The strength of the initial sentence, its assertion that this widow was wrong to advocate acceptance, had me looking up the definition of the word ‘acceptance’ in the Oxford English Dictionary: whilst acceptance can mean agreeing to something, there is another definition listed: ‘Willingness to accept an unpleasant or difficult situation’.
From the very early days of my ‘widowing’, I was clear on two points:
1. Whilst my life would be forever shaped by what had happened, it would not be defined by it.
2. If I was to live any sort of meaningful life, as I couldn’t change what had happened, I had to accept it.
For me, at not yet five months, both points are difficult to adhere to, and I believe that there are some for whom acceptance may always be too much to ask, such as those whose loved ones have died at the hands of others either through malice, negligence or ignorance.
Last night, during one of my daily trawls around the internet, torturing myself by putting the word ‘drowned’ into Google, I came across an article in The Telegraph about the death of Elspeth Thompson, the gardening expert who, suffering from depression, drowned herself in a manner reminiscent of the suicide of Virginia Woolf. In the article, Elspeth Thompson’s husband, Frank Wilson, talks about how he and his young daughter are coping with the sudden death of his wife. It is moving and tragic. Reading it, one of Frank Wilson’s comments resonated with me. Talking about advice his mother had given him he says, ‘She taught me that one has to accept. Even if you can’t understand.’
I’m holding on to those words.
PARTY POOPER
Just knowing he was there at parties gave me confidence and made me smile. Now, in a room full of people, I feel so alone. ~ Linz
There are at least a million things that I miss about my husband, one of them being the way we worked together to protect each other from difficult situations. I’m not talking about the time JS had to literally put his body between me and a woman who took offence to my suggestion she bogged off and had her roots done (she’d blocked our garage and was snottily unrepentant), or the countless times I’d answer the phone whilst he frantically pointed towards the front door, relieved when I finally said to the unwanted caller, ‘No, he’s out walking the dog,’ at which point he’d have to grab The Hound’s muzzle for fear of the dog woofing and giving the game away.
No, I’m referring to the way in which, together, we could defend ourselves from the hell of the surprise invitation. I’m sure you know the sort of thing I mean, the moment when someone asks, ‘What are you up to on Tuesday evening?’ and flustered and unable to come up with something plausible you mutter, ‘Er . . . nothing,’ and find yourself invited to trek miles across town and country for a ‘simple kitchen supper,’ a phrase which usually means Mrs Smug doesn’t just want you to sample her salmon coulibiac, but coo over her new dual-fuel Aga in the Farrow & Ball ‘Elephant’s Breath’ painted kitchen. Yawn. Oh, and to me, an exiled Geordie, supper always means cheese, biscuits and a pickled onion before bed, whereas what southern folk mean by supper is actually tea, though my husband maintained tea was at four and included cake.
But I digress.
With two of you, it’s easy to get out of an invitation as you can always toss in at the end of the phone call/random meeting in the street, ‘I’ll have to check with JS in case he’s got something on,’ which of course he has, even if he hasn’t, hence the follow-up phone call to Mrs Smug: ‘I’m so sorry, but we can’t make Tuesday evening. JS forgot to mention his sister has just come back from competing in the Extreme Ironing World Championships; she wants to show us the silver iron she’s won. Let’s get together soon!’
But now I have no one to shield me from social invitations, so I say yes, go, am miserable, decide never to say yes ever again, and then become terrified that if I keep saying no, eventually people will stop asking me and I’ll end up housebound and word-perfect for every one of the 177 episodes of Two and a Half Men. Anyway, under normal circumstances, I like meeting people, and if I want to try and claw back some sort of normality, however uncomfortable it is, I must try and socialise. So to start going out and about whilst minimising ‘Social Stress’, I draw up a list of my requirements.
1. Be back by 9pm at the latest (6pm during the winter months).
2. No dinner parties, to avoid Spare Part Syndrome.
3. Within easy reach of home.
4. Includes food, so limiting the amount of time spent in my own kitchen.
Points 1, 2 and 3 are non-negotiable, but at a pinch, I could accept an invitation without point 4, and just make some cheese on toast.
Recently, some good friends of ours rang to say that they had been invited to a bit of a do two roads along from my house, and having mentioned to the hosts I was local and what had happened, the invitation was kindly extended to include me.
It was on Sunday! At 5pm! Five minutes away! There would be food! A good mix of children, couples and singles! JS had never been there! You can tell by my shocking overuse of the exclamation mark that I was excited by the possibility of this party, indeed, it could be the perfect party for a shaky widow; it certainly ticked all the boxes on my list.
Sunday came and the first hurdle appeared: having lost a great deal of weight in the last five months on the Death Diet, nothing fits me, and the smart-yet-casual, stone-coloured chinos I intended to wear shot over my hips to my knees. Undeterred, I resorted to Plan B: to cinch the waistband of the trousers tightly with a belt. Whilst this has worked with some items in my wardrobe, for the chinos, the excess material resembled a rather large tumour underneath my white shirt, just below my tummy button. I changed into a pair of navy trousers that could be belted without the weird growth effect, strapped on my silver cork wedges and, with a spring in my step, set off.
I met my friends outside, we went in, the host and hostess were welcoming, the guacamole was delicious, the weather was lovely, we stood around in the garden and then, after about an hour, it all went horribly wrong.
I was talking to a man with such winged eyebrows and odd teeth, he resembled an owl. Bored of discussing house prices, I glanced across the garden at the assembled throng. It was a typical north London mix of writers, artists, a photographer, people who did something in the City, women with ethnic necklaces and low-slung boobs, the sort of gathering I’ve been to countless times before with varying degrees of enjoyment. But this time as I looked at them, a train of thought came into my head; not an Intercity 125 train, but one of those Japanese bullet trains, searing through my grey matter: My husband is dead. I am alone. My husband is dead. I am alone.
The thought-train gathered pace. I gulped my glass of white wine. My husband is dead. I am alone. I tried to concentrate on Owl Man who was by now hooting about his son moving back home at the age of 30, but the dreadful reality of my life wouldn’t go away: My husband’s not here. He’s not at home. My husband is dead. I’m all alone. I gripped the stem of my glass as I realised that JS was never going to glance across a party at me and smile, or give me the look that says, ‘Shall we go?’ He’s never going to come over and fill up my wine glass or get me another plate of food. I can’t tell him all about Owl Man; dammit, he’s never going to rescue me from Owl Man!
I stood there and tried desperately to follow the conversation, but I couldn’t, because any sort of communication is hard when you’ve got such terrible thoughts careering around your skull, so I made my excuses and left. The party was in the garden and basement kitchen, so I climbed the stairs to