pneylan's Journal

I’ve just returned from a week away with both my kids and during the week it was my 55th birthday and what would have been our 32nd anniversary on the same day, and also my son’s 21st birthday.  Another round of those difficult “special” days  but a week of a lot of thinking about where I’m up to and where I’m going.

A couple of things I’ve read in recent weeks have set me thinking a great deal about the future. So far, for the last 2 years 5 months, I’ve been trying to keep busy and avoid thinking about the future, the future I didn’t plan on having nor the one I particularly want but it is the future I am now facing. I read in a book a character describing life as 1000 months (our average lifespan now) and calculated I’ve already now had 660 of those and as we all know here there are many of us who never get those 1000 months. I’ve spent the last 29 months deeply grieving Pam’s death and I began thinking whether I am to spend the rest of my months deep in that grief. The more I thought the more I came to the conclusion that it would be my decision how the next maybe, 300 or so, months go. As each month goes by it will never be there again and I realise I have to accept some responsibility for shaping however long I have in life. I do believe this life is all we have and it is up to me to make what I want of it.

Just before I went away, I read a discussion posting on the widows and widowers support group put on by a friend of mine here that talked about  wanting to live life and have some happiness in life again and learning to live life without our loved one. This really struck a chord with me and I’ve been thinking a lot about this for the last few weeks. I miss Pam terribly and would still give anything to have our life together back again. But I also know that this is not to be and never will be. Last week on my birthday, we had a lovely meal in a beautiful place, after which we walked alongside an Alpine lake in the warm evening and listened to a French Canadian folk group playing on an open-air stage overlooking the lake. We had a few beers and generally had a wonderful evening. I did actually feel very happy and thought a lot about the past, the things Pam and I had done over the years and how much she would have loved that place and that evening. For perhaps the first time the memories filled me with warmth and comfort alongside the sadness and maybe for the first time I realized that life can be so sweet and so sad all at the same time.I think I now understand that you don’t get over sadness, you work your way right to the core of it to fully come to terms with it. Before Pam died I never knew how deep and raw sadness could be, how lost and alone I could feel but now I do and I think I can now learn to live with those feelings as I try to get to know the new me and develop the new life I now have.

I’ve avoided facing the future but am beginning to think it is something I have to face up to and the answers are in my hands. I feel I now need some sort of plan to try to begin to make some sense of the future. We never really had a detailed plan for the future but it all seemed set out how we would move towards retirement and enjoy out time together as the kids grew up and moved away. I have five years to go before I can retire. My son has one more year at university, so that’s the next hurdle. Once he’s finished I think I need to sell this house and move to somewhere smaller to stop rattling round this big house and spending so much on what is only bricks and mortar. We’ve had many happy years here but I can take the memories with me as I build a new life in a new place. In a couple of years I may cut down work to part-time to move towards retirement and that may help to force me to find other things to do with my life. I plan to keep travelling as long as I’m able and can afford to do so as I feel I need to experience new places and new people and trust to luck that I can find new things to do with my life. I know I could just carry on as I have done, looking inwards and struggling through each day, each month. I could sit here and turn into a “grumpy old man”, although I can here Pam telling me I’ve always been one of those!! I still feel that it’s maybe the fear and guilt holding me back and I still struggle in coming to terms with those feelings. I do feel guilty when I enjoy something or somewhere, knowing that Pam can’t share this with me but I also know that she would want me to be as happy as possible and do the things we’d planned to do together. She certainly wouldn’t begrudge me those things, so why should I? I still need to work some more on that one.

So maybe I’m beginning to turn some sort of corner on this journey and develop some sort of new optimism and realization that my future is mine to shape. As we all know now, we certainly don’t know what tomorrow may hold but either we have to try to shape our tomorrows or we just give up and I don’t think that’s the option I want to take.

An old friend of mine here on DS sent me two quotes a long time ago about happiness that at the time I couldn’t relate to but maybe now I can. She wrote, “When one door of happiness closes another opens but often we look so long at the closed door that we do not see the one which has been opened for us” (Helen Keeler). Perhaps for the first time I’ve seen that other door. I just need to work out how to go through it now. She also wrote, “The grand essentials of happiness are something to do, something to love and something to hope for”. I think perhaps I’m ready to try to work out what those things are for me now.

I’m sure I will have set-backs, days of darkness again but I’ve got to believe I can get through those days and try to remain as optimistic as I can do about the future, especially knowing the support I can call on from my friends here on DS. I know there will always be part of me missing now that Pam has died and I’m not expecting the future to be easy but I have to try to take some control of whatever’s left of my life.

I’ll let you know how things progress but I wish you all as much happiness as possible in the future.