I am a widow.
I don't even know what to make of these words yet, I don't know if they have registered at all in my mind. It's like I don't understand the meaning of the sentence. Because I keep hearing his voice, I keep asking him questions, I keep feeling his presence. I get disappointed, even a bit angry sometimes, that he's not here.
During his nine weeks at the Hospice we talked, we discussed, we joked, we laughed, we exchanged daily experiences - how was your day, I have a new idea for a business concept, I just remembered this and that…. Like we have always done.
However intensely prepared you are for someone's death it will always leave you empty and grieving.
Some have said to me after his death: "Well, you must have been grieving already for a long time." Or: "It was merciful for him to go now, with his terrible illness." No! As long as he was there with me I did not grieve! He was alive and perfectly capable of taking part in conversations, even if it was just by nodding or shaking his head, which he did until hours before the end. And he was warm and present, gripping my hand tightly. So much THERE. And no! He didn't want to die, he wanted life! He never thought of death as "merciful." But he knew when enough was enough. He decided to let go then.
I am the definition of volatile at the moment - suddenly elated, suddenly deep in grief. My tears come unexpectedly and are triggered by anything and everything - a noise, a smell, a song, a flower, a view, the sky, the sun, the rain, a piece of road, an object, a thought, a memory. Of course a memory. They are all memories, gathered through thirty-four years, almost to the day.
We started going out on May 9th 1981.
All six of us girls - daughters and granddaughters - were driven off in a golf bus at full speed through the cemetery. (Never done that before, and the granddaughters were given an extra spin later, even faster). Our African driver/cemetery employee made us feel good about the whole process, and with his advice we decided very quickly on a spot a few metres between my husband's parents' grave and my parents' one - all facing the same way. On the way back to the cemetery office the driver told me he was leaving this evening on his holiday to Africa. I asked him where. Kenya, he said. And suddenly we had a common reference, me with my youth in Tanzania.
Yes, we are all from the same Earth. We are all connected.
And we are all going back to that same Earth.
