The problem is, back then JS was right when he said we could get through anything, together. But we’re no longer together. I’m alone. And I haven’t lost my dog. I’ve lost my husband.
SOPHIE’S STORY
Two months ago, I put my head under the water in the bath for the first time without totally freaking out. Last month, I swam across a (small) river in an obstacle race. After a brief panic, I realised I was going to just do it, and I did. One tiny step, word or breath at a time, whatever our circumstances. It’s such a cliché, but it’s true. ~ Sophie Day
Bereavement is tremendously isolating, which is why so many of us find comfort online, sharing our experiences, fears and tears, sometimes with a humour so black it can only be appreciated by those who have ‘been there’.
I remember getting a list of members of the charity, WAY: Widow and Young, and instead of feeling comforted by the roll call of names and deaths, I felt even more alone, frightened and isolated. In those days, I didn’t realise that whilst our individual journeys to Planet Grief might take different routes, the landscape was the same when we got there.
I read the causes of death on the list: cancer, cancer, heart attack, brain tumour, heart attack, cancer, RTA, cancer, RTA, brain tumour, cancer, cancer . . . I felt in a club of one until – blistering bikinis! – there was a woman on the list whose husband had died on holiday by drowning! I remember my heart lurching with a feeling not so much of hope, as some sort of solidarity. I wasn’t alone! Someone else had been through a similar ordeal! If this poor woman could survive, so could I!
Hope turned to despair as I realised the ‘poor woman’ on the list was me.
I have spent countless hours (usually late at night) searching the internet for stories about people who have drowned. During those lonely nights with the laptop in bed, little did I know that there were others out there searching for exactly the same thing.
Firstly, I came across Julia Cho through her blog, Dear Audrey. Julia’s husband, Daniel, a talented cellist living in New York, drowned in Lake Geneva on 6th July 2010, whilst in Montreux for the jazz festival. He was 33, his daughter, Audrey, not yet two. It felt like a lifeline.
But I wanted more. I wanted to find someone who was there when their husband drowned. I still felt completely alone in what I saw, what I felt, what I experienced.
Then Megan in Maine, USA, found my Planet Grief blog. In 2009, Megan had witnessed the drowning of her partner, Matt. She wrote in her own blog, Not Even a Wren: ‘I somehow landed on this blog [Planet Grief] and was stunned to read that she was widowed by drowning. That she was there when it happened. There are a couple of other similarities between she and I, but enough to say – wow.’
Megan posted a comment on my blog. I was amazed, thrilled and relieved. I emailed her. This is the opening paragraph of that first email:
Dear Megan, I was both sorry and yet ‘glad’ to see you arrive on my Planet Grief blog – I am sure you understand the strangeness of that first comment. One of the things that I have been saying over and over is that even after searching on the internet and all the stories people have told me, I haven’t come across one person who was there when their loved one drowned. Until now. I’d like to find someone who saw their other half drown whilst they were thousands of miles away on holiday, but that might be too much to ask!
Megan replied. She said she knew of a person in the same situation, a woman from the UK who was on holiday in Egypt. Rightfully, she kept most of the details confidential, but gave me just enough facts for a Google search.
Up popped an article in The Guardian about Sophie Day titled: ‘My husband died on our honeymoon’. Sophie and her husband, Luke, were on honeymoon in Egypt when, on the first night of a three-day trip along the river Nile, the boat they were in overturned and sank, trapping them in a pitch-black cabin that rapidly filled with water. Despite a fractured skull, Sophie found her way to the surface, but Luke was missing. His body was recovered a few hours later. With no money, no passport and no help, Sophie eventually made it to a cruise ship and called her father, who contacted the British embassy.
Stunned at what I read, I immediately emailed The Guardian’s features desk, who passed the details of Planet Grief on to Sophie, who then read the blog. In the meantime, Megan forwarded Sophie my contact details and Sophie got in touch. I asked Sophie whether she was happy that I share her story on my blog and generously she wrote back: ‘Yes please. That is why I did it – if anyone can find a glimmer of hope I want them to.’
Sophie, thank you. I found more than a glimmer of hope. In you and your story, I found a beacon lighting the possibility of a life worth living. I would say that you will never know how grateful I am, but of course, you do.
Postscript: It is difficult to convey the effect on my grieving that Sophie’s story had on me. It was a turning point. To read, ‘I returned to Britain on my own. It felt like I had been torn in half,’ finally made me feel less isolated. Over the years, I have come across many widows and widowers who lost their partners whilst on holiday, but back then, Sophie was my role model; if she could make it, so could I. I remain in touch with all three widows. Sophie Day now has a partner and a young daughter. Julia Cho is a talented writer and blogger at Studies in Hope, her prose about living and parenting after loss as beautiful as ever. Megan Devine has used her experience and qualifications to become a respected grief counsellor, writer on bereavement and founder of RefugeinGrief.com.
Sophie, Julia and Megan. Three women whose lives were shattered by drowning, but who have not only survived, but thrived.
Ladies, I’m proud of you.
THEY SHOOT HORSES, DON’T THEY?
If I’d been told in my teenage years that contrary to my conviction and heart’s desire I was not going to marry Donny Osmond, I would have been devastated. If I had then been told that I would in fact marry someone ten times better than Donny Osmond, but he would die and leave me a widow at fifty, I would have spent the whole of my married life terrified with this knowledge and every year of bliss would have been horribly marred. Thank goodness we don’t know what lies ahead. ~ Angela
Nowadays, my standard response to the question, ‘How are you doing?’ is a simple, ‘Oh, you know, plodding along.’
For a while I had a more comprehensive reply: ‘I’m doing whatever I can to get through the day to cope with what’s happened,’ but after trotting this out a few times, I realised that most people who ask you how you’re doing are terrified that you’ll tell them the unvarnished truth.
Imagine the scene, let’s say an encounter in a local shop, perhaps the chemist where I’ve gone to get a further supply of herbal Nytol to help me sleep.
Concerned person with tight smile and cocked head: ‘So, how are you doing?’
Moi, a red-eyed string bean with a sunken blotchy face: ‘Oh, you know, very little sleep, then waking up in floods of tears, anxiety vomming into the flower bed when I let The Hound out for his morning wee, going back to bed with my mobile and ringing the Samaritans, fantasising about getting my will up-to-date before climbing over the banister and strangling myself with the dog’s lead . . .’
Not really on, is it?
But equally, I feel a fraud if I give them a cheery, ‘Fine! OK!’ because I’m not fine much of the time, and I’m never really OK. ‘Plodding along,’ is a good compromise, plus, I like the word ‘plodding’. Not as much as I like the word ‘Chanel’, but still. Plod is an onomatopoeia: plod – plod – plod – the very word sounds like heavy footsteps moving slowly forward. And when I say I am plodding along, I can remind myself that although my progress might be slow and heavy, I am moving forward.
The problem is that I’m not a plodding-along