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I stood on the very edge of this world and the next and farewelled my beloved husband of 24 years. He passed peacefully in hospital recently after a heroic three-year battle with cancer which was already stage 4 at the point of first diagnosis. He was a fighter, managed to see three children through VCE and graduation and into adult life before the scourge of cancer gained ascendancy.
How does one see a soul cross over and then oneself return to normal life? What is normal life after the loss of the love of one’s life? How to do without the chats we so loved on the couch at the end of the day and the walks and talks on the beach? He was so funny and insightful: no one made me laugh like he did. He left a light footprint wherever he went and was dearly loved by all. How does one survive an eruption of this magnitude? A mother who loses a child is still a mother. I feel no less a wife for the loss of my beloved husband.
I joined an online grief community and the posts were heartbreaking. Grieving partners wrote of feeling invisible and unloved, having lost the one who treasured them most. Some wrote that the grief never goes away and that they have cried every day since the day of their loss. Many were married longer than me, meaning not that their loss is more or less than mine but that they were older and perhaps more isolated when confronted with that loss. How does one cope with a pain that feels physical, like a weight on the chest? The memory of that loss is the first thought that rises to the mind when one wakes in the morning.
I am still in a dreamlike state but trying to build a ladder of light back to the land of the living. The ladder of light is about finding little things that lift my heart each day.
It might be something very small, like making the bed, getting dressed and making breakfast. Bigger rungs on the ladder of light have been the children and I getting a massage or thinking about a trip to somewhere sunny later in the year. My friends have been wonderful, joining me for walks by the sea. My daughter saw dolphins in the still, grey waters of Port Phillip Bay and I saw a baby penguin sheltering between the rocks during the day. These are all rungs on my ladder.
Talking about my husband with his siblings helps, as do the beautiful bouquets of flowers that have been regularly arriving at my door. My children’s friends have been keeping close to them. My friends have delivered meals that need me only to reheat in the oven. Kindness surrounds us like a heated blanket on a grey, rainy day.
My friend who also happens to be a psychologist suggested a plunge in the sea. It was icy and we relished it. She said that intense cold to the face or neck is used to pull people out of fight-or-flight mode. It felt like CPR, an injection of energy, an anchor to the present.
The ladder of light will be different for each of us. Solace at a time like this is very personal. No one can really say what time each of us needs to deal with the loss of a loved one to the point where we can adequately function again. I accept that grief at such a loss will never really leave although its edges may soften over time.
I don’t know what happens on this journey. I am still at its very beginning. It helps to be grateful for the happy marriage we had; not everyone finds their forever love, and we did. I am grateful he told me he loved me at the end of every conversation and I told him the same. I am grateful for our simple appreciation of life. Gratitude does help.
My heart tumbles, though, at the thought that I won’t hear his voice on the phone again, greeting me with a cheerful, “Hello beautiful”.
Readers, you have accompanied me through many of the stories of my life from the time my children were little. This story is completely uncharted. I have no map or compass to guide me, only my instinct that I must search for this ladder of light to take me out of the darkness, and a conviction that my husband would want all those he loved to live vibrantly, and that we best honour him by filling our lives with the love and optimism which characterised his life. And so, even though the skies are heavy with clouds and the road ahead of me is hilly and sparse, with staff in hand, I am starting to walk.
Melissa Coburn is a Melbourne writer.
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