Planning.

I’ve always been a planner.

With Mike, planning was easy. Because we knew so early on that we wanted to get married and have babies and all that good stuff, we were pretty strict about The Plan.

No, we weren’t going to go on holiday because Buy A House was in the plan, and that needed all our money. No, we wouldn’t stay in London because Have A Baby didn’t really fit in to that, and we knew we wanted to do that asap. It was all about The Plan. We knew what we wanted our life to look like, and dammit, we were going to get there.

Well.

That worked out well, huh?

I mean, it did, because I loved my life with Mike and I wouldn’t change it. I’m so glad we ended up in Northern Ireland, so glad he got those last years with his family and by his sea and so, so, inexpressibly, unfathomably, breathtakingly grateful that we had Lyla.

Beyond grateful.

But I realise now that all those years we were pouring absolutely everything into something that was, unbeknownst to us, never going to happen. And some of that energy (and money!) could have been used elsewhere, to make our daily lives more joyful, richer, more full of experience. Made the last years of Mike’s life about living, not striving.

That doesn’t mean I’m going to throw all thoughts of the future out of the window and stop planning altogether. Not only is that not sensible, it’s also so completely antithetical to my personality that it wouldn’t be possible! But what Mike’s death has taught me is that it doesn’t make sense to always be working towards a potential future at the detriment of the actual present that exists right in front of you.

Because the future isn’t going to look like you expect it to. It just isn’t. It might be worse, it might be better – but it will be different to the picture you have in your mind. You’ll be different, for a start. Your circumstances will be different, in ways you probably can’t even imagine. And all those carefully-laid plans – well, some of them will come to fruition, but others won’t, and even the ones that do might not make you happy in the way you imagine.

All we have is today.

I’m not saying I’m going to jump out of a plane every day or give it all up and go travelling, or anything. I don’t think every day has to be a stand out adventure. But I’ve realised that it’s important to make the most of every day – to find the small joys and suck the marrow out of them.

Because that’s all we’ve got, really. We have to do the long-term things – the working, the saving, the planning for the future – just in case.

But first and foremost, we have to be in today.

Just in case.

Quicksand.

Here’s where you get stuck.

So. Your life has changed completely and irrevocably. There’s no way of going back, no way of bringing back your person and having that life you had before. And you know that. Logically, you know that. But the problem is, that life was so good. It was so happy, and content, and comfortable. Everything was right. So of course, that’s your template for happiness. Everything about it is, as far as you’re concerned, an essential element to creating a happy life.

So what now? You’re looking at that life and desperately wanting to recreate it as soon as humanly possible because that’s happiness, right? And without all those elements you can’t be happy? So you just need to put all those elements back together and everything will be okay again, yeah?

Only – wait. Hang on. That big, central piece. The most important element of that life is gone and gone forever. And there isn’t another one.

I know. I know. I’m so, so sorry.

It sucks. It sucks beyond the telling of it. I know the pain it brings you. Because I’m there right now. As much as I wish it wasn’t true, it is. There was only one Michael Waring, and nobody – nobody – will ever be his particular combination of sweet, loving, funny, whimsical, silly, caring, generous, good, smart, and giving ever again. Nobody.

So here are your choices. Here are my choices.

Either we accept that nothing else could make us happy and therefore we’ll never be that happy again. Or we believe that we can find happiness in another way – not the same, but equally good – and we start making it happen.

This sounds like it’s leading to a positive, uplifting lesson but honestly? I’m not there yet.

My brain knows that’s the choice in front of me, and it knows which is the best path to take. But my heart hasn’t connected up with that yet. It’s still wavering between the “but-if-Mike-would-just-come-BACK” and “well that’s it, the happiest part of my life is over, I’ll just have to accept it”.

And it doesn’t really matter how much my head tells me that I need to try and find a new kind of happy – one that might feature another love one day, but equally might not, and might instead be filled with friends and passions and my beautiful little girl – I can’t make the rest of me get there any faster. In fact, trying to force it only makes it worse. Doing anything before you’re ready is excruciatingly painful and utterly pointless.

So for now, all I can do is keep putting one foot in front of the other and hope that eventually, I catch up with my brain.

Buckaroo.

Friday was A Very Bad Day.

Most days now I start off functioning okay, coping okay, but as ever, aware of the nagging presence of Grief, sitting there on my shoulder.

She’s still quite a new friend to me – other people I know have learned to live with her, even to value her as a reminder of the love they shared with their lost person, and I can see how that will happen, over time. But for now, she and I are still getting to know each other. Still learning to tolerate our various quirks and hang-ups. Still warily eyeing each other up and testing boundaries.

On Friday she was poking me a bit. Just a little. Nothing I couldn’t handle. A few intrusive thoughts. A few moments of that gutting sense of loss, under control as quickly as it arrived thanks to my honed distraction techniques and coping strategies that keep me from falling apart and allow me to carry on doing my job and caring for Lyla and getting things done.

But then things started to go wrong. Other, external things. A broken laptop. Some (mild) criticism at work about a slightly stressful project. Nothing huge at all. Things that, when Mike was here, I would have shrugged off, or at most gone and asked Mike to talk it through with me, got a hug and been reminded of what’s important in life.

Yeah. That’s not what happens now.

I completely fell apart. We’re talking sobbing, wailing, hyperventilating, even thoughts of suicide (don’t worry, I stayed safe, I have lots of coping strategies for that in place and they work and will continue to do so – but it’s been a long time since I’ve had the urge and it was frightening). I could not get my emotions under control. In the end I had to go and take a Diazepam – something I’ve not had to do for 6 months – and just crawl into bed and wait for it to pass.

So silly. Such a big reaction, for something so tiny. But it always is something tiny. A broken laptop. A child with a cold. A missed bus. An argument with a friend. A burnt dinner. Something so small that when you find yourself wracked with sobs you can’t quite believe it. Such an overreaction. So little resillience.

Did you ever play that kids’ game, Buckaroo? The one where you load the plastic donkey with hats and ropes and lanterns and firewood and, if I remember correctly, a banjo? And it would take everything without complaint until suddenly, without warning, something – one tiny thing – would tip it over the edge and it would buck and throw everything all over the floor?

Yeah. That’s basically what it is. All the time you’re carrying Big Stuff. The usual things that we all carry – working and parenting and day-to-day stresses and the joys of living in a global pandemic – but also my new friend Grief (and let me tell you, she is HEAVY). And next to her, your child’s Grief, because that’s a burden you have to carry as well. And it’s hard going, but it’s manageable – you’ve learned how to carry it, over the months or years. You can carry it and keep going.

But then someone adds something else, and it’s too much. It’s too much and you can’t help but buck, and, to be frank, lose your metaphorical shit.

What a mess.

But there’s no choice but to pick it all up again. Working and parenting and being a friend, they’re things we all have to carry. And Grief, of course – the burden you can’t put down.

So you gather it all, and you load yourself back up, and you wait for the next tiny thing. The rope. The lantern. The bloody banjo, for goodness’ sake. The tiny thing that tips you over the edge.

Buckaroo.