Missing

If you're a reader of this blog, I apologise for my infrequent postings of late. I've decided to aim for about six hours' sleep per night rather than five. This has reduced my usual level of tiredness, but I am missing that extra time in the week for optional activities such as blogging.

Last week I watched "The Time Traveller's Wife" on DVD, and I've almost finished the book. The plot is complex, but it revolves around Henry, who travels involuntary in time, and his relationship with Clare whom he meets as a time traveller when she is six, and later marries in 'real life'. So it's above love, and as I know in my own life, that also means that it's about grief. Henry's mother dies when he is five, and Henry's father subsequently descends into alcoholism and despair.

At one point his father says of his late wife 'I miss her every day'. That plunged me into thinking about the ways in which I miss Jen. It's tempting to reach for that big emotional declaration, that sounds much grander than 'I miss her now and then'. Part of the struggle of grief is coping with what I do feel rather than what I imagine I ought to feel.

One dimension of loss is missing the many roles that Jen had in my life - someone to talk to in the evening after the children go to bed, someone to whom I can let off steam, someone who needs me, someone who loves me fiercely and exclusively, someone who knows and understands my history.... - it's a long, long list. Those roles are not Jen, but together the shape they make is one that implies who Jen was. So it's like having only one leg -- every day I notice I'm struggling to stand up, and I remember why that is. Over time I find ways to hobble around and evolve better means to cope, but I'm still crippled.

At times it can seem selfish to miss what Jen did for me, rather than for who she was in herself. With the erosion of time it's hard to hold on to the precise way that Jen would say certain words, or the intricate ways that Jen's love was expressed in everyday life. It's even harder, curiously, to remember her flaws and failings. As a parent I miss the relationship that Jen had with the boys, her capacity to find a circuit-breaker in difficult situations or the right word of encouragement. To be fair, she had her share of arguments and meltdowns as well!

Sometimes I ponder how I would have wanted Jen to miss me if I'd been the one who died. On one hand, a part of me wishes that Jen would have been inconsolable, would never have found anyone else again, would have missed me desperately until the day she died. That's really about knowing for sure that I mattered to her. On the other hand, I would wish for her to be able to live without me, to smile again, to enjoy the boys, to see some of her dreams come true, to find love again. When you know you're leaving, as Jen did, then you lean more to the first, and when you're the one left behind, more to the second.

So do I miss Jen every day? In many practical ways I do - her seat at the table, her chair in the loungeroom, her side of the bed, her place in our lives -- all are empty. I'm not often reduced to tears, as I have been in writing this blog. So much is gone that can never be replaced - the history and secrets and intimacy of fifteen years. But the sun still shines, and there are moments of joy, even if they are islands and sorrow is the sea. Even as we struggle, there is so much that is going right for myself and the boys, and I'm profoundly thankful for that.

One of the most emotional scenes for me in 'The Time Traveller's Wife' is when Henry travels forward in time and meets his daughter at ten years old, only to discover that he died when she was five. At the time of Jen's first diagnosis, it was the loss of future that was hardest to contemplate, the years we might have had together. For Jen, the saddest part was the increasing realisation that she wouldn't see the boys grow up more, wouldn't see the flowering of all her love and care for them, and wouldn't be able to rejoice in the fine people they had become. Now at each moment of the boys' achievements or triumphs, I miss Jen again, and know that I'm experiencing it for her.