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Happier Times

This week I’ve been thinking a lot about the last holiday I had with my lost love.   I wish that I could relive every single minute of our time in The Alps.  But memories sometimes fade and too often you don’t realise how precious life is.   You need to seize these happy times and truly immerse yourself in them. 

Old photos help fill in some of the gaps. 


Historically I was a prolific photo snapper, often being shouted at for taking too many pictures.  The pictures would then just sit in albums or memory cards, and just gather dust.  I would never find the time to enjoy them.

Since the world changed, my camera now tends to gather dust and the old photos are frequent sources of smiles and tears. A pathway back to happier times.

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What do you say

What do you say when your son asks “do you send dead mums a birthday card, and if so where to?”

I had no answer.  I must have missed the class on this one.   It’s another one of those ‘I’m out of my depth here’.  If only I could find a Dummies Guide.

Thankfully my son came up with a solution. So in a few weeks a birthday card will be attached to a balloon and set off into the skies.  The wind will then do the rest.

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Lights out

Today I took our son to see wrestling.  It’s one of his favourite things.  

When we’ve gone in the past, his mum would stay at home, she hated wrestling.  We would return home to a bright and warm house, with mum peaking through the curtains waiting for us to return. 

That was before the world changed.

Tonight as I drove into our drive, I glimpsed the perfect metaphor for my changed life.

To the side of me was my excited son, still talking about today’s action.  In front of me was a cold and dark house, with no lights and no one waiting at the window.  

The lights have gone out in my world but I’m driven by the desire to give my son the best possible childhood.   

I’m off to bed to try and recharge the batteries.  Then I start again tomorrow trying to be a decent mum/dad.

Posted on by bereavedandbeingasingleparent · 5 Comments

One bad apple …

Got a call from some chap today asking for my partner.  Apparently my partner would sometimes do some auditing for him.  Normally when you say “unfortunately my partner passed away a few months ago”, people are really understanding and apologetic.  So I was a tad surprised when this chap responded “well that’s of no help to me at all”. He then slammed the phone down after I said “my partner dying was not really much help to me as well”.

I can take two key things from this strange call.

1)  You will always find bad apples but it’s taken me seven months to find one.  Most people are basically nice…

2)  After a bereavement the world still keeps turning.  The world seems to stop for the bereaved, but not for everybody else.  I know that at some stage I need to rejoin the world again and to stop living in the past.  But maybe not just yet….

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Some days…

It’s seven months since I lost my love and became a single parent.  I get ok days and then less than ok days.  Basically I’m still broken.

Yesterday I coped well with what life chucked at me.  Today is not so good.

On top of nothing seeming to go right, my son had problems at school. In the past we would talk these problems through as a couple.  Together we would normally find a solution.  Now, on my own, the solutions often don’t seem to come. My son deserves better than this and this gets me down.

Sometimes listening to music helps.

Sometimes just sticking to the routine helps.

Sometimes walking the dog helps.

Sometimes going for a run helps.

Sometimes a gallon of coffee helps.

Sometimes playing games with my son helps.

Sometimes talking to the ashes helps.

Sometimes reading uplifting books or blogs helps.

Some days (like today) nothing works.  From experience I know what I need to do.  I focus on being ready for my son tomorrow.  Once I get my son to bed then I’ll go to bed, and just write today off and hope for better tomorrow.

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Perfectly laid plans…

Everybody has got to find their own way of dealing with loss.  We initially tried to establish a memory box.  Regularly we would try to write down memories from the great times before the world changed.  We would then keep them in a safe place, the memory box.  I know this has worked for some children who have lost a loved one.  It just didn’t work for us.

My son came up with the idea of just talking to his mum each day.  So we both set aside a few minutes a day, find a quiet place and just tell our lost one what we’ve done today.  It’s been important to my son as it helps him make sure his mum is not forgotten.

For the last few weeks during my ‘daily chats’ with my lost love I’ve been wrestling with a decision.  My son wants a portion of the ashes to be placed in our garden, but where? 

Yesterday ‘we’ came to a decision.  A patch would be cleared under our small apple tree and my partners favourite flower (Forget Me Nots) seeded.  This would be the perfect ashes spot.  

After a couple of hours work the site was ready for the ashes.  Unfortunately we had not shared the plan with the puppy.  Two minutes later we had a very muddy dog who had now found a great new place to bury his toy bone. All I could think about was the look my partner would be giving me, especially if I had got round to scattering the ashes.

The best laid plans…..

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One of those days

I wish I was organised. I wish I was able to cope better.  I wish I was just a little less useless at this single parenting gig.

Today I was cooking Sunday lunch for the two of us.  Everything seemed fine until I started dishing out.  

Two people and three plates of food.  

In auto pilot mode I had gone back to the days of being a family of three.  

At least my son found it funny and the puppy ate well…

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Practical things I wish I knew months ago

Within a couple of weeks of registering the death I was inundated with booklets on coping with bereavement and practical things you had to do.  I’ve just counted the numbers of pages of help I kept and it comes to about 600 pages.  The last thing I wanted to do was read that lot and given the state I was in, it wasn’t going to sink in.  

The local Hospice provided the best help pack (and one of the shortest).  It’s checklist did help a lot.  More importantly they also sat down with me and talked me through the process.

Seven months on and boy did I make some mistakes.  Tasks were missed, wrong forms filled out and wrong assumptions made.

So here’s my list (not exhaustive) of the practical things I wish I knew months ago.

  • When sorting out the funeral remember to work out who is going to collect the ashes.  I assumed the Funeral People would get them to me.  Nothing came for weeks.  Apparently I had agreed to pick them up.  I probably should have had someone with me when I sorted out the funeral arrangements – I clearly was not on this planet at this stage.
  • It was a shock when I picked up the ashes.  I knew it would be an emotional nightmare but I hadn’t thought about what the ashes would come in.  I wasn’t expecting to handed what appeared to be a giant brown coloured sweet jar.  It sounds funny now, but it did through me at the time.
  • In the UK when you register a death you can sign up to a “Tell us once” scheme which automatically notifies a range of government departments.  In the main it works however in my case it wasn’t perfect, and I NEVER CHECKED.  I assumed the local council would be notified and the council tax amended (never happened).  I assumed that both car registration and driver licence records would be sorted (neither happened and it caused problems when trying to sell my partners car). 
  • On the subject of my partners car I assumed that my insurance would cover me to drive it.  WRONG.  My insurance only covered me while my partners insurance was valid.  As soon as she died, I was not covered.  Should have checked as soon as she died.
  • Don’t let your passport expire if your partner is about to die.  The number of times I was asked for a valid passport in the weeks after the death……
  • The help guides talk about short term government bereavement benefits.  The guides I was given failed to mention that they are not available to non-married couples.
  • When you are faced with the question on every form you fill out, “Please tick which applies, married, single, bereaved……” don’t just assume it’s bereaved.  Some of these forms only count bereaved as applying to married partners.
  • Make sure you are registered at the same health practice as your young son.  My partner was but I was at a different one (nearer my former employer).  If you are not registered at your son’s practice then the doctors won’t discuss any issues with you.  I had to move health practice.
  • Don’t forget to check any subscriptions your partner had.  I accidentally found a couple which had been paid in full and which I could claim a partial refund on.  Car Breakdown cover was one.
  • Removing my partners name from most of the regular joint bills was quite painless.  However trying to change bills which were just in my partners name has been a nightmare.  Expect to fill out countless forms, in triplicate.
  • When registering a death you get asked how many copies of the death certificate you want.  I thought I was playing it safe by going for 5.  Every time I notified someone of my partners death they wanted an original copy.  Quite often you would get the original back in a few weeks, but sometimes they don’t come back. As a result for a period of about 5 weeks I didn’t have any copies to hand and this just frustratingly delayed things.
  • I forgot to close down my partners Facebook and email accounts.  This actually was helpful as it identify a number of my partners friends who I had not got round to letting them know about the sad news.
  • One help guide talked about sorting everything out in 3 months.  Seven months done the line and I’m still bumbling through the process.
Posted on by bereavedandbeingasingleparent · 4 Comments

Maybe people think I’m fine now

Maybe I was in a selfish mood today, but I was trying to think of the last time someone asked how I was doing.  It’s got to be at least a month ago, maybe longer.

Is it because I’m hiding things so well?  Even during the really dark periods I try to smile when I meet people.  Sometimes I smile because it seems like the right thing to do.  Mainly I smile because I don’t want people to raise questions about “If I can cope being a single parent”.

Then I think is it because when people first started asking how I was, I would reply “I’m ok today” and then switch to talking about how my son was.  Then after a couple of months I made the decision to be slightly more open.  So when I got asked the question I was more honest and more likely to respond “Not so good today” or “A bit down today” or ‘Struggling”.  It just felt that people felt uncomfortable with that honest response.  They would change the subject quickly.  Maybe it’s unrelated but the enquiries about how I was doing started to dry up as soon as I was more honest.

Maybe I should get a t-shirt printed saying “I’m Ok today” and let’s see if people start asking again…..

Posted on by bereavedandbeingasingleparent · 5 Comments

Good or bad idea

Seven months after the world changed and we’ve largely kept the house the same.  Everything is in the same place.  It just seemed the right thing to do, as if nothing had happened.  All my partners clothes and possessions undisturbed from the day she went into hospital.  Even after she died, I washed the clothes she had used in hospital and put them neatly away in the draws (as if she was coming back).

This weekend we have started to change things.  We’ve started to go through the clothes to see what can go to the charity shop. We so far have a car full of bagged clothing ready to go.  Really important point is to check every pocket and bag.  I dread to think of the sentimental things we found which would have been lost.

We have also started moving the furniture around, trying to make it our house now.  The funny thing is my partner was good at this sort of thing, so our changes haven’t really improved the look of the house.  But that’s not the point, the key is that we made changes.  I’m probably not ready to move on, but my son wants to try …. and that’s what’s going to happen.

Update:  Carefully check any books you are giving away.  I’m giving the charity shop a pile of my partners books.  As I was putting the last book in the bag, a photo fell out from the book.  It was a photo from 17 years ago, taken on our first holiday as a couple.