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.

I am thinking about what I have gained

'Next time, let's think about what you have gained,' she says. I feel my hackles rise a little as they do every time someone offers me some platitude about things happening for a reason, or your love being a gift to cherish. And I think to myself that I don't want to think about what I have gained. I don't pay no money to come to this amazing bereavement counselling service week after week to talk about what I have gained. I come here to cry and to tell her what I have lost. I want to sit here and tell her again and again. Does she not understand how big it is? Does she not see yet just how much I have lost?

The truth is, I want to tell everyone what I have lost. I want to talk about it and write about it over and over until I have explained it in every possible way. I want to express it in poetry and prose, with pictures, signs and symbols. I want to find, each day, a new simile, a new metaphor, a new way to tell someone. I want to dance it, walk it, swim it. I want to spread this loss like a disease until everyone is just a little bit infected, until everyone has felt, just for one moment, a homeopathic amount of this grief. And yet.

Today I went out into the Peak District where you lived. I spent the morning with my writing group and then met an old friend/ex-partner for lunch and a walk. We had a good chat. He listened while I told him again how much it hurts and I accomplished my mission of making him sad too which always makes me feel just a little bit better: misery loves company. Together we talked at length about life and death, purpose and meaning. We talked about lack of purpose and lack of meaning too, about the way that, for both of us, sometimes, we're not sure where we're going, or why. The way that sometimes, we lack motivation.

For me, this sense of purposelessness has reached a new level since you died. My bereavement counsellor says that I am having an existential crisis. I am questioning the very point of being alive. I no longer take it for granted that existing is, in of itself, a good thing. Every moment now is framed by the knowledge of death. Big things and small things are seen through this filter. My friend is talking about buying a new sofa and as he's talking I find myself wondering why anyone would bother buying a sofa when we're all going to die. (And then I concede that while he's waiting to die, he may as well have somewhere comfy to sit). We take it further. Why go to work? Why accumulate wealth? Why visit foreign countries? Even my writing feels pointless these days. A friend online says how important this grief writing is but I'm not sure anymore. I write because I can't think of anything else to do but I reflect to her that no amount of writing can bring you back and that feels like all I want. I could turn this into a bestselling memoir and then what? You still won't be here and I'm still going to die one day. It all feels kind of meaningless. The truth is, I tell my friend, when the person you love has died, you just want to go and join them. Without actually feeing suicidal, it's where you want to be and everything feels empty without them. At the beginning I felt that if I hadn't had children, it is where I would have gone.

I don't feel that anymore, I realise.

I am thinking about what I have gained.

I was always painfully honest but I am even more unguarded now. I say what I think. I speak what I feel. A writer friend tells me that writing online so openly would scare her. I tell her that sometimes it scares me too but what's the worst that can happen? It is only words. It is only truth. My truth is that grief has made me fearless. Grief has made me more me.

I am thinking about what I have gained.

I am buying a new house and I'm sure there is a multitude of things to be stressed about but I don't really care. It is only a house. It is only money. I have a different perspective now.

I am thinking about what I have gained.

Since you and my mum died, I have felt more alone than I have ever felt. I am no-one's partner. I am no-one's daughter. I am peripheral to everyone but the children. I tell my friend that I lack support because there is no-one who is there for me day to day. But then I look at him, this old friend, who has caught the train to spend the day with me and I realise it is churlish of me to say that. Here he is, supporting me. I talk online to other bereaved people and I feel their support too. This week I told my Facebook world that I was worried about being alone without my children while they are on holiday with their dad, and friends flocked to fill my diary. So many people offered their company that I am craving alone time, that I have people on a waiting list to see me. I tell my friend that no-one would care if I died and he says that perhaps I might be surprised how many people would care. I would care, he says. People do care. I have learned to ask for what I need. I have learned that there is more than one kind of love. As I sat with my friend eating dosas in the sunshine at the end of the day I felt, for a moment, that I was glad again to be alive.

I am thinking about what I have gained.

I tell my friend that I can't think about the future anymore. Thinking about a future without you is too painful and so I have no choice but to live in the moment. While we are out, I find myself stopping to look at things more closely than I would have done before. I notice things more. I stand and observe the greenness of green, the treeness of tree, the cloudness of cloud. I see what is and nothing more. And I look at everything knowing that one day I won't be here to see it any more so I take it in. I  learned that from you: the man who lived in the moment, who never planned for the future, whose future has been wiped out.

I am thinking about what we gained.

I tell my friend that it was fear of the future that made us doubt whether we could be together. We both knew that, in the moment, it was fantastic; it was the future that we couldn't see. I reflect again that if we hadn't overcome our fears and lived in the present, we could so easily have missed what we had. We took a risk, let our guards down, opened our hearts. We were fully present in each moment together. What we had was something real and brave and fearless. We had true love.

I am thinking about what I gained. I am thinking about what I lost.

When you're in love with a beautiful man - and then he dies - then what?

I think about that thing that teenagers do when they're first in love and on the phone. Maybe they don't do it these days. Maybe they just send multiple texts until their fingers fall off or they fall asleep drooling onto the screens of their smartphones. But I'm thinking of the way, in the olden days, young people used to find it so impossible to part that they'd say, 'you put the phone down first,' 'no you,' for about half an hour until a parent's voice would intercept the call and they'd have to say goodnight. We did that a few times, in an ironic way, of course, but kind of not.

It can be a shock to realise that you can still fall in love, I mean really fall in love, when you're a middle-aged man or woman, especially if you're a man or woman who has had a few relationships since those first heady days of youthful romance. Amazing to realise that you can still walk around in a daze, tripping over your own feet because your mind is always with your loved one. Wonderfully destabilising to spend your days waiting for the ping of your phone (because you too have entered the modern age) and your nights so enthralled with your lover's mind, body and soul that you forget to go to sleep entirely. Incredible to feel the kind of love where hours and days apart feel like torture and you can't wait to be reunited, where every parting is a wrench, a tiny grief. You are in the bonding phase of love, the enchantment phase, where you see only common ground and ignore differences. Love is blind, they say. Love is a form of madness, they say. Love is a drug. In fact, scientists have proven that being in love is like being on cocaine. You are bonded to your loved one by a powerful cocktail of hormones. You are attached to your beloved. You are, in essence, like Robert Palmer, addicted to love.

This week I joined WAY, a support network for people who are Widowed and Young. I consider myself neither widowed nor young (even though I am skilled at social networking and can drool on a smartphone with the best of them) but I realised that it might be helpful to talk to other people who have lost a partner and specifically people who have lost a partner before old age. Because the experience has been like nothing I've ever known and I don't know anyone in the real world who has lost a partner. I thought I might find people who understood. I've not been disappointed. I'd only been on the Facebook group for five minutes when someone said, in black and white, so clearly, the thing that I'd been feeling but not quite articulated: that there is a world of difference between losing someone you love and losing someone you are in love with. Suddenly it all made sense.

I've been careful in my conversations with the bereaved, to try not to suggest that there is some kind of grief hierarchy; everyone's grief is unique and incomparable and yet, this feeling has been nagging at me, that this grief is different, that it is violent, that it is visceral in a way that is unfamiliar to me. I've even been feeling guilty that this grief is so much more extreme than my grief for my mum who only died recently, or for my dad. And I get annoyed with friends who suggest that I am feeling so bad because this grief is cumulative, even though I know that they're right to some extent, because my heart tells me that, no, this grief is for you. My grief is commensurate to the amount of love I felt for you and my love for you, as it happens, was enormous. But there is something else going on here. I didn't love you like your family or friends did. I was 'in love' with you. Even when my mum was dying, I didn't think about her all day long. I didn't daydream about the beautiful future we would have together. I didn't pine for her until we were reunited. I loved her and I wanted her to stay in my life but I wasn't addicted to her. I was addicted to you and when a partner dies like you did, suddenly and with no warning, it is like going cold turkey. I am physically ill with grief. My body hums with grief so loudly that I'm surprised other people can't hear it. I am shattered by grief.

I went to a party the other week and your friend found me crying. He thought he understood. 'Paul would have been here,' he said, like I was crying because I'd just remembered you because I was at a party with your friends. But the truth is that I don't just remember you at parties and I don't cry when something reminds me that you lived and that you are gone. I remember you all day long, the way I thought of you all day long when you were alive. I cry, or fight back tears, all day long, the way I fought back smiles when you were alive. I only forget you when I am distracted by something else for a moment. I am in agony, looking all day long for the place to rest my heart and it is gone. 'Are you still sad about Paul?' another friend of yours asked this week. "Of course,' I said. 'I will be sad about Paul forever.'

Today I walked up to the spot where we first held each other as we watched the sun set and I talked to the sky as I often do. 'How on earth am I supposed to do this?' I asked. You didn't talk back, though I do sometimes hear your voice in my head and when I asked you for a sign in the clouds, I found my heart again for a moment. Your love goes on but you are gone.

I think about those phone calls: 'You go first,' 'no you.' You went and I was calling you and there was no answer. You went first and you can't come back. You went and I am talking when the line is dead, waiting for a ping that will not come, rattling like a junkie coming off cocaine, on my own.

Who can reminisce with me?

Your mum is talking about your family, the people that I never met. She mentions Auntie Ethel. 'Did he tell you about Auntie Ethel?' she asks. 'She used to pinch his cheeks.' I beam with delight and picture myself sitting on your knee and squeezing cheeks that were still pinchable even though you were fifty-three. 'Stop it,' you said, batting my hand away playfully, 'you're like Auntie Ethel.'

It thrills me every time I talk to someone who knew you and realise that, at least in some ways, we knew the same person. Another time, I am out in my campervan looking for a spot for the memorial bench with your colleague, Rodney, and he mentions the day that you planted the big tree in Broomhill. And suddenly you are sitting alongside me in the same campervan and Rodney is texting you and asking if you'd rather get up early to do the planting or do it late at night. I tell Rodney that I remember this conversation and we both agree that there was no question of you getting up early for anything.

These moments for me are rare and precious because, before your death, I only knew one of your friends and you barely knew any of mine at all. I hadn't met your family and you had only crossed paths briefly with mine. Nobody really knew us together. It  makes me so sad that nobody knew us together. If we had had a few more years, even months maybe, I imagine things might have been very different. I imagine people telling me how great they thought we were together, how they could see from the way you looked at me, how much you loved me. I could take things further and imagine them saying how they never believed you would get married and what a surprise that, at your age, you finally settled down. How you turned your life around - not that there was anything wrong with your life - but that you changed it, because of me.

Instead sometimes I have heard your friends say that you lacked commitment. People have questioned whether it could have worked in the long run. They're not sure, I know. Sometimes I'm not sure either. We weren't there yet. But I knew from the way you looked at me how deeply I was loved and I truly know how great we were together. And I know that you wanted it, all of it, and that you wanted it with me. I know that, for you, at least as you saw it then, I was the one.

But nobody knew us together. There are no wedding photos to keep on a mantelpiece, no shared stories of day trips or holidays with friends. Our memories are all just mine now and the only photos are five pictures of us captured in the background at a poetry reading. 'You look like you're the only people in the world,' your friend said when he saw this photo. And that's how it felt. And now it's just me. I am the one left behind. The only one who can tell the story. I reminisce alone.

Maybe that's how it always is. Maybe, even when we lose the same person as someone else, we actually lose someone different. My lover was someone else's child, someone else's brother, someone else's friend. We all lost something different. We all grieve alone. But how happy it makes me, just for a moment, to share that loss with someone else who lost you too.

All roads lead back to you

I run a weekly writing group called Get Writing. I love it. For two hours a week, I hold it together for my wonderful group of writers and sometimes I manage to focus on something other than you. I get to remember that, even now, I am more than just grief.

I set writing exercises and try to think of things that have nothing to do with death or love or living but invariably, wherever I start out, I end up writing about you.

Today we were in the Winter Gardens and I asked people to focus in detail on the plants, as if we were artists in a life drawing class on a day out sketching. Almost every writer prefaced their reading by saying something along the lines of 'I tried to do what you asked but......' their writers' minds took them elsewhere - to ceiling fans in Hong Kong, to swimming pools, to fairy caves and lands where fibre glass elephants broke free to bathe in the fountains outside. This is what I love about writing groups: writers' minds will not do as they're told.

I told my mind to focus on the plant in front of me, just the plant and nothing else. And this is what I wrote:

In the rattle and hum of an underwater world, life spreads like wildfire: 

a squeak of pram wheels and a shuffle of shoes as people move under glass, like fish in a tank. 

And a baby squeals like a tropical bird on a breath of air while a child's voice says over and over, 

I can do it on my own.

The fire starts here at the heart of this artful plant. 

It thinks it is a flower though its leaves are tough like the rubber soles of shiny shoes,

splayed out like blossoms in a wedding bouquet, 

pear-shaped, bell-bottomed, 

pointing upwards like flames.

The outer leaves are dark black creatures, deep as ladybirds with tiger stripes, 

they lurk down low, so dark they are almost mud. 

Their tips are pointed like feather quills. 

If I spilled some blood and pulled one from its stem, 

I could write the truth right here, right now, scrawling words on pavement. 

I could make a murder scene of this haven.

On the middle leaves, the black has lightened a little to a dark green.

Orange veins streak across bloody tracks, blood orange, going nowhere,
melting into the orange rim, 

the end of everything.

The top leaves are the green of spring grass and fresh apples. 

Their streaks are tracks of lemon and honey. 

They know nothing of the fire that rages beneath them, 

haven't seen the darkness that lurks,

they don't know yet about the blood. 

But the fire is licking at their undersides. 

They can't escape forever.

 They are not blossoms, just leaves and the fire is spreading.
I can't do this on my own.

All roads lead back to you. Your presence and your absence streaks the plants. I write about what is there. And it is always you. I don't know what else to do but write about life and death and love.

http://beverleywrites.co.uk/writing-workshops/get-writing/

Grieving just as fast as I can

Sometimes, it goes like this.

I'm having quite a good day, all things considered. The sun is shining, the kids are happy, I have ticked some jobs off my to do list. I pat myself on the back. I am doing ok. And then I get a message from a friend asking when she can see me: 'I hope things are a bit brighter,' she says. And the sun goes behind the clouds for a moment and I feel a little bit less ok for some reason. Later a different friend sends me another message: 'I hope things get better soon,' she says. By now, it's raining and I feel thoroughly out of sorts and I still don't know why. These are my really good friends and they love me and love from friends like these keeps me afloat and yet, what is this feeling that they're leaving me with?

Yesterday I went to, not one, but three parties. This, you might call progress, or you might call it insanity. Since you died, so far I have been to two children's parties (and cried at both of them), to one disastrous night out in a pub (from which I walked home crying) and, other than that, social occasions have mostly revolved around you (it's ok to cry at those) or I have been one-to-one with good friends who have been there primarily to support me (while I cry some more). So, three parties was ambitious. I felt like a superhero to even attempt such a feat. If this kind of grief is like carrying a full glass of water all day long or walking on a tightrope, going to three parties is like trying to carry that water on a tightrope whilst making conversation with strangers. It is seriously impressive if you can pull it off. Mostly, I pulled it off.

The first party was the hardest. It was a street party on the road that the kids and I will be moving onto so we were meeting new neighbours. Luckily the natives were friendly enough. The kids had a nice time playing with other kids and I chatted to some other mums about school, about the house and the street. It was ok. For a while nobody asked about a partner but eventually one woman risked the subject and I had the thought then, that I could erase the episode where I fell in love with someone who died from my narrative and just tell her that I was separated. But I couldn't do that to you. I did fall in love and you did die, so I told her. 'I'm so sorry,' she said. 'You're very brave. To move on your own.' I felt it. Very brave.

The second party was easier being at my brother's house and consisting, as his parties mostly do, of running around his garden trying to avoid being soaked by water pistols. In the kitchen he asked me briefly, 'how are things?' He stopped short of asking if they were better but the question hung hopefully in the air and I felt I had to give him something. 'Not too bad,' I said. He didn't have time to chat. And then a friend of his approached me and told me that she'd heard what a hard time I'd been having and told me that she'd recently had a double mastectomy. It was like a breath of fresh air, in a stifling day of small talk. She wasn't ok either and there we were, standing like warriors on a battlefield, comparing tortures, eating nibbles in the sunshine, doing our best to keep living. Very brave.

The third party was fancy dress at the big co-housing project where you sometimes worked, amongst some of your friends: socialist performers and reformers. I walked there in twenties-style heels (talking nervously to you in the clouds, asking you for a sign of your presence as I walked, getting more nervous when the clouds kept moving and I couldn't see you.) I was now walking on a tightrope, carrying water, in heels. I knew I was pushing it. But it was a beautiful evening. People sang and read poems and performed tricks. The people who knew you made me welcome as they always do and I chatted to other people I knew from years of working in Sheffield's third sector. As I sat talking to your friend (the one who found your body with me) the most incredible rainbow appeared in the sky and I felt your presence again with relief. The party host talked to me about the new house which is round the corner. We'd stopped short of moving into the co-housing project, though we had considered it for a while, just to be close to you. 'It's nice to stay loosely connected,' I said. And she corrected me, 'no, you are as tightly connected as can be,' and I was so touched. She introduced me to her cousin who lives on the street I'm moving into and he drunkenly asked me something about my marital status and I said, 'it's just me and the kids.' Just like that. So brave. And then the activist singer-songwriter, Grace Petrie, did a gig right there in the central room in the house and she was amazing. And I sat there the whole time marvelling at how the world keeps turning and how people keep living, even the birthday host who told me herself that her partner died years ago. And I was thinking, 'is this it? Is this how you do it? In crowds of like-minded people, singing through the pain?' And then Grace sang a love song and I started to cry again and had to leave the room. Your friend put his arm around me. 'Are you still in pain?' he asked. And he is so kind and such a lovely man but there it is again, the bad feeling I get when he says that word, 'still'.

In amongst the parties yesterday, I chat to people on the Facebook group that I joined as part of my grief writing programme. They call it the 'Tribe of After', refer to each other as grieflings. I ask them why these words, 'better', 'brighter', 'still', have the power to bring me to my knees and they understand completely. They tell me that, of course, it is impossible to feel that the world is bright when my loved one is dead. And how can it get better? My loved one is dead. Unless someone can bring him back to me, it isn't going to get better. And, as if it wasn't bad enough to feel this way, my friends are, with absolutely the best of intentions, making me feel like I'm not doing this grief thing right, like it's not ok for me to feel the way I do. I am failing at grief. I need to change. Don't get me wrong, I want things to get better and brighter too. Sometimes I actually tell myself to snap out of it. But it doesn't work. I am grieving just as fast I can, healing as best I can in the circumstances. There is nothing anyone can do to speed up the process except listen and sit with me while I cry and acknowledge that I am in pain and that it sucks. I tell the Tribe of After that I feel like a superhero just for staying alive and they reply: 'you ARE a Superhero. You ARE.' One of them, in her own posts writes, 'I don't have a hard life, I know I don't...but it does occur to me....that living is the hardest thing I've ever had to do.' Staying alive, without you, is enough. The kids are getting fed, I am managing to work, I am buying a new house for God's sake. I am a superhero. Please, I've lost so much, let me keep the cape.

Casualties of loss

The tow hook on my campervan is deeply embedded now into the metal bumper. I have reversed into things so many times since you died that I have lost count. Driving is another activity that has become hazardous. I remember the advice I read online for the recently bereaved: if you are crying so hard that you can't see where you're going, pull over. Once or twice I had to. But it's not so much the tears that alter my perceptions, it's that my whole awareness has shifted. My focus has changed. Objects in the rear view mirror should appear closer than they are and yet I am looking so far back into the landscape of my memory that I run into them constantly. Reality hits me, like a brick wall, time after time. My eyes aren't on the road ahead anymore either. Instead they are looking into the past or searching for your presence - in clouds, in trees, in the faces of passersby. I still look for you even now. Today, I actually stopped and walked back down the street and peered at a man in a red van. There was something about him. I just had to check. Maybe you hadn't swapped this life for the next, but had just changed your profession and the colour of your van. The driver nudged his mate and they laughed.

The week my mum died, I ran into the back of a man in a shiny white car. He was cross. It was a new car, he said, like this changed everything. He really didn't want to have it repaired. I apologised, handed over my details, explained that I was stressed. His car was the least of my worries, though I didn't say so. A few days later I put diesel into the tank of my vehicle by mistake. I ground to a halt a few yards from the petrol station though it took two young men from the local garage to suggest that perhaps this is what I had done. I sent you a message with a sad face and you replied immediately: 'stay there. I'm on my way.' I had never been so happy in my sadness as I was to see those words, to see your face when you pulled up alongside me, to feel your arms around me in your warm brown fleece, enveloping me with love and care. Being looked after is not something I am used to. It was a treat to see you during the working day and my tears turned into laughter as they always did when you were near. We sat in the campervan together, snacking on Waitrose provisions - stuffed vine leaves, chocolate rice cakes, millionaire shortbread. It was the closest we ever got to a camping trip, parked up at the end of Ecclesall Road, waiting.

You waited alone for the rescue vehicle while I went to see my therapist. 'You go,' you said. 'you need it today'. I didn't need to explain. You understood. You always did. The death had been a shock even though we had been waiting for it for six long years. I needed to talk it through. 'I'll be fine,' you said.

Later you watched with glee as the man pumped the fuel out of the tank, intrigued by the mechanism, asking questions while I hung about, content, just then, to be a dumb girl. I couldn't understand anything the man was saying. Grief can do that too. He taught you how to use the gas conversion and I let my mind wander, knowing that you had it covered. I have no idea now how to do it. I've no idea how to fix the pump either. That too has broken since you left. I thought it was broken once before and you said you'd have a look. While you were fiddling, I realised I hadn't turned the electricity on. We said you were the catalyst that made it work. You were a catalyst for a lot of things. I just needed to have you around and things were ok.

Since you died, it seems like everything has broken. It feels right somehow that things are grinding to a halt without you. First it was the TV. The reception went fuzzy a few weeks after you died so live TV was gone. Which made sense. Why should the TV be live when you weren't? Luckily we still had Netflix and On Demand, but some time ago, that went too. Turns out we can't always have what we want at the click of a button. We were down to watching the old DVDs but a week ago the DVD player froze. The drawer won't open anymore and Rise of the Guardians is stuck forever now. Now nothing plays at all. The silence is comforting. The landline went down in sympathy a while ago as well and though the broadband stutters into life every now and then, often it fades away, like it too is tired of the effort of keeping going.

My mobile is still working though I dropped it heavily soon after you died and the screen shattered so badly that I could no longer see what I was typing. I don't know when or where I dropped it. There are great holes in my memory. It is another thing that isn't working. My daughter and I have been playing Mastermind with a secondhand game but I have no recollection of buying it even though I know we haven't had it long. I often have no idea what I have been doing from one day to the next. I liked the shattered screen on the phone; the pattern had a certain beauty to it - like a butterfly or a spider's web. (I search for meaning in the strangest places now.) For months I have avoided repairing it as if fearing that somehow if I got it fixed it would be a sign of 'moving on', 'letting go', 'getting better'. I like the visible symbols of what your death has done to me.

There have been other casualties too. As if losing you were not enough, I have lost a friend or two. Not everyone is comfortable with broken things.  Other friendships hang by a thread. I struggle to relate to people in the ways I used to and common reference points have fractured, though I have gained new reference points and new friends too. Some people come closer, while others retreat. My world is rearranging.

Soon after you died, I was crying so hard as I tried to phone a friend that I spilled boiling peppermint tea all over my thigh. I couldn't get up quickly enough, was in too much emotional pain to quite feel the urgency of the physical pain, too scared of my emotions to put the phone down. By the time I'd realised how badly burnt I was, it was late at night and my leg was swollen, raw and blistered. Hoards of friends on Facebook offered advice, while neighbours got out of bed to deliver aloe vera plants and people offered to babysit while I went to A & E. I was swamped with care. It is easier to help a friend with a burnt leg than a friend with a broken heart.

Today though, I fixed the screen on my mobile phone. One day I will repair the bumps and bruises on the van and maybe I can find someone else to fix the pump. Perhaps, when I am strong enough, I will even be able to sit for long enough at the end of the phone to find out, via the call centre in India, what is wrong with the broadband and the TV. But the scar on my thigh will always be there and the scar in my heart will be there too. Maybe I will move on one day and maybe things will get better, but I know I will always feel this pain. Because this pain is the other side of love.