In a single year, I lost my mum, dad AND husband
DEAR BEL
I AM 65 and in the past 12 months l have lost both parents, three long-time neighbours — and, lastly and unbearably, my beloved husband.
My whole world has changed and the pain l feel grieving for my husband of 43 years is unbelievable. I yearn for the old life but know it has gone for ever.
I’m lucky to have family and my husband’s sisters have been amazing to me. I have joined a support group, but l feel my life is over.
I cannot stop thinking of him nor see my way forward. I am trying so hard but can’t see any point. Always I try to put on a brave face, so people think l am coping, but as time goes on it feels as if he is getting further away.
The loneliness is awful. It doesn’t matter where l go in the day, l still come home to an empty house. I would not wish this on my worst enemy.
I even attend a spiritualist church, which gives me some comfort. But here is something that bothers me: my parents both lived to 88 and were very needy at the end. This means I feel that our last years together became so wrapped up with them that my poor husband and l lost out in terms of our own precious life together.
He dropped dead of a heart attack three weeks after my mother died and I am afraid that I can’t help feeling bitter that my old parents had 25 more years than he did. Well, I’ve said it all now. There is nothing you can do to help, I know, but still — thanks for reading this, if you do.
JANINE
Yes, Janine, I do read everything, and sometimes (as a result) find it hard to bear the cumulative sadness.
Mind you, I don’t think anybody should read a letter like yours and just carry on regardless. Why ought we be protected from the pain of others?
In the words of the great 17thcentury poet and cleric John Donne, ‘Any man’s death diminishes me, because I am involved in mankind.’
In their hearts, most people know that such pain is but a rehearsal for the inevitability of their own...and that is why they want to run away.
A couple of days after I received your email (not long before Christmas) this short, devastating one arrived from Mrs K:
‘I am in a terrible place as I lost my stunning, irreplaceable daughter, aged 30, this year to a devastating illness. I am trying to cope each day and not show others how destroyed I am inside — but it is very, very hard.
‘People try to give you comforting advice but the truth is I will never come to terms with what has happened. Please spare a thought and maybe a prayer (whatever your belief) for all those who suffer grief and loss and feel so very alone, even in the midst of friends and family, at Christmas and the rest of the year.
‘Believe me, I would not wish this pain on anyone.’
Janine now knows that I do read all the sad letters and I assure you, Mrs K, that my confused ‘belief’ does allow me to spare many thoughts and prayers for those who suffer loss.
Because there is nothing else to do. You can send an army of bereavement counsellors to talk to the afflicted and some of them may do good, in time. But they can’t stop pain.
since my second son was stillborn in 1975 I have studied bereavement but found no ‘answers’. How could I? There are none. Only endurance.
so that’s my starting point: it’s impossible to prepare for a great loss that will actually never go away, but which becomes absorbed into our being, like a vein throbbing under the skin.
In time (perhaps very long) it might become less acute, but then something will trigger a memory . . . and the scab is knocked off, releasing blood once more.
so my finishing point is as sad as the start, I’m afraid — because I
refuse to offer glib words of comfort or to suggest bereavement counselling (useful though it can be) or to tell you that ‘all things pass’ (although they do).
All of that would be too easy; instead, I just want to bow my head in acknowledgement of how hard it is for both of you.
What you are learning, Janine and Mrs K, is that there is never an end to great love — and therefore no end to the frustrating agony when that love has nowhere to ‘go’. When the loved one is no longer there to talk to, to hug, to bring a cup of tea, to be comforted by . . . and when what has been shared seems to have ended, for ever. Yet of course the love is endless, isn’t it? That doesn’t go away. It is the cross you bear and, simultaneously, the glory of that cross.
I find it almost beautiful that both of you say that you ‘would not wish this pain’ on others.
For within that thought we witness the beating heart of true humanity: the comprehension and compassion which wishes to protect others from the knowledge of love and loss and pain. Yet none of us can be protected as long as we experience love. It is the price we pay.
The only other thing to look at is the bitterness Janine mentions — and which surely lies unspoken beneath Mrs K’s grief. It wonders angrily: ‘Why did that person have more life than my beloved?’ King Lear holds his dead daughter Cordelia in his arms and cries: ‘Why should a dog, a horse, a rat have life / And thou no breath at all?’
Many people contrast the ‘premature’ death of a dear one who deserved many more years, with the very old who are tired of life yet cling on. They ask how fate can be so unfair.
Yet there is no allotted time. None of us know what will happen and (I repeat) there are no answers — only boundless sympathy, prayers and a sincere hope that, in time, some healing will come. Believe me, there is so much empathy in this world that you are truly not alone.