One year down. Rest of my life to go.

So I did it. I managed to survive the first year.

I haven't always wanted to. In fact for a large chunk of it I would have preferred it if I didn't. But survive it I have. 

I haven't done much else. This has definitely been a twelve month period of surviving rather than living but I am still here. 

Getting here has been very different than I expected. I touched on some of these points in the Myth vs Reality post - https://unhinged-ramblings-man.blogspot.com/2020/05/grief-myth-vs-reality.html - but I wanted to use this post to reflect on the last twelve months and what I hope for the future ahead.

The biggest surprise, and I think this is unusual, is how little I've cried. The tears just haven't come. The heartbreak has - a gut-wrenching, almost vomit inducing pain - but the tears haven't followed. I've cried more for each of my cats that I've lost than for Roz. I have no idea why this is - perhaps part of me still doesn't believe it really happened or perhaps, due to the fact that she faded away slowly from my eyes over a period of months rather than suddenly leaving, I don't feel that departure. My tears come from when I think of her suffering rather than my own loss. If I think about her sitting in the wheelchair in Bluewater feeling lost and fragile I get teary. When I think about how I'm never going to see her again I don't. 

I read about people who lost their loved ones and I feel incredibly sorry for them. Then a voice in my head whispers "That's happened to you as well you know" and I am almost surprised to realise it's correct.

The second surprise is how the pain didn't fully hit till about ten weeks in. This is very common. For the first few weeks shock and numbness take over. I had loads of energy and a real positivity about life going forward. I remember thinking several times that I shouldn't feel this good. I questioned if I really loved Roz...then the shock wore off and the reality kicked in. All my energy went and all the positivity with it. From ten weeks to ten months I had no energy and no enthusiasm for anything. I was Schrodinger's widow - neither alive nor dead. I just existed.

The third surprise was how borderline suicidal I felt. I have never contemplated, or even come close to contemplating, ending my own life or desiring it to end before Roz's death but for a large portion of the year I have thought the idea of dying to be a better option than continuing to exist. It has changed over time but only now am I starting to think that living another decade is better than passing away.

When Roz first died I just wanted to go to bed and never wake up again. This lasted for about three to four months. If someone had offered to take care of my cats and told me I could go to sleep and never wake up again I would have run to bed. It wasn't because I believe in the afterlife - I'm agnostic. I'll find out (or won't) if there's an afterlife when I'm dead - it was just purely so I wouldn't have to deal with living without Roz.

After those four months the feeling changed to apathy. I didn't care if I lived or died. Apart from the cats nothing mattered. I wasn't special to anyone else any more. If I died some people would be upset for a while but no-one's day to day life would be affected. I also had no real joy in life. Everything was grey. All the colour left with Roz. It was during this period I actually googled "Most painless way to commit suicide". I wasn't desperate to die. I just couldn't see a reason to live. Fortunately, before Roz had died, I made a promise to myself that I would see out the first two years and, if I still felt this bad, then I could end it.

After ten months or so, almost imperceptibly, this apathy passed. It wasn't until I was hit by a massive wave of grief in the build up to the one year anniversary of Roz's death that I realised how well I had been doing. I was looking forward again. I was day dreaming about meeting other women - something that would have previously made me feel sick - and I was contemplating holidays and future plans.

 The final surprise was how much more difficult the lead-up to the anniversary of the death was than the actual day itself. I expect this is mainly due to how Roz died. She died of Cancer on the 2nd of July but entirety of June was a nightmarish downhill roller coaster that took her from struggling but stable to in a comatose state on the verge of death. During June my brain would very happily show me what was happening a year ago - Remember this? This is when she was rushed to hospital with major jaundice. Remember this? This was when she was told the cancer had spread to her lungs and lymph nodes. Remember this? This was when you walked in her room in the hospice and she was in a coma.

As her last few days were spent in relatively pain-free peace they didn't upset me as much as the build up to them. It was almost worse than the actual days in 2019 as I knew the ending this time around.

So that was my first year as a widow. Very different to how I expected. Better in some ways. A lot worse in others. I have heard from some people that the second year was worse for them while others have said it was a lot better. I guess time will tell.