Till death do us part?

Four years ago today the words I said on my wedding day became a reality. My husband died. I became a widow.

But this phrase has been going round in my head a lot over the last few months. Yes, on 19 April 2020 death parted us physically, but when someone dies, are you ever really spiritually or mentally parted from them? Are they ever not a part of you? Do you ever reach a point where you no longer do things for them?

I almost feel more of a sense of a duty to my late husband as a widow than I did as a wife. I tried articulating this to a friend recently and it was hard to do. I don’t think until you go through this, you can actually understand it. But I’m going to do my best to explain it. When my late husband was alive, he was ultimately responsible for him. Whether he did things that made people smile or annoyed them. For making sure he was present in people’s lives. If he chose to shut himself away from the world that was on him. While I was his wife, I couldn’t do anything to change his behaviour or how people perceived him. It was entirely his responsibility.

Yet he can’t do this any longer. And if I don’t keep his memory alive and try to keep him a part of people’s lives then who does? One of his oldest friends said this Terry Pratchett quote at his Memorial Service “No one is finally dead until the ripples they cause in the world die away.” It’s what I mean about a sense of duty. I feel an inordinate responsibility to him to make sure he’s still thought about and is still in people’s minds. That he’s still causing ripples and isn’t finally dead. This isn’t a pressure that anyone has put on me, this is something that I inextricably feel. That I can’t escape, no matter how much time has passed. Although as time is passing, I’m finding it that little bit harder to do. I sometimes feel conflicted between my past, my present and my future. I think more about whether people would rather I stop banging on about him and talking about our story. Queen of Overthinking. That’s me.

But I do think about it. He crops up in conversations I have a lot of the time. It still feels perfectly natural to me. New people come into my life, and I talk about him with them. Recently, I put myself in check and asked if it was weird that I talk about him with them. These people never met him, is it strange for me to talk about someone they never knew with them? I’m always reassured that it isn’t and that he was such a huge part of my life that it would be weirder if I didn’t talk about him, but these thoughts didn’t cross my mind in the early days. I guess that’s what time does, it makes you more reflective and think about things differently. Equally, I find it weird when I’m around people who did know him, and they don’t talk about him. I recently went out for dinner with people who knew him really well and he wasn’t mentioned all night. It was one of the first things I thought about when I got home. I know it wasn’t done with any malice; it was just one of those things, it was how the conversation flowed but it still felt weird for me. Yet, this isn’t something I’d ever say to them. Because I don’t want to make others feel uncomfortable in my presence. I don’t want people changing who they are and doing or saying things that are unnatural. He wouldn’t want that either.

It’s just the way that life goes. The more time passes, the more his physical presence on this earth fades. It’s the same whenever anybody dies really. But it’s a part of death and grief that I hate. That causes me the most conflict. My life is moving forward, I’ve had brilliant opportunities come my way and I’ve met people who have become important to me. But none of these things would have happened if he was still alive. If I hadn’t gone through what I’ve gone through. It is the biggest juxtaposition of my life. That I still get to live and experience so many amazing things, while he doesn’t. I’m regularly torn between being grateful and being sad about it.

It’s one of the reasons that I do fundraising activities in his name. So that an impact can still be made because of him. But this can be a challenge at times. I’m no athlete, running a marathon is never going to be something I’ll do and nor would I want to do it, so I do what I do best. Organise events. Work with designers and printers to bring his photography to life in the form of calendars and greetings cards. We come back to that sense of duty. He’s not here to do anything with his photography and I feel it would be an utter waste for it to simply sit on a hard drive and not see the light of day. It takes a lot of effort and work to get all these things off the ground. And all the time I’m putting this effort in, this nagging voice at the back of mind queries what if no-one comes to the event? What if no-one buys the calendars or greetings cards? What if no-one really cares anymore? It’s been two years since I last did this, am I being ridiculous to do it again? As I say, I’m the Queen of Overthinking and I do know this, but the constant worry isn’t for me. It’s for him. It’s a fear of letting him down. It’s a fear of him being forgotten.

I feel this so strongly because of our daughter. She never spoke the words “till death us do part” but nonetheless, she has been parted from her father by death. And yet I try to make sure he still lives on for her too. I see it so often when I look at her, she has so many of his mannerisms or Charlie-isms if you prefer. I try to tell her stories about him as often as I can. I’m so, so scared of her not knowing things. Of something happening to me before I’ve had a chance to tell her as many stories about him as I can. We’re reaching a point now where I tell her something and she responds that she knows as I’ve already told her. She does this with a bit of an eye roll too if I’m being perfectly honest. Like I say. She reminds me so much of him. But this is all part of this sense of duty I feel to him. To make sure that his only child can remember him. That she’s able to talk about him. That he’s still able to be an integral part of her life. Again, this wasn’t something I needed to do when I was his wife because they were able to make memories together. He was able to do things with her himself. They were as thick as thieves.  

For all these reasons, this last year leading up to this anniversary (or Dad’s Death Day as my daughter calls it) has been one that has seen the worries and concerns I feel increase a lot more than in previous years. There is something about four years that just feels it’s now a bit “too long” since he died. The world seems to be putting the pandemic into the history books. Life for the majority of people has gone back to “normal” (I use this term loosely because who’s to say what is normal anyway). His loss isn’t front and centre any more. And neither should it be. Because that’s the way with loss and grief. We learn to grow around it. We learn to live with it. We learn that we have to move forward, or risk being sucked into a horrible abyss. But it’s just so, so hard. And I wouldn’t be doing myself any favours to pretend it’s not.

My daughter and I recently did the holiday that my late husband and I had planned to do for my 40^th birthday. We just needed to reset this time of year a little bit. To stop the “this time four years ago” thoughts, to not focus on the looming anniversary. And it did just that. Both of us this week have been shocked that it was coming round so soon. That we haven’t been as aware of it as in previous years.

It’s proof that doing a trip at this time of year does us the power of good. We’ll probably always try to go away for a bit each year now. It was an amazing trip. No two ways about it. But there were tears. There were disagreements. I think with such a bittersweet and poignant trip there was always going to be. But there were also a number of little signs of him throughout the whole holiday. Again. I get a bit of an eye roll from my daughter when I say “that’s dad doing that” but it gives me so much comfort. These signs mean the world to me. I genuinely believe and feel that he was watching over us the entire time we were away. Because while he might have also said “till death do us part” and isn’t able to be with us physically, if it is at all possible for him to be with us in spirit, I know without a shadow of a doubt that he will be. With those signs and me still talking about him, it’ll be possible to keep those ripples going. And it’ll be a long time, if at all, until he’s finally dead. And death truly parts us.