Introduction

I'm writing this blog as a way of trying to help myself find a way through this f***ing awful maze of grief called widowhood.  If it helps someone else along the way then great.

I'm quite new to this - widowhood and blogging - so please forgive me if I jump around a bit.  To be honest, my head is full of cottonwool these days.  Some days I can barely remember my own name and I struggle to work out what day it is.  I had absolutely no idea that grief would be this bad and I have little to no idea how to figure it out.  I do, however, have to write everything down on both a physical and digital calendar.  And even then, I manage to get dates, times and events horribly mixed up. 

Some background info..... MLH  (My Late Husband) died four months ago at the beginning of May, 2022, just before his 70th birthday.  He had bowel cancer which had been diagnosed 15 months earlier.  Despite doing his "poo stick" tests (after some nagging from me) at the regular 2 year intervals - it had already spread to distant lymph nodes by the time he was diagnosed - and it was deemed incurable (and inoperable) from the beginning.  He never really grasped this and couldn't understand why, when the main tumour in his sigmoid was only 2 cm in size, they wouldn't just operate and "get it out".  Covid and lockdowns didn't help, of course, and he didn't see any actual scans for nearly six months - well into his chemo treatment.  Even then, when he could see that the lymph nodes in his chest were lit up like a Christmas Tree - he couldn't and wouldn't really accept that he was going to die.  As he said to me about half way through his treatment programme - "Well, it's not like it's terminal, is it?"  Hmmmm.

Of course, on one level he knew it was a one-way street.  But, to him, it was a very long street...which could go on for up to 5 years and who knew what new cures and treatments they would come up with in the meantime?  Even when they told him a year later (in February 2022) that they were stopping his treatment as it wasn't working, I think he still believed he had at least another 6 months before he needed to start worrying.  He died 10 weeks later.  The 19 weeks since then have been some of the hardest of my life.

Today I did my weekly volunteering stint at my local library and, as I was "shelving" all the returned children's books I came across a book which had been put in the wrong section (or, perhaps, not?).  It was How to Get to Grips with Grief - 40 Ways to Manage the Unmanageable by James Withey.  Coincidence?  Maybe. I borrowed it and speed read it as I ate my lunch (getting harissa paste on some of the pages...sorry).  Somewhere in there blogging was mentioned so here we are.  I had a sh*tty day yesterday where I just couldn't stop crying so I maybe this will help...it couldn't hurt.  I think I'll stop here for now and come back later.