Goodbye Toni

Toni 20/5/2008 - 15/02/2025

 Last August I read an article* about the grief that people feel when losing a beloved pet. I knew that when the time came to say goodbye to our beloved Toni, that I would be inconsolable. 

And so it is. Her death has brought with it echo grief. Grief for Tall. Grief for my children who have all left home. Grief for all the lives I haven't lived because of decisions made on the footpath of life. 

She had been ill, but seemed to be on the mend. At 6:30 in the evening she ate her dinner. At 7:00 she had lost the use of her legs. One trip to the emergency vet. At 8:00 she was gone. I feel like such a failure. I couldn't save her. I wanted her to live to 20 not 16. People keep telling me I did the right thing, but it was me, and me alone, who signed her death warrant. How I wished Tall was with me so we could make that decision together. 

Toni was our "baby". She arrived when the house was full of people. Over the next six years the number dwindled to just the two of us, just as Tall started dialysis. She was rarely alone and doted on Tall. She felt his loss very badly and never really got over it. 

Toni the day we got her 19/08/2008

*https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/article/2024/aug/15/the-surprising-shame-of-pet-loss-you-are-supposed-to-think-humans-are-more-important-than-animals

Solo voyage.

"Grief is like the sea, sometimes the waves overwhelm you."

As time passes I realise that it isn't grief that is like the ocean, it is in fact life itself. Most of the time we bob along experiencing the highs and lows that life holds, the waves are bearable. Most of us will occasionally hit a spot of dead calm, it doesn't last and life would be boring if it did. Even those who we perceive must have an easy life will still have their highs and lows.

It is guaranteed that life will throw up massive waves, deaths, break-ups, changes that we have no control over. Everyone experiences those waves. My life with Tall had more than most. A few times I was washed overboard, drowning in the confusion. Tall was always there to grab my hand and pull me back onto our little vessel, and we would ride out the storms together.  

I think that is what differentiates the loss of a spouse from any other grief. To lose the person who was your co-pilot and rescuer means having to save yourself when washed overboard. It can take months to be able to pull yourself back into your little boat, and when you are back aboard, navigating life's waters is a lonely life. 

More than four years on and I'm still struggling to find my way. The waves keep coming, and I have struggled to get back into my little boat. Four years ago, there were other boats I could call on. They have all sailed off on their own journeys now. Maybe they thought I would be okay alone, maybe I wasn't grateful enough, maybe my plight was too much for them. 

So now I am missing Tall's hand almost as much as I did four years ago. There isn't anyone else to rescue me.

Not so nifty sixty

 Yesterday I celebrated my 60th birthday alone. Well I had the dog, but she doesn't drink prosecco and she can't eat chocolates. 

I opened the cards I had been sent, the ones from my children, and a handful from work colleagues. I then burst into tears and sobbed for the card that wasn't there. I thought about all the other birthdays with Tall and the last present he bought. You can read about it here; last birthday. Eventually the tears dried up, and I went food shopping. 

Despite repeated efforts, I never did get to my target weight. Everytime I get sad I eat. I'm not sure if it is the job itself or that I am the only person there who doesn't have someone, but I have really found the last six months hard. I have struggled to lose any weight at all, at least I haven't gained much. That's due to the walk to and from work though, I have lost all self control. 

The journey continues. Life continues.

Time can do so much.

 I'm two weeks away from the four year anniversary of Tall's death. It all feels very strange still. The four years have seen so much happening, not just to me, but to the whole world, and so the four years feel much longer and at the same time it only feels like yesterday some days.

I was talking to a work colleague recently whose dad died January 2020. She was telling me about how her mom was coping and we shared stories of how silly things can set us off. Her mom, like me, still feels like he has just popped out, and that he'll be back soon. I don't think that feeling will ever go away. I told her that in my head I'm still married, that I still have a husband, I don't think I will ever stop feeling that way and can't imagine ever looking at another man. 

Last week I ordered a rose for Tall. I had seen last year that a prize winning rose grower had created a new rose called Bring Me Sunshine. I don't remember why I didn't buy it, and I only just got in my order for this year's bare root deadline. I can not think of a more perfect name for a rose in his memory. There will be tears when I plant it, just as there were tears when I ordered it. I have come to realise that the only way I can cope, and live any sort of life, is to not really think too much about him. Am I wrong? 

I still miss him when the trees blossom.

I still miss him when I see a classic car.

I still miss him when I sit in the garden.

I still miss him when something happens that I want to talk to him about.

Time has done so much to change my life. I never imagined I would be where I am now as we sat and discussed what would become of me. I will be forever grateful that I knew him and will always hold the joy and happiness that he brought me in my heart.

Bring Me Sunshine - David Austin Roses

Goodbye 2022

 Hello 2023. 

What a transformative year 2022 was!  This time last year I had no idea how far I would travel, I had no plans, and was still living with some of the effects of my grief. A year on and I've lost 28 pounds in weight, have a job that I love (even if I don't always like the patients) and am happier than I have been in years. 

Looking back I can now see how hard life had been even before Tall died. The truth is that life changed when he started dialysis. We tried to live around it, but the fact is it's hard to carry on as if life is normal when  every other day is dialysis. When the cancer returned things became even tougher and the last few years I was swallowed up by the role of a carer, never really relaxing even when we were trying to be normal. 

I've reached a point where I look back and say to myself that I wouldn't want that life again, even if it meant I would have Tall back. Does that make me a bad person? Should I still be wishing he was back with me? Of course I would like the man I married back. The man who would dance like no one was watching at every opportunity. I don't want the man who was stuck on oxygen, that needed a wheelchair to go to hospital appointments. 

I still had moments in 2022 when I missed him so much I thought my heart would stop. When I cried so much, I didn't think I would ever stop. Yes, I still talk to him as if he is just in the other room, asking him to give an opinion about something I am contemplating. I don't think there will ever be a time when I don't miss him, like everytime I go in the loft or try to reach something from the top of the wardrobe.  Not long after Tall died a neighbour from across the road came to speak to me. She lost her husband 30 years ago and she said she still misses him when she is doing the garden, after all those years.

The fact is, that for the first time in quite a while, I am actually sitting on New Year's Day looking forward to the year ahead. 

A promise

 I realised as I lay in bed last night that the end of my previous post might have made out that Tall was controlling, that he tried to tell me how I should be. It couldn't be further from the truth.

Tall championed me. He always had faith in me, even when I didn't have faith in myself. He never tried to change me, unlike my first husband, he simply loved me for who I was, warts and all. In return I loved Tall in exactly the same way. It's one of the reasons that I know we were soulmates, we loved each other, never wishing to change a single thing about the other. So I feel I owe it to Tall to explain what I meant about not being the woman Tall had wanted me to be. 

We had months knowing that Tall's health was declining, months that Tall used to get his affairs in order. One of the things he wanted was to make sure I would be okay. We had many conversations about what would happen to me when he was gone. Many of his plans didn't work out as friends and family, that he was sure would step up, simply stepped away. Along with his plans on how to continue the business was the plan that I should find someone else. Despite my repeatedly tearful replies that I could never love someone else, Tall insisted I must try, saying I had too much love to give to spend my life alone. Eventually I agreed, if only to stop him talking about it so often. Three years on, and with the clarity of reaching a different place in my grief, I can see that my acceptance of Tall's suggestion wasn't so much for me, but for him. He needed to know that I would be okay, even if he was leaving me. I realise now that the guilt he was feeling must have been awful for him. We had spent so many years joined at the hip, and he knew how hard it was going to be, having to continue our journeys alone. The promise that he made me give him eased his passing, and I know that he would understand that in my own way I have kept that promise. I have rediscovered the Good Cheer Pixie, and with her help, I don't need anyone else to love me.

The path to nifty sixty

 Three weeks in, and the job seems to be going well. I find myself dreaming of Tall most nights, I guess because I can't tell him about my day any other way. There are so many things I want to tell him. One of the real pluses is that the walking there and back has helped with my aim to be a healthy BMI by my birthday next year, hopefully it will be sooner.

 As part of my healthier lifestyle I looked back at the possible reasons why at the start of this year I found myself heavier than I had ever been. Eleven years ago, when we were planning our wedding, losing the weight was easy. I managed to keep the weight off until our very dear friend P. died, just before our first wedding anniversary. In 2017 I lost some weight again and vowed I would never allow myself to to put it back on. That lasted until Tall and I realised that he wasn't going to recover from the second SCT like he had after the first, and it was clear his health was going to slowly deteriorate. After his death the weight continued to creep on, little by little, not helped by the isolation of lockdown in 2020. 

Clearly I am a comfort eater. I use food to console myself when grief strikes, be that the loss of a friend, the loss of a future or the loss of a soulmate. I have come to realise over the last couple of months that, in reality, eating and drinking to excess doesn't actually make me feel any better. I still wake up the following day with a massive hole that can never be filled by wine or cream cakes. I need to find my happiness elsewhere. 

I have realised too that the changes I have made are so much easier without Tall. There's no one adding hot cross buns or Easter eggs to the trolley. No one suggesting we get a bottle, or two, of wine. No one asking for sausage and bacon sandwiches whilst on the dialysis machine. I thought that I would miss my crutches, yet in reality I am finding life without them quite easy. I can walk past the things Tall would have picked up and smile, remembering fondly what he would have said and done. 

 I think it might just turn out that I'm going to be alright on my own. Not quite the woman Tall told me I should be, but a woman that I am content with.