment and how to just be as kind as possible to myself.
50 reasons why … 50 reasons why life will never be the same again, 50 reasons why you feel absolutely fucked, 50 ways in which everything you know has been pulled from under you, 50 reasons and sometimes she would take it to 100 reasons why ….why why why…
Why we totally underestimate grief ….
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