No matter the amount of time I spend being upbeat and engaged with thoughts of all the things that life will offer up; there is always a grief anvil waiting to drop on my weary bonce.
Sometimes it is letters addressed to him, or letters from people who don’t know that he’s dead; always wanting to know why they haven’t heard anything- I am fairly adept at admin but it’s just exhausting. A fortnight after he went a parcel containing a couple of t-shirts he’d chosen online turned up- the kind he always wore- you know. He had shown them to me before purchase, all keen for them to arrive. I haven’t opened that parcel. The other week it was a Rilo Kiley record, as if he knew I had been playing vinyl again and that it would form part of the new office set up- the cellophane is staying on that too.
I have crossed so much off my to-do list. I have handled so many of the affairs that need to be addressed. There is just so much thinking to do, information that has to be shared over and over again. I have found myself making calls to what would have been offices, workplaces which are now people sat at their kitchen tables; trying to hear over the clunk of the dishwasher. I have told them that he is gone but still they write- the slow train of bureaucracy. I have tried to spare them the discomfort of the information invading their space. Sometimes they speak with care and at other times with such a lack of sentiment. Paul and Jim and Hillary- all working from home with their coffee going cold; crossing my husband off the list. They ask me to state the nature of our relationship. I don’t even really know what I’m called anymore. The Mrs. Patrick about to be summoned in the classroom isn’t the one who had the wedding and the baby and then got the job. There is all this stuff with her name on it. She is me and she isn’t. I didn’t ask for this rebrand. I won’t be going backwards, I am still part of the family.
When we got married I chose the poem Atlas by U.A. Fanthorpe for one of the readings. Seb didn’t really like it, he didn’t tell me at the time but he did later on- it didn’t paint an exciting enough picture. To him it might have read like too much of a compromise between practicality and passion. We were best friends; it wasn’t very Hollywood but it made sense to me. I think he’d understand the meaning all the more now, with me left holding everything aloft. Of course he got the words, he was the smartest man; but he could never really understand why I needed love to be like that. I still think it is perfect portrait of us in my mind and what I was hoping for at that time. He was just who I needed and I think I was the same to him. I can’t ask him about it now.
As for the song title in this post- Seb picked that. I walked down the aisle to Belle and Sebastian. We went out together to The Beatles. It’s all too much. It was at the time and it is now. The song is marvelling at the glory of love but the other side of the see-saw, the down part, is overwhelming too. It is said that the pain you feel in loss is equal to the way you felt in life. This is true; however it is just not as simple as that. Relationships are so complex and when he was here I had him to discuss us with. I can’t resolve anything now, there was no goodbye. That’s why it’s important for me to put the marriage down, it doesn’t exist with one person. I can’t cling onto thin air. Perhaps that’s why I feel nameless.
Alongside the clerical tasks, the most important thing of all is the responsibility I have for LP. The finger points at me like the dreadful Flying Glove from Yellow Submarine. I can handle it; it’s just all encompassing. I am accountable for how she experiences so many things. Christmas. She recalls our past routine. Today she said that it wont be the same without daddy. Have you ever attempted not to fall apart on the school run? Not easy. I asked her what we might do to make it better- then before she could answer I suggested singing; she went with Jingle Bells and I segued into Jingle Bell Rock. LP has said that I am allowed to sing in December- the rest of the year I’m banned.
I have really tried not to feel sorry for myself. I don’t know how people go through this alone. I am so loved. However sometimes I need to really recognise the enormity of what has taken place and then feel utterly devastated by it- all over again. This feeling that once ran for weeks, now can be moments, the odd hour; this time it’s days. I have asked for help and I have it. Still too much.