A neighbour rang my mobile, heard my sobs, and as I passed her front door, she met me and ushered me inside.
As I sat in her sitting room convulsed with sobs and reeling in pain, I realised that the million things I miss about my husband boil down to only one: the man himself.
SEARCHING FOR CLUES
I search for signs all the time, willing Mark to show me he is here. A pinch of my behind would do me. I want to turn the page and reach a sense of calm. It has to be around the corner, right? ~ Emma S
For a brief time I was a scientist. I’d really love to tell you what I did, but in order to do what I did I had to sign the Official Secrets Act, and I’m not sure whether something I signed in 1986 still counts. I hope it doesn’t, because after a few glasses of Merlot I usually start telling lurid tales of what went on in the Physiology department at St George’s Hospital in Tooting. Anyway, with a 2:1 BSc Hons after my name and ambitions to upgrade to a PhD, I pretended to be a scientist, before eventually admitting I’d rather read Cosmo than Nature, and preferred dresses to a white coat that stank of the contents of a ferret’s anal glands. A year and one nasty mammal bite later, I left and became a secretary.
I mention my science background, because in a recent Twitter storm, one of Professor Brian Cox’s tweets appeared to mock people with a belief in the afterlife, describing them as (ahem) ‘nobbers’. As the debate raged on social media sites, many sided with the sexy physicist: what sort of sane and rational person with an understanding of science could possibly buy into this ghost/afterlife silliness?
Me!
I’ve always believed that after death, our loved ones are still around, it’s just that we can’t see them and ask them to help prise the lid off the jar of Doritos Hot Salsa Dip.
So, when JS died, I was certain that he would be with me, that I would feel his presence guiding me, comforting me.
The early signs looked promising. Back in London (but before his repatriation, which took two weeks; the funeral was almost a month after the accident), I had a ‘vision’. JS’s face appeared to me with such startling clarity, it was as if he was backlit in 3D high-definition. He didn’t smile, speak or look directly at me, he was just there, in the bedroom doorway, suspended slightly above me and to my left. When I put my arms out to reach him, he dissolved. At the time, I didn’t find it comforting; I found it profoundly distressing.
It’s five months tomorrow since my husband drowned, and other than my vision, I haven’t felt him with me or guide me. All I feel is shattered, disorientated and frightenly alone.
Did I scare him off by my reaction to his ‘appearance’? Perhaps, despite my supposed open mind, I am too cynical to tune into clues that other widows seem to take as proof of a life after death. Have those early years examining evidence and making sure it was statistically viable left their mark? If my scalp crawled whilst watching TV, I’d think it was nits rather than JS stroking my head. I often find pennies lying around, but the dates are never significant. White feathers litter our lawn because of the pigeons that nick the bird seed intended for the blue tits, and we’ve always had robins in the garden. There was one bizarre incident involving photograph albums, an IKEA bookshelf and an army of flying ants, but would JS really send me a sign through insects? If so, then, as I sobbed my way through Sunday morning, brandishing the Hoover and fly spray, shaking ants out of photographs I wasn’t yet ready to confront, I can only conclude that JS has developed a mean streak on the other side.
I constantly ask myself why others can sense their loved ones, yet I can’t. I long to feel JS’s presence. I cry out for signs, shouting at the sky. I stare at a tiny scrap of paper on my desk, urging him to make it quiver. Instead of crying, sometimes I get all stroppy and say defiantly, ‘Right JS, now’s your chance. Get that lamp to flicker!’ only to sob in frustration when the beam of light remains strong and unwavering. I find myself sitting in a room, scanning it, my eyes flicking here and there, looking for clues as to where he might be and how he is. I read endless books on grief, the afterlife and the progression of souls, finding flaws and discrepancies in all of them. In one, a boy who had drowned tells his parents he has a girlfriend and is finishing college on the ‘other side’; in another, I am told that earthly concerns such as status and education mean nothing. One book claims that we make a pact before we’re born as to how we die. Am I really to believe that JS chose to drown and leave me stranded and heartbroken four thousand miles from home? I cherry-pick my mediums and their message: I watch Sally Morgan and sneer at (what I believe to be) her music-hall, cold-reading (informed guesswork) act, and yet I seriously consider flying to America to see John Edward, or to Scotland for a reading with Gordon the Psychic Barber. I nearly ring a psychic telephone line late one Saturday night, but pull back at the last minute. I might be desperate, but a woman called Angel on an 0906 number isn’t for me or my Barclaycard. And what if I did have a reading and JS came through? What if I had a reading and he didn’t? I’m too scared to confront either scenario. Sometimes I wish that I was like Prof Brian Cox and had no belief in an afterlife; I’d still be heartbroken but this searching for clues is exhausting.
‘Talk to him,’ friends urge. ‘Tell him how you feel.’ I do, every morning whilst making The Hound’s breakfast. I cry and tell JS out loud that I can’t bear another day without him, pleading with him to give me a sign to let me know he’s OK. Then I wait, always hopeful, but every morning the silence in the room and in my head is deafening, the effect on my heart crushing. I’d hoped The Hound might sense his master, but even he’s let me down. ‘Do you know where your dad is?’ I ask, and he runs to the front door wagging his tail. I get the same response if I ask him about the ginger cat next door, or where his squeaky ball is.
But perhaps there is hope for those of us who don’t feel our loved ones walking with us through life. Towards the end of last year, a friend of ours died after a long and painful battle with cancer. He was an atheist who chose a humanist funeral, his wife was brought up as Jewish and neither of them believed in life after death. At six months, his widow was exhausted and depressed; seeing her and what lay ahead frightened me. It’s now just over eight months since her husband died, and I had champagne and lemon drizzle cake with her recently. She didn’t look exhausted or depressed, she looked like she always used to: poised, fun and with light in her eyes. She said that one day she was feeling desperate, and then suddenly it was as if a page had turned and she felt an overwhelming sense of calm. Shortly after, and for the first time, she felt her husband was with her.
Prof Cox might be an expert on the Hadron Collider, but he’s no more of an expert on life after death than any one of us. As for me, that page-turn moment can’t come quickly enough.
MOVING STORIES
The best role model, and the image that I still cling to in the depths of my grief on really bad days, is a lady I know who lost her husband eighteen years ago. For the first two years she was in such a state and so frightened by life without her man, even leaving her house was a big ordeal. At the time she was in her early forties with four young children. Eventually she returned to her job and now she is a busy, vibrant, motivated and strong lady with a very full social life and four grown-up kids. She says that she will always, ALWAYS love and miss her husband, but she is now strong and has been able to be happy again, just in a different way. She is living proof that it can be done, and she is the person I aspire to be like one day. ~ Angela
When I was seventeen, I travelled up and down the country wearing an emerald-green woollen suit and a tomato-red blouse in an attempt to decide what I was going to do at university, and where I was going to do it. There were workshops and open days and interviews, but, in the end, it was all a waste of time and money because I flunked my A-levels and went (without an interview) to the only place that would have me: Thames Polytechnic. But before my fall from academic grace, armed with my student railcard, I hopped on trains in search of my future. On one of these journeys (Newcastle to Leeds), I got chatting to a woman who subsequently became so distressed, she threatened to throw herself off the train.