The food of love

At Wagamamas on a rare occasion when Paul let me buy him dinner because he was helping me with Christmas shopping after my mum's death

'People always wanted to feed Paul,' says your mum. This information makes me smile because it leads me to conclude that this is how you got by. Even as a grown man, you'd rock up to people's houses unannounced and find yourself eating plates of toast, or cake or staying for dinner. You loved food but you didn't know how to make it, though some of your concoctions were legendary: garlic sandwiches, cider vinegar potions. I don't really even know what you ate most of the time. I know you occasionally cooked fish and roast dinners for your friend but generally I assume you got by on a diet of tinned food. I know that you liked to mix things up, adding spices and garlic to tins of beans and soup and that it didn't always turn out the way you intended. And I know that you loved cheese.

'Do you like cheese?' I once asked you by Messenger.
'I am at least 40% cheese,' you replied. 'And must have it at every opportunity.'
You made me laugh.

At the beginning of our relationship, things proceeded in the manner to which you were evidently accustomed. I'd bake flapjack in anticipation of your arrival and you'd arrive hungry and eat your way through a plate of it with obvious gusto. If it was evening, I'd cook you sweet potato curry. You didn't like going out to eat. It wasn't really your style and you didn't like spending money. And nor did you like me to pay for you but, on the other hand, I really didn't like having to cook on my days off childcare. As a feminist it irked me to always be the one doing the cooking. It was another conundrum. 'I'm not cooking for you every time you come round,' I said. So, you started picking up a meal for one in the supermarket with mock seriousness, even though I protested that I didn't really mean that I would never cook for you; you took feedback on board and you were not going to have me resenting you.

One day, in January, you decided to show me that you could be the new man you felt I needed you to be. You determined to cook me dinner. You arrived, Ainsley Harriot cookbook in hand, with a bag of shopping and set about chopping in my kitchen while I went to a doctor's appointment. I returned to the smell of burning and you, dripping with sweat and visibly shaken in a way I'd never seen you, pans all over the kitchen and a pile of orange slop deposited onto two plates. It tasted ok, I said, just slightly singed. I said it added to the depth of the flavour. It took you a full hour to calm down. It took another hour to clean the kitchen. You never cooked for me again. But I loved you all the more for trying.

How do you survive that?

A year ago my beloved partner, Blacksmith Paul, died. We'd only been together for eight months, although we'd known each other when we were younger and not realised the depth of the connection that we shared. It is a tragic story of chances missed, bad timing and true love. I was a single parent, recently orphaned, who had not been lucky in love. I'd known a few things that I thought were love before but nothing like this. This was the real deal. Too scared to risk things going wrong after the last boyfriend debacle, I'd been reluctant to introduce him to my children but, on the sixth of March 2016, I did. I can still see him standing in my front garden that night writing messages to Hephaestus the blacksmith god with them, releasing paper lanterns into the sky. They loved him. I loved him. He loved me. And that was the last time I saw him. Five days later, he was dead. No-one really knows why. It seems his heart just stopped beating. He went out of touch and I went out of my mind with worry. On the thirteenth, two of his friends and I broke into the tiny shack where he lived alone in the Peak District and found his already decomposing body on the bed. My world imploded and I experienced the kind of relentless pain that I didn't know existed. I didn't think I could survive it. But I did. Like lots of other people who have been through impossible heartbreak, I continue to survive.

It seemed appropriate just before the anniversary to spend last weekend at the AGM and birthday celebrations of the organisation Widowed and Young. The organisation has been a lifeline to me over the past year even though I'm not really a widow, even though I'm not really that young, even though I've not been sure that I really belong. It was only a short relationship after all and we weren't even married; I've not been sure that I can compare my loss to the loss of people who have been married for years, some of them with children. But the members of WAY have always welcomed me and, over the past year, I have spent most evenings in an online room with the only people who truly understood how it feels to have your future ripped apart. It felt right to make it to the AGM, to meet some of those people in person, at this time. The title of John Irving's novel, 'A Widow for One Year' keeps going round my head. When I read it, I never thought that it would be me.

It is strange the solidarity and comfort that can be found from being in a room full of people who have known great tragedy. As I stood in the hall of the hotel in Stratford last Saturday night, I looked around me and was overwhelmed by the thought that every one of the people in the room had lost a partner, that all of those people had had their worlds blown to pieces. The love, and the lost love, in the room was palpable. Still, it wasn't a sad occasion, on the whole. There was fun and laughter and by the end of the evening everyone was on the dance floor. It turns out that the widowed have lost more than their spouses - their inhibitions have gone too. For them, the worst has already happened. In some ways, they have been liberated from fear and they know how to live, how to love. They are a truly fabulous bunch. It was a fabulous weekend.

Even so, gradually, inevitably the stories came out. I found a girl (really, just a girl) crying in the toilets and offered her a hug. My heart broke for her. How could someone so young survive something like this? Then I spoke to a man who had lost his wife just after his baby girl had been born. She'd developed ovarian cancer while she was pregnant. 'That's so sad,' I said feebly and he nodded wearily. He had told this story before. And then there was my online friend, who had given birth to her only chid the week after her partner had been killed in a bike accident. She was choosing funeral flowers when she should have been choosing baby clothes. 'How do you survive something like that?' I found myself thinking, kicking myself at the same time because I already know the answer. You survive because you have to. Because, unless you kill yourself (and most people who have been widowed will have considered it), you have no other option.

As I sit here, a year on, I find myself reflecting, not just on my enormous loss and sadness but at the resilience of the human spirit. Sure, my grief is still deep and I still cry a lot. I still wish that I could rewind time and bring Paul back. I wish I could undo this long year of pain. And I know that grief will not be tied up neatly at the end of this year but will go on for as long as love goes on (forever). But I can also see how far I have come. I have moved house and started new ventures. I have let go of the work that was weighing me down and now only do work that I love. I have written more than ever before and made new friends. I am even, very tentatively, dating again. And I experience joy, like sunshine between clouds of sadness, on a regular basis. Slowly I am building a new life for myself. What's more, I can tell you how I did it. And this is how.

I wrote. Sometimes, I wrote all night long, often with tears streaming until the words on the screen blurred in front of my eyes. I just had to tell the world my story, even if they thought I was mad, even if I felt mad myself. I needed to get it out. When you're in love and your partner dies, you just want to talk about it and my laptop listened when friends were asleep. The very act of writing calmed my mind. Sometimes, just trying to find the perfect metaphor for turmoil gave my brain something to do and when I had finished, I felt sated. It was like literary self-harm, releasing the pressure from my heart and mind. And in sharing my words, I found support from compassionate friends and from other bereaved people. I also found meaning, as I realised that my words were helping other people. Writing gave me a purpose and, when your world has fallen apart, a purpose is what you need.

I learned to slow down and I learned to say no. I rarely went to social occasions (it all seemed so trivial and alienating) and I removed from my life anything or anyone that didn't make me feel good. I let go of the pressure to meet other people's expectations and focused on myself. I filled my life with the things that made me feel better: not fixed, but less bad. I went outside as often as possible and looked at the world from high hills with big skies. I walked crying through woods and parks, not caring who saw. I swam, feeling the support of water, absorbed in the rhythm of the strokes. I learned, finally, to meditate, practising mindfulness on a daily basis, staying in the moment, learning to name my emotions, to focus on the feeling of the ground beneath my feet. In deep grief, the moment is the only place to be; thinking about the future all too often gives rise to panic. So I stayed in the moment, even when that moment was pure agony. I gave in to pain and sobbed so hard that I thought I was going to die. Like the writing, it brought release, it brought peace.

I exercised. Gently at first, more vigorously now. My bereavement counsellor tells me that in shock, we are in fight or flight mode all of the time. Exercise seduces my body into thinking it has fought and afterwards, it can relax. I tried to remember to eat. I tried to remember to drink water. I tried to remember to sleep. Finally I understood what people meant when they talked about the need to look after myself, about self-compassion. I asked myself what I needed and I tried to give it, to myself. In the absence of anyone else (and often there was no-one else), I had to care about number one.

Still, I reached out to people and I learned to ask for help. I had regular bereavement counselling, saw a herbalist, paid for help at at home (luckily, I was able to afford to do it). I said to my friends, 'I can't do this!' Some of them stepped up to support me. Some of them backed away and left me floundering. When I moved house, I told Facebook that I couldn't manage and a whole hoard of people came to help, some of whom I barely knew, some of whom I hadn't seen for years. I will never forget the kindness of the people who came forward. (I am trying to forgive or let go of the people who let me down. Not everyone is able to be close to a disaster zone.)

I learned to stop caring about what other people think. I let go of my own idea of how I should be. When I'm on my own death bed is it going to matter than someone I don't even like that much thinks I'm self-absorbed, or that someone I barely know thinks I'm too vociferous in my grief? Does it really matter if my children go to bed an hour later, or watch a bit too much TV, so long as they know that they are loved? Does it really matter if I am ten minutes late and don't send thank you notes? As Dr Seuss says, 'those who matter, don't mind and those who mind, don't matter'. I learned to value myself as my partner valued me. My resources are precious, my energy is precious, my time is precious. I am careful now where I invest it.

And this year, I have invested a lot of it not just in surviving my grief but in supporting other people who are in agony. Every day, for the last year, I have talked to the people on the Widowed and Young Facebook group (and to the writers from Refuge in Grief) and, regardless of the differences in our circumstances, I have felt myself to be at home in those places. There is solace to be found in the communities of the heartbroken. There is no silver lining to the cloud of my grief and yet, I am grateful for the wisdom that comes from experience and for the companionship of the people I have met. I am grateful for the knowledge that I am not alone, that other people have been here too and they have survived. We know what it is to love and we have known great loss. We have stared death in the face and we will make the most of the time we have left. We know how precious life is. We know what love is. We are warriors and we will survive.

A version of this blog also appeared in The Huffington Post 
http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/beverley-ward/how-do-you-survive_1_b_15265562.html?1489079553

This won't be a Happy Christmas

I'm not sending Christmas cards this year. Call me Scrooge, but I just don't feel like celebrating. I don't begrudge other people their happy Christmas (or maybe I do) but I don't want to think about it and I don't want to talk about it and I just want it to be over as soon as possible. I don't have any festive cheer to spare. It took all my energy to put up a Christmas tree for the children. I've booked the panto and the Christmas train and some time between now and the twenty-fifth, I will buy the children some presents. But that's it. That's enough. I have turned off the radio and I'm staying away from the parties. I don't need to be constantly reminded that Christmas is a time for sharing love and that half of the people I love most in the world are missing. Frankly, Mariah Carey has it covered: All I want for Christmas is you. And Santa can't bring me what I want. So it's 'Bah Humbug' from me, I'm afraid.

I suppose I could do what other people seem to be doing and donate to a charity instead of sending cards, but I donate to charities all year long. Charity is for life, not just for Christmas, surely? I'm already saving a few trees. Isn't that enough? Why do I need to offset my sadness? Can't I just be selfish this year? Sometimes sadness is appropriate. We can't all make lemonade every time we get lemons. It's exhausting squeezing every drop of positivity from a negative situation when you're already exhausted.

Don't worry, it goes both ways. I don't want any Christmas cards either. I mean, I don't mind if you have to follow the custom, if writing cards gives you some joy, if it just wouldn't be Christmas for you if you didn't send cards. But please don't send one on my account. Please don't think that sending me a snowy scene with the words: 'Happy Christmas' and 'Happy New Year' is going to improve my lot during this festive period. Putting it bluntly, it's not.

I appreciate you thinking about me but love is for all of the year, not just for Christmas too. The friends who care about me have been here for me during what has been the worst year of my life. Some of them have sent me love on a daily or weekly basis. They have checked in on how I am regularly. Some of them have driven across the country to see me. A lot of good friends have read my blog, religiously or sporadically. They know how I am. They have sat me with while I've cried week after week after week. They know that I will not be happy just because it's Christmas. The word happy is just jarring. It's not appropriate for someone who is grieving.

This Christmas won't be a happy one. I'm not being negative. It's just the way it is. Sure, it will have some happy moments. I have two gorgeous children who are excited and there will be joy in seeing them open their presents and all that malarkey. And, yes, I'm grateful that I have them and that I'm not homeless and that I don't live in Syria. I have a lot of things to be grateful for. I can make lemonade when I need to. But I will mostly be sad and mostly thinking about the people who are missing. That's just the way it is. My life is half-empty, not half-full.

By all means think of me. And if you want to send me a card, send me a card acknowledging that you know this year will be hard. Wish me some peace. Send me some strength. Keep sending me love. Make plans to hang out with me, knowing that there will probably be tears if you do. But don't wish me a Happy Christmas. Christmas will be tough. As for 2017, with any luck it can't be as bad as 2016 but I hear bereaved people and counsellors routinely saying that the second year following the loss of a partner is worse than the first so I'm not counting my chickens and the last time I said things couldn't get worse, you died. I'm not risking saying it again. Probably the second year following the death of a partner is worse, at least in part because friends forget that things don't get better just because the year on the calendar has changed. When the person you love is missing, they just keep being missing. So please, friends, forgive me for the lack of cards and for the Grinchlike behaviour and keep sending the love.

You didn't send me a card last year. You sent me a New Year's card instead. It was a beautiful scene of bluebells and trees. You acknowledged that life had been tough for me for years and that things could only get better. You were a big part of my future plans for life improvement.  

'May all your dreams come true in 2016,' you wrote. 

So much for that. 

Bah Humbug. 

Once upon a time the man I loved died

When I started my blog, I didn't set out to tell a story. I was simply in agony and writing was my way of trying to survive. I wasn't writing for an audience, I was writing for myself. But gradually my blog has turned into a story with an audience: the story of my grief's journey and also the story of a beautiful love affair that ended, like your life, way too soon. I hardly have any photos of you, so my blog is the equivalent for me - a photo album in words, a way to remember every precious moment that we shared. Because our relationship was short and restricted by the fact that I wouldn't introduce you to my children, when you died I was able to make a list of each day we spent together and what we did. I know I will keep writing until I have recorded them all. There are only a few left. And now, for some reason, at my hundredth post, I find myself wanting to put a structure to the story, wanting to write it from the beginning but I'm not sure where the beginning is.

It is always a tricky decision, knowing where to begin a story and this one is no different. I could start it back in the nineties when we first met, when Cupid made a blunder and fired his arrows in the wrong direction. Or I could go further back to when I met your future best friend. Ed, at playgroup while we were still in nappies. I could talk about my divorce and my terrible relationship with the children's father or the break up of my last relationship, to give context to the precious nature of this love story. Or I could rewind time just a short way and start last year when our paths crossed again, back to that good time when Cupid had his act together and everything was aligned, until suddenly it wasn't.

Still, I've been to enough creative writing classes to know that, these days, a story should throw us into the centre of the action and start with a bang. So, if I were going to start this story properly, I would start it with a body, the body of the man I loved -  your dead body. Without that appalling scene, this blog wouldn't exist.

And so it transpires that, at what is the true beginning of this story, I am standing in my pyjamas and dressing gown on your doorstep, staring at the dead body that is laid out on your bed. It might seem surprising to some that I can almost see your bed from the doorstep, but those people don't know yet that you are a surprising hero who lives in a tiny shack in the Peak District. Also a little odd that I am out here in my pyjamas with two male friends of yours that I don't know. They've just bashed the door of this shack in with a fire extinguisher as if we are in some kind of crime drama and a voice is saying the words, 'there's Paul'. Before they've had time to stop me, I am pushing past them into the darkness of the room where you sleep and there is a breath in time where I think you might actually be asleep now and I feel guilty for dragging your friends out here in the dark. But as soon as I am near enough to see your body properly, I know that you are dead. Either that or you have been abducted and someone has left another deformed body on your bed. Part of me wants to run to you and hold you but a larger part recoils in horror and I stay in the doorway, wanting to leave but unable to move. I stay just long enough to take a picture in my mind, a picture that I will never be able to erase. Your head is black and purple in hue and swollen so that your features are distorted. You look like the elephant man, completely unrecognisable aside from your clothes, clothes from which you are bursting, your body inflated and leaking. Your hands are clenched, there is blood on the bed and the stench makes me want to retch. One thing I know for sure. This is a body but it is not you. You are gone.

Your friend calls an ambulance. Someone on the end of the line asks routine questions, trying to ascertain whether there is any hope of resuscitation. We all know there is not but they force him to touch your skin and check for signs of life even though he is saying repeatedly, 'he is definitely dead.' And I just stand there listening to the word: dead. How can you be dead?

Afterwards, I stand on the porch shaking until someone ushers me into a car and I sit, still shuddering and stare into space. I don't know how long I am there. At some point I see blue flashing lights moving up the long drive to the shack where you live, the shack where you are dead and some time after that a policeman slides into the driver's seat of the car and asks me questions that make me feel like a terrible girlfriend. You have been out of touch for three days and judging by the state you are in, you have been dead for all of them. I wonder with him how it can have taken me three days to raise the alarm. Was it just yesterday that I was out on a day trip with a friend? What was I thinking going out for the day when you were lying dead on your bed? If this is a crime drama then I assume that I am a suspect. I'm not yet sure how you died and maybe circumstances are suspicious. So I try to justify myself, explaining to the policeman that you don't always answer your phone, that we don't live together, that we don't see each other every day because of my children. I tell them that I have been sending messages and calling for days but that you haven't answered. I don't tell them that I have been worrying that you were about to dump me but I tell them that I came out last night and that your lights were on but your door was locked. I tell them about the notes I left on the door and on your van.  I don't tell them that I was frightened and crying, banging on your door and shouting your name, pleading with you to let me in.

They ask me what your mum's name is and I feel even worse. I don't know. I can tell them roughly where she lives because you once drove me past her house but I haven't met your mum yet. We've only been seeing each other for eight months and we just haven't found the time. I can tell them the first name of your sister but that is all I know. I don't know where she lives. I could tell them so many things about you if they asked: your favourite songs, what kind of tree you would choose to be if you were reincarnated as a tree, how you have changed my life, but I can't tell them anything they want to know.

The policeman takes my number and eventually says that I am free to go. I wait for your friends and find myself browsing Facebook as if it is just a normal evening except for the fact that I am sitting in a stranger's car in my pyjamas at one in the morning. I see that a friend is up and I message her to tell her that you are dead. How can you be dead? She phones and I try to explain through my tears and I say, 'can you come?' She says that she will catch a train in the morning to be there.

Your friends drop me back at home and I stand in the kitchen wondering what to do now that you are dead. I go upstairs and climb into bed with my daughter because I need to be next to someone whose heart is beating. I hold her hand and lie awake for hours. I think about the last time that I saw her, standing at the top of the stairs as I told her that I needed to go out to look for a missing friend, that I was leaving her with a stranger, that I would be back soon. I am wondering how I will tell her in the morning that I found you but that you were dead. It is only three months since I told her that Grandma was dead. It is only a week since she met you for the first time and gave me her approval. It is too much. I am wondering how on earth I am going to get up and get the children to school. I am thinking about you and every snapshot of our beautiful time together, time that is now over, snapshots that I will record later. I am wondering where your body has gone and thinking that I never even turned back to say goodbye. I am wondering if they have found your mum or your sister and what happens next. But mostly I am just lying there thinking that you are dead. How can you be dead?

I am wondering how it can all be over now. This is not the way the story should end. It is not the way the story should begin. But it is the way it happened.

Counting

These days I find myself counting,
I am always counting.
I count breaths, days, months,
log the seasons as they go by:
spring, summer, autumn.
Only winter lies ahead.

I don't know why I count,
don't really know what I am counting.
Life is upside down and back to front
and I'm not sure anymore
if I am counting up
or counting down,
if I am counting towards something
or away.

But I count the days,
tick them off on the calendar
labelled 'After';
you ended as it began.

I don't want to count:
every day takes me further
from a day spent with you
and a day closer to

But I count anyway,
watching time pass by,
amazed by the number of
days survived,
amazed still that you died,
amazed I am still alive.

This time last year - falling in love as the leaves changed 

at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park

The future doesn't exist

I went back to see my old therapist last week. It was a routine follow-up from the sessions I had when we were together. She was the one who was helping me to trust again, who encouraged me to take a chance on love with you. She told me that no-one is perfect, that nothing is permanent. Love is like a cup of coffee, she said. It always ends. Someone will always leave or die. All we can do is enjoy the coffee while it lasts. When you died, she acknowledged that she didn't expect my coffee break to be so short.  (I'm not sure if I ever told her that I don't like coffee.)

I start crying as soon as I walk through the door, remembering all the conversations we have had in this room about you.  I cry as I tick the boxes on the routine form asking me how often in the last two weeks I have felt anxious, or sad or hopeless (most days, every day). I cry when she asks me if I think a lot about you (most of the day, every day). I cry as my pen hovers over that box that asks if I have had thoughts that I would be better off dead, as I explain that I have no plan to kill myself (I love my children) but that, often, when I am exhausted and drowning in waves of sorrow, I still have that thought that I would rather not be here anymore. Dead would be easier than living with this pain. It is natural, surely, to want to be with your loved one and dead is where you are. I cry when she tells me that my scores are lower than when I started seeing her eighteen months ago, that, according to some clinical diagnostic criteria, I am suffering from moderate to severe depression, that my anxiety levels are high. She suggests anti-depressants and some online CBT. I leave feeling worse than when I went in. I'm not just grieving anymore. I'm now mentally ill. Someone in some central NHS office has created a downloadable test that tells me so. It must be true.

I try not to let it get to me but I wonder again if I should be over this by now. I have passed the six month milestone after all. I logged it as it went by and hoped for some respite. We were properly together for six months so six months seemed a reasonable length of time to mourn your loss. And I'd read somewhere that if you're 'functionally and significantly impaired by grief symptoms' six months after being bereaved, then you move into the territory of 'complicated grief'. And I remember the TED talk that I watched in March that told me that happiness is all in the mind and nothing to do with life circumstances. Apparently, six months after trauma, in most cases, the trauma has no bearing on levels of contentment. Evidently, I am not most cases. (Mind you, I have been through a whole heap of recent traumas. I have covered most of the most stressful life events in the last three years - sick child, ill health, separation, death of a parent, death of a partner, massive change in financial circumstances and I threw in a house move just to finish me off). But I am complicated, still suffering, doing it wrong.

It was the mindfulness teacher who suggested the group watch the TED talk last time. She recommended it again this time, as I restarted the course six months after your death. Take it gently, she'd said to me, see how it sits. And it was sitting ok until she mentioned that talk again and my mind was flung back to that evening when we were apart and I was telling you about the dude on TED and his theory that happiness is all in the mind, all about living in the moment. 'That makes sense to me', you'd said. 'Longer term thinking is more vague and uncertain, more likely to lead to anxious thinking.' Twenty-four hours later you were dead.

The therapist asks me the question that other people ask. 'What have you got to look forward to?' She's like a hairdresser asking me if I'm going somewhere nice tonight or if I have holiday plans, as if a night on the town will fix it all, as if things might look better from the top of the Eiffel Tower. My mind draws a blank. I can't see the future any more. The future now is vague and uncertain and reflecting on it leads to anxious thinking. I shake my head and she adds up my scores and shakes hers. I am failing again.

I leave her office seventy pounds poorer and seventy per cent less happy. Rather than head to the GP for some pills, I think of the words of the mindfulness teacher and ground myself by asking questions that I can answer, the questions writers often ask: what can you see, what can you hear, what can you feel, what can you smell? I see my daughter's freckles, speckling cheeks that are rose-petal soft to my touch. I hear the rustle of autumn leaves underfoot. I feel the water supporting my weight in the pool. I wake up and smell the coffee, even though I don't like what I smell. I do as she suggests and watch my feelings like clouds in the sky. I name them, as writers like to do, welcome them in. I see you, Pain. I feel you, Anxiety. I know you, Grief. Ah, Loneliness, you too. I remember you. I label the emotions, refuse to take on the label myself. I have moments, hours and days of unbearable depression but I am not depressed. I am grieving but I am not just grief. Yes this grief is complicated and cumulative. I have been through a lot over a lot of years. It will take time to recover.

A few days later, I get a message from my daughter's school. A girl has died. She was nine year's old, healthy by all accounts. She contracted meningitis and died suddenly, just like that. I have to lie down and cry when I hear the news. I feel it fully now. It cracks open the rift in my broken heart again. I can't bear to imagine the carnage in another's life of such a brutal loss. This wasn't in anyone's plan. In six month's time, I wonder, will her parents have recovered? Will they be as happy then as they were last week? Will they be back to normal? Dr TED can say what he likes but I don't believe him. When death explodes into your life like that, there is no normal any more. Everything has changed. Everything is rearranged. Life will never be the same again. They will never be the same. I am not the same.

But it is not all doom and gloom, not for me, not now as I approach seven months without you. I reflect again on the therapist's questionnaire and wonder where the other questions are? The ones that paint a balanced picture. How many times in the last two weeks have you felt joy? How often have you felt love? How many moments of calm have you experienced? Did you see today, the beauty of the trees? How many times this week have you held something precious in your hand? Most days, every day.

I am living in the moment now, like you did, like we did. I take notice of each moment and hope that, perhaps, the future will take care of itself.  Yes my moments of sorrow are many and as deep and dark as the deepest sea but I have moments of joy too and these moments are brighter now and more precious. At night, I hold my children tightly, marvel at freckles and fingers and locks of hair. I know that this moment might be our last. Life is made up of moments - unbearable beauty alongside unbearable loss. This moment is all we have. The future doesn't exist.

It sucks, I'm here, I love you - or What to say when you don't know what to say

A good friend sent me a text message yesterday letting me know that her dad had died. I felt terrible for her, as I do now for anyone who has lost someone close, and wanted to respond immediately but I paused before I started typing, edited and re-edited before I pressed 'Send', trying to apply what I have learned. Maybe I got it right and maybe I got it wrong. Everyone is different in their grief. I can only speak from my own experience of the recent, shocking loss of my partner and the loss of my parents from terminal illness, but, for what's it's worth, these are my tips on what has helped or not helped me. I share them in case they help someone else to help someone else who is suffering the agony of loss.

Firstly, whatever you do or say, there is a good chance that you will get it wrong. When someone is in extreme pain having lost someone they love, there is NOTHING you can say that will make it okay. So, it is fair to assume that, at some point in your friend's grief journey, you will offend them. Give them a break if they're over-sensitive. Their world has been blown to pieces and their mind and nerves with it. Bearing this in mind, here are some things you might like to avoid:

1. Beginning sentences with the words 'I hope.....' It is such a natural instinct when we see a friend in pain to want to offer them some hope but when someone you love with all your heart has just died, there is no hope. It is much better to just sit with the person who is in pain and acknowledge that it sucks and is hopeless. Anything else feels undermining. If you must hope for something, make it something small: 'I hope you can sleep tonight,' or, as a widowed friend of mine has said to me, 'I hope you have some moments of peace'. In the early stages of a violent grief, moments of peace are as good as it gets.

2. Beginning sentences with 'at least': 'at least you still have the children,' 'at least you had his love', 'at least you got to say goodbye', 'at least they'd lived a good life'. None of these things change the reality for the bereaved. The person they love is dead. This is all that matters. Children, a nice house, a good job.....none of these things are compensation for losing your loved one. One day, there might come a time when your friend is grateful for the love and able to simply cherish what they had, but probably not now.

3. If your friend's partner has died, unless they bring up the subject, please don't tell them that they will meet someone else. There is no guarantee that they will ever meet someone new and even if they do, that someone new will never replace the someone who has gone. Especially in the early days, all I wanted was for the person that I love to return. That this is impossible is irrelevant.

4. Don't tell your friend that their loved one is at peace or in a better place or that the angels needed them. You don't know that. No-one knows that and, even if you think you do, that is not much consolation for the person left behind. For more on this;
https://griefwriting.blogspot.co.uk/2016/04/things-not-to-say.html

5. Please don't tell your friend that this is part of a plan, that it happened for a reason or that it happened to teach them something. What kind of god/universe would take my partner's life just so that I could learn some kind of lesson? Maybe you believe that but I doubt it is comforting to many people who have just lost someone who was a cornerstone of their world.

6. Please don't make judgements about the relationship of the person who has been bereaved.  As my Grandma used to say, 'no-one knows what goes on behind closed doors'. Your friend's relationship may have been 'better' or 'worse' than it appeared to you. Just because the relationship was short or had some issues, doesn't make it less of a loss. Don't make assumptions and judgements full stop. Some people might be relieved at the death of a long-term spouse while others might be bereft and heartbroken at the death of a partner they'd only known for a week. How they feel is up to them and actually not something that is within their control. I had only been with my partner for eight months and we were, in some ways, an unlikely pair but I have been utterly devastated by his loss in a way that I didn't know was possible. My loss is no less valid than someone else's just because the relationship was brief and because I may have told you that we both had doubts. In my case, I hadn't told many people what my partner meant to me because I was scared to jinx it having had my fingers burned too many times before but I loved him very deeply and my grief has been similarly deep. Likewise with other bereavements. The apparent closeness of the relationship is no indicator for the violence or longevity of the grief that follows.

7. Don't judge your friend's grief. People grieve in different ways for different lengths of time. Contrary to popular opinion, there are no neat stages to grief and no linear timeline. Grief is messy and complicated and unruly. From my own experience, one minute I can feel ok, so much so that I actually wonder what on earth I've been making such a melodramatic fuss about and the next moment it is like someone has opened up a trap door and I have fallen into the deepest darkest hole. At those moments I can't see the light or a ladder and it is hard to remember that, only recently, I thought I was doing well. Grief is a tangled mess, a complex maze and a confusing whirlpool of emotions. It is full of ups and downs where the ups are mountains to climb and the downs are the deepest troughs imaginable. In between there are pauses and plateaus where you can occasionally have a tea break and look at a view of devastation.

8. Don't say those words: 'how are you?' especially not by text message. In my case, I'd prefer that people just assume that I am desolate until I have told them otherwise. By all means ask your friend what they've been up to because, of course, the days are going by and they are still living, but how they are is likely to be complicated and will take some time and energy to explain. If you want to know how your friend is, go round, make a cup of tea and prepare to mop up the tears. Or, in my case, read my blog. I'm much more articulate in writing.
https://griefwriting.blogspot.co.uk/2016/04/things-not-to-say-part-2.html

9. When your friend is obviously down and weeks or months have passed, don't ask them what's wrong. Just because the funeral is over doesn't mean they're fine now. They're still sad, about the same thing. They will be sad for a long time.

10. Don't ask your friend if they're feeling 'better'. You don't get better from grief. Maybe it gets easier to deal with or maybe it doesn't. In my experience, asking me if I'm feeling better just makes me think about how far I still have to go and, if I was feeling ok when you asked the question, most likely I will feel worse because you asked it.
https://griefwriting.blogspot.co.uk/2016/07/grieving-just-as-fast-as-i-can.html

11. Don't assume that someone else is looking after your friend. I was living alone when my dad died and will never forget how it felt. About twenty friends sent text messages but no-one called to see me and no-one phoned. Three days later, I called two of my best friends in tears and they said that they assumed I was busy with family. Nope. That's not the kind of family I'm from. Some of my best support since my partner died has come from people that I had only just met. There's no hierarchy of support. If you feel for someone, see if you can help.

12. Things don't necessarily get incrementally better. In fact, it is probably more common for things to get incrementally worse. At best, it is one step forwards and two steps back. In the early stages of grief, especially unexpected grief, your friend will be in shock. They will also have a lot of practical things to do and, hopefully, a lot of support. Once the funeral is over, the shock has worn off and other people's lives have returned to normal, your friend is forced to confront their new normal on their own. The reality might not sink in until three months or six months or even twelve months later. In fact, for me, it is sinking in slowly, day by day, as I gradually realise that I have to find a way to forge a new life that doesn't involve the man that I thought was my future. Be there for your friend at three months and six months and twelve months when people are no longer rushing round with flowers and hot meals. The point at which you're really bored of your grieving friend and thinking that they ought to get a grip, is probably the time when they need you the most. Believe me, they are thoroughly bored of it too.
https://griefwriting.blogspot.co.uk/2016/06/sometimes-i-imagine-that-my-body-is.html

13. Don't avoid the subject. Your friend's loved one and their grief is the main thing on their mind and they are, most likely, desperate to talk about it. It doesn't matter how well you know the person, you can still ask. If they don't want to talk, they won't.
https://griefwriting.blogspot.co.uk/2016/09/i-need-to-talk-about-kevin.html

14. Don't expect your friend to be able to function normally. There is no normal anymore. Things that seem simple to you are loaded with land mines to your friend. They may not be able to go to the pub or to a party or do any of the things that you're used to them doing. They will at some point but please be patient. Unless you have been through the same experience, you have no idea how difficult it is. Sometimes, just getting out of bed in the morning is enough of a challenge. Your friend is not avoiding you for any particular reason or because of anything you have done, it's just all too difficult sometimes.
https://griefwriting.blogspot.co.uk/2016/06/the-tightrope-of-grief.html

15. Don't ask your friend to call if they need anything. Most likely, they won't call and, more importantly, they probably have absolutely no idea what they need. They probably don't even know what day it is. Come round, bring food, walk the dog, play with the children, tidy up and, most importantly listen. And then repeat, over and over again for months on end.

16. On the other hand, sometimes, you could try asking. I'll never forget the friend who said to me, 'what single thing could I do that would improve things?' It took me a while to think what it was but then she remembered and did that thing and it really did improve things.

So, that's a lot of stuff to avoid. Is there anything you can safely do? Yes.

1. In the early stages, do rush round with flowers and hot meals - meals more than flowers. It is easy to forget to eat or drink in the early stages of grief. I was so grateful for people who brought food.

2. Do phone or call rather than sending text messages. As in my case with my dad, a flurry of text messages over an hour or two, do not make for great support. They're better than nothing, but, if you can, go round or pick up the phone.

3. Do keep phoning to check your friend is still alive. I have been so grateful to the friends who have done this, especially the friend who always phoned on a Tuesday knowing that this was the night that the children were with their dad and a night that I used to spend with my partner.

4. Do offer practical help. Grief is exhausting and blows your brain to bits. Ordinary everyday tasks can seem insurmountable. It is so helpful to have someone share the load even for a moment. Pick your friend's kids up from football training, walk with them to school, go with them to appointments, wash the pots. A little goes a long way.

5. Send love. If you can't think of anything to say, send love. A little love goes a long way. Especially when you have lost the person who used to say 'I love you', hearing those words from someone else is very powerful. When you feel like you just want to dive into the grave with your partner, knowing that you still matter is essential.

6. Do offer hugs and kisses. Especially in the case of losing a partner, your friend has lost the person who used to do this. When my partner died (and still now, six months later) all I wanted to do was curl up in his arms and feel safe. The touch of someone else can't replace the warmth of his embrace, but it helps a little.

7. LISTEN. It is the biggest gift you can give your friend to simply listen without judgment or agenda, without offering your opinions or platitudes. It is incredibly hard to do but so essential that grief is witnessed. And actually, in reality, it should be easy. The best way to avoid all of the mistakes listed above is to say very little. Just sit with your friend, listen while they talk and say, "it sucks. I'm here. I love you."

If you're a friend of mine and you've said any of the things to avoid, don't worry. As I said at beginning, you were bound to get it wrong and, let's face it, anyone who knows me, knows that I have the worst case of foot in mouth disease around. And if you're a friend of mine and you have done any of the things that help, then thank you from the bottom of my heart. With no parents and no partner, I feel like friends (and my brothers) are all the support that I have. It is just as well that I have some great friends.