Teach us to number our days aright,
that we may gain a heart of wisdom.
I'll come back at the end to what I think that means in context, but I took it perhaps whimsically as a confirmation of my mathematical habit of counting days. As I wrote in an earlier blog entry, Jen and I were married for 5800 days. From the day of Jen's diagnosis to her death was 310 days. On April 15th this year we passed 1000 days since her death.
Why bother to count? For one it makes the time seem longer. Now there's been no-one on the other side of the bed for 1000 nights. I've had several thousand cups of tea and eaten at least 20-30 kilograms of chocolate without Jen (estimated at the rate of 100-200g per week), most of it fair-trade chocolate (as she would have wanted). I've run close to 4000 km in training, knowing each time that she won't be there at home when I return. For the boys, being much younger, the time since Jen's death is a large proportion of their lives. For Secundus, those 1000 days would be almost as much as the time that he can remember with Jen.
Then again I could count the time in a different way. There have been three Christmases without Jen. Primus and I have had three birthdays without Jen, and Secundus two (since Jen died just after his birthday). A counsellor that I saw suggested that the first anniversaries might be different to the later ones, and that after two or three years we might have established an alternative pattern. There's some truth in that, although reality is never as clean as theory.
In grief I find myself battling against the time frames that I or others create. Reaching one year, I found myself secretly thinking that we might have 'turned the corner' in some sense. Other people's talk of 'moving on' often envisages even shorter time frames, and I've written elsewhere about how I think this sometimes betrays our discomfort and embarrassment with grief. You the reader may also be tired of three and a bit years of this blog, going on about death and grief. Sometimes I am too, but grief is long, as long as love. It's like a faint shadow that follows me everywhere. I can be sitting in my office, when I'm reminded again of Jen and find myself in tears for a moment. Secundus can still feel sad about Jen as he's going to sleep. Our grief has changed markedly since that day of first diagnosis or the day of Jen's death, but it's precious too.
The verse from Psalm 90 is in fact more a reminder of the shortness of life in comparison to God:
The length of our days is seventy years
- or eighty if we have strength;
yet their span is but trouble and sorrow,
for they quickly pass, and we fly away.
It's important for me that grief, which can be all-consuming, directs me to remember the transience and uncertainty of my life, the importance of God's perspective, and still allows, perhaps even encourages, me to rejoice.
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I hope this is helpful, it's meant to be.
ReplyDeleteSomeone I know well lost both her parents, about forty years between the two deaths,
She noted that for her, grief took about 7 years. It was just there, all the time. Yes, she still functioned, and got on with life, and did stuff. But it was there.
And then one day. It wasn't.
She still misses them, and she loves them, and she talks about them.
But the grief has gone.
Grief is all-consuming at times. And it will pass, but the love remains.
Thanks Fiona, that's a helpful reflection. I'll see how I'm going in another four years! I know already that experiences of bereavement vary widely. It raises the question of what we mean by grief? what set of feelings are we identifying? Is there a 'test' as it were to know if grief is absent? I'm sure the everyday feelings will keep changing. I also suspect that the day of Jen's death will continue to be a sad memory throughout my life.
DeleteI find also for me that it's better to accept that this feeling is our current state, rather than imagine that we are just making do until 'normal programming' is resumed. We will never again be the people that we once were with Jen. Otherwise I find I am plagued by imaginary time lines.