Again I have been away travelling for a few days, to Bulgaria, and again I find it hard to return to everyday life. I realise more and more that the routines and activities of my life were so closely tied up with my husband's that my biggest challenge is to create a new structure for myself, raise a new framework, even find a new path. My husband and I would both claim that we gave each other a lot of space - "holding each other tight in a loose grip," as one of my husband's favourite sayings goes - but having lost him I see clearly how synchronised we were, how very much in step. This is no wonder, really - thirty-four years of mutual life - building it, exploring it, being challenged by it, loving it. Yes, loving our life, each other and our children.
Lives intertwined. Lives lived side by side, day in - day out. Interdependency. Always pulling in the same direction. But also having domestic discussions. ("You call it discussions," our daughters said. "We call it fights.") Last week in the apartment in Bulgaria I suddenly lost it with him and shouted at him through raging tears: "Why the hell did you die?! Why the fuck did you leave me!! Can't you see how ALONE I am?"
And yes - I am alone. Aloneness is of course the essence of my existence at the moment. Used to doing most things together with another person - and one who was very capable too - I find myself easily slipping into passivity when it comes to meeting and solving problems these days. Rather than face them straight on I turn away and bury my head in the sand. Some mornings I hardly want to venture out of bed because I worry about the tasks that await me. I would simply like to hibernate.
I'm aware though of how my grief overshadows everything else. Sometimes I feel that nothing else is important, because my grief overwhelms me completely. All I can manage is cry.
Still. Still I know deep in my heart that I will emerge eventually and that my path will be found. And that path might not turn out to be so very different from the one I'm walking now. But the restructuring will be different - raising a canopy that will cover one person instead of two.
Last trip to Bulgaria for my husband - September 2014
Travelling is always good for me - it gets my head out of the sand and my body out of hibernation, if only temporarily. My trip to Bulgaria last week, with my best friend Svein, was pure relaxation - reading, having massages, sharing meals with good friends, enjoying unusually warm evenings on the balcony. And I was efficient too - cleaned the apartment, did small repairs, threw out things (but not my husband's holiday clothes. It is not yet time, not in this particular place).
Lamb and cabbage brought from Norway and cooked in the Bulgarian apartment - Fårikål
Take-away pizza on Svein's terrace, from Palazzo in Nessebar, best pizza around!
Shopska and calamares at Tangra Restaurant in Nessebar, lunching on their terrace in October
Wonderfully tender lamb shank at the Rosé Restaurant in Bourgas - with Norwegian friends
Salad and crispy whitebait shared with Bulgarian friends - and a couple of Slovakians!
Beautiful Nessebar, on the UNESCO world heritage list - one of my favourite towns
On my return to the empty apartment in Oslo and the usual despondent feeling, I spent most of a sunshiny Sunday wetting my pillow with tears and despairing at my own heartbreaking sighs. Then telephone calls and texts started coming in. Three lunch invitations, two dinner invitations, conversations with people who seriously want to know how I'm doing. I will never stop being amazed by my caring friends. I love them endlessly.
My daughters. My granddaughters. Genuinely happy to see me! Though I am alone, I am not.
I do wish to creep out of my hibernation sometimes and blink incredulously at the world - this world that both beats me up cruelly and caresses me gently.
And sometime in the future - when my grief gets milder and the world seems less harsh - I will look back on everything my husband and I did together and think - "Yes, it was all worth it. I'd do it all again. Even if you died on me, you idiot..."
Cut my hair!
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