Sitting in your sadness

Dear Reader,

Before I went AWOL to Greece, I had a significant conversation with someone who was going through the toughest of times.

Just an acquaintance at work really, someone I bonded with because of her feisty, no-nonsense approach in the workplace and her love of PLANNING!

I won’t tell her story in depth, but she met her childhood sweetheart over a year ago after 30 years, they fell in love (did they ever fall out of love?) and, in a nutshell, he proposed very quickly and they were planning a wedding. Then he was diagnosed with terminal cancer, following the discovery of a brain tumour, and one year later, as they were planning their wedding, he took his last breath holding her hand.

Sorry, there was no easy way to say any of that. But, for me, that’s the saddest, most bittersweet tale I’ve ever heard. It really resonated with me, and I wasn’t sure why.

We had a long chat on Teams the day before I broke up for my holiday and, although it felt a little bit like a counselling session, it also felt a bit cathartic for me.

In particular, towards the end of our chat, she just looked at me, with dead eyes and said: “But what am I now going to do for the rest of my life now that I’ve lost my love? We had so many plans, and we were going to do so much together, what will I do now?”

Oh, my heart broke into a million and one pieces. Because, inadvertently, she had uttered the words out loud that I had kept hidden in my heart for over a year. The thing I couldn’t really acknowledge about my break-up (and it seems unfair to compare her loss with mine, such was the tragedy of finding love again, only to lose it so quickly), were the words she had uttered.

When you find something that you think fits perfectly with you, that absolutely fulfils all of your needs, wants, desires, passions, what do you do when that disappears in a last gasp of breath. No matter what the circumstances, it absolutely feels the same.

I looked at her and said; “You have to sit in your sadness.”

It was a bit like a sudden realisation for me also.

And this is so important during the grieving process, something I’ve learned (slowly) over the past year or so, and something I’ve referred to in my other blogs recently. By all means, put on a pretty dress, explore new avenues, push yourself forwards and onwards and upwards.

But also, sit in your sadness.

My friend looked back at me and started to cry. And that’s what I mean. If you hold this stuff in, it can really mess about with your head. And that’s where I’ve been just this last couple of weeks. I think it was spending so much time with my sister that did it. It brought up an avalanche of emotion that came totally out of the blue for me, and was so unexpected that I don’t think I was prepared for it.

Having someone to come home to every night, someone interested in my day, someone making me coffee, someone to go exploring with. It was so lovely that when she left I realised there was a great big hole in my life that I had been too busy filling by myself (& I’m more than happy filling my holes!) but it was perspective of a very different kind that plunged me into a kind of depression & a little bit of despair.

For all the faults of my unorthodox relationship there was a special bond there, a keen interest in each other’s lives, wants, needs. And although the time to snuggle and kiss was limited, boy we made the most of all that. The thought of it gone, well it hit me. Hard. Just like that. The sadness.

You see, I had so many plans, like my friend, for my life that involved someone I thought was so significant I was prepared to put myself on a shelf for them. And then they were gone. It was like the diagnosis of a slow death for both of us, terminal, but I had to be the doctor and say, finally, that nothing more could be done.

And yes, what happens to all those dreams you had, all that wealth and breadth of feeling, because it has to go somewhere, doesn’t it? What I wanted her to understand, based on my own experience which wasn’t half the pain she was going through having lost someone in such tragic circumstances, was that she needed to sit and she needed to be sad about all that was lost, because throwing yourself into work and excessive play, is just a mask that covers the story. I hadn’t realised that until that moment.

It’s really okay to sometimes take the mask off.

Sadness is an awful thing to endure, which I guess is the reason why people don’t want to meet it and shake hands with it. But I’ve found, through experience, that if you don’t cry it out every now and then, and maybe wallow a little bit in it, immerse yourself in its watery depths, you end up like a tumultuous ocean filled with crashing waves and tidal splashes. And there is a real danger of wanting to drown.

Just acknowledging it is a great relief. I realised talking to this woman, that I hadn’t really acknowledged my sadness at losing my soulmate, my missing jigsaw puzzle piece, my lifeblood, my significant other, the person I trusted the most in my whole life, the one I still yearned for day and night, thought about every minute, and I’m not sure that was the best coping mechanism. Although I am still living, and enjoyment is something I’m celebrating. Isn’t it always there, sitting like a parrot on your shoulder?

Because I know what it’s like to lose your joy.

And I could see her, sitting there, tears streaming down her face, thinking how she just lost her joy. And how could she continue on. It was like looking in a mirror. For the first time.

I wanted to say, you will continue on. But you must acknowledge the loss of your joy and you must come to terms with the enormous space that leaves, and you must try to focus on the good memories (which actually hurts more in the early days) and, if that means sitting with your sadness, then you must invite it in.

And one day, hopefully, you will wake up and he won’t be the first thing you think about. Maybe it will be yourself you think about. Maybe you’ll meet someone else who makes you feel that way and does all those things? Or is it, like they tell you, a once in a lifetime occurrence?

My friend is at the early stages of her terrible journey through grief.

I’m a few years on, but still reeling sometimes from the roller coaster of emotions. In my head I moved on quickly, because resilience and time is important to me. I feel like I’ve wasted years (although perversely it doesn’t feel like a waste when I think of all the things it brought to the table for me, things I’d NEVER experienced before) and I don’t want to waste anymore. I think I’ve moved on, but I know that I haven’t really. And this needs to be acknowledged, this needs to be said out loud and not kept hidden in a head that might burst one day.

The enormity of the hurt is like navigating Everest. And that sometimes ends in death – it certainly takes your breath away.

I told my friend that she needs to wallow in the in-between for as long she needs to. I’ve been there, it’s not such a bad place, but I do need to get to the other side now. I’m just not sure what that means yet. The journey forwards still isn’t that clear for me.

In total my years spent with my love equate to almost half my life, and that includes the wilderness years when I thought about him all the time. I need to admit that this must be part of my framework going forward, and I need to build this emotion into my resilience as it’s not going anywhere fast.

It’s the same for her. She will go out into the wilderness and she won’t be prepared for what lies there, waiting to attack. I hope to help her see that through. And maybe by doing that, I can tend to my own wounds at the same time.

Perhaps.