A Bird on My Shoulder (23 page)

obscured, even at our worst and most desperate, we hold on.

One day, while the children were at school, I got ready for a bushwalk with a friend, a man I knew. He once belonged to the world of couples I had also inhabited before Julian's death cast me onto more distant shores. At the time he was also marooned on his own island, in the throes of a separation.

So he was available, as I was. For what exactly, I was not sure. Certainly I longed for companionship, for understanding from another adult. I had no sense, no conscious sense at least, of wanting to replace Julian in any way.

I heard the crunch of gravel on the driveway and went outside. The clouds were thickening, but we were both eager for the walk and, putting on raincoats, we headed off.

The road through the scribbly gum forest wound through the trees which loomed over us like entwined fingers. Black
cockatoos were dipping and screeching overhead. We followed the path over a river, which twisted its way downstream over vast exposed platforms of sandstone, talking less as we went.

Spatters of rain began to fall and we decided to turn back.

By the edge of the river, he held out his hand for me to step across the rushing water onto an isolated rock. From this vantage point we could see right down the river, the crude edges of the small cliffs and great boulders heaped in careless piles. The rain began to fall more heavily.

I turned to look up at him, silhouetted against the sky. Then, without a word, he held me as the clouds hurtled down onto my upturned face.

I had not realised how disastrous it might be to allow myself to fall in love while grieving for Julian, but that was what I did. Surrendering to someone else was, for a time, profound and beautiful; I truly believed this would make me whole again.

•••

I also felt overwhelming relief – someone had opened the door of my prison and offered me the tantalising possibility that all this pain could soon be over. Without hesitation I grabbed the promise of another life for us all. I would now have a soul mate and my children would have a father figure; love would be the key to my restoration and a release from all our suffering.

Any concerns I had were immediately and ruthlessly suppressed, and I dismissed all the cautious advice from well-meaning friends. I thought I would simply float off into a magical future; this was going to be my wonderful reward. It had to be.

The first signs that all was not well came from my body.

Within weeks I experienced my first-ever panic attack. These were not, as I thought, the first flutterings of romantic love, but the beginnings of a descent into paralysing agitation.

Without warning, I frequently found myself in a cold sweat, my heart pounding, my breathing short and shallow. At any moment I could feel waves of anxiety wash through me as though my body was being flooded. Having lived with uncertainty for a long time, I was used to a level of stress, but it was clear that something was terribly wrong. Lying in bed at night, I listened to hours of meditation and music CDs, anything to calm me down and stop my whirring mind. I felt constantly uncertain, and any encouraging thoughts I might normally have had were drowned out by a voice, the soundtrack behind every moment which asked: Am I enough? Am I enough?

My response to this was to cling to the relationship even more tightly. With him or alone, I found I had little ability to feel secure and content as the possibility of failure, of being alone again was just too terrible to contemplate.

It soon felt as though my very survival was at stake and any indication of uncertainty on his part was like a knife in the wound of Julian's absence. When the relationship began to collapse, as I knew it would, my devastation turned to animosity and despair. I was angry with him but mostly with myself – I had lost faith in my own judgement and aspects of the relationship and my own behaviour, which I would never have tolerated before, horrified me. Only people in pain behave badly.

Deep in the cocoon of depression and an excruciating painful lower back where two discs were bulging, there was nothing else to do but take the medication my doctor had prescribed for depression. For someone who had always been quite resilient and capable, this was a new low. I crawled back into bed when the children had gone to school, counting the hours until I had to face my responsibilities again. Where had my spirit gone? Where was my faith?

The relationship gave me a very stark self-portrait; it exposed my loneliness, my need to be loved, my insecurities. Until then, I had no idea of the depth of my vulnerability.

I struggled to care for the children – the ever-faithful Mandy was, with the help of others, doing that for me. Of course, not coping on a permanent basis was unthinkable. I was fortunate that when those absolutely critical times came, I had extraordinary friends I could turn to even though I found it
hard to ask. Father Terry reframed that for me on one of my visits to the monastery at Douglas Park.

‘Asking for help can be a gift to other people,' he said.

‘How?'

‘It gives them an opportunity, if they want it, to feel good about themselves.'

•••

One morning I could hear the children calling to one another ‘No, put it there, that's right, you stand there.' ‘You're not the boss of me!' The alarm rang out, shrill and insistent, and my heart sank. Another day. I really did not know if I could face it: the lunchboxes, the cajoling, the remonstrations.

I was too tired to shower and instead washed my face in the sink, shuddering in the cold. I had no patience that morning for all the arguments and petty bickering that often became part of the morning rush and I lost my temper. The children stared at me, stunned.

I remember the bus pulling away from the end of the driveway; the shame I felt was still stinging. Grief had edges that were black and vicious. I wanted to call them back, hold them close, say that I was sorry, that I did not know what desperation was moving in me. I imagined myself as my children must have seen me, wild-eyed and hair askew, screaming in my pyjamas about a pair of lost socks.

That day I returned to my long-abandoned journal.

That night I woke from another fitful sleep. It felt as though someone was pressing on my shoulder, an unmistakable energy that I recognised as Julian. His presence was as vital as it had ever been.

I sat up and addressed the dark empty room. I was trembling.

‘Is that you?'

Silence.

I put on the lamp, feeling my breath coming light and quick. I knew I was depressed but this – so fleeting, yet so real – this, I knew, was bordering on serious madness.

‘Who's there?'

More silence.

I sank back and closed my eyes. Just as I felt I was drifting off I felt Julian's spirit near me once again and his voice spoke.

‘You must endure,' he said.

•••

I could not always hear the kind and encouraging remarks of those dear to me, and my life became what someone once described as ‘dancing beside the abyss' – and frequently falling into it. I felt imprisoned by inertia, daunted by all I should be doing.

My father's periodic battles with depression were something I had been frightened by for much of my life, I found it hard to comprehend that someone so vibrant, so capable of fun, and someone so intellectually vigorous and fortunate could feel this way. When I began to suffer myself, I began to understand his struggle. I had more compassion for him, which developed into a softening attitude towards my own situation.

Many years before, during a visit to my parents in Kidder-minster from my home in London, I had sat with my father at the kitchen table. Dinner was finished and my mother had gone to watch television.

We sat chatting among the detritus of plates, discarded silver napkin rings and two opened jars of mustard. The dull ticking of an electric clock filled the room.

‘I often wonder . . .' my father began, rearranging his knife and fork on his plate and looking at me with his pale distant eyes. ‘I feel my life has been like a desert,' he said. ‘And I often wonder, when I look back, how did I get all this way without any water?'

•••

There were times when the energy for pushing on and staying strong, something I learned from my mother, was an incredible gift to lift me out of sadness and self-pity and catapult me back to life.

Gradually, with the benefits of medication and more help, I slowly, very slowly, got better.

It was not easy. The need to embrace my vulnerability became a matter of survival – if I was going to get through this terrible sorrow, I needed to allow myself to feel, which meant feeling everything. I also had to look deep inside myself at the shadows in my psyche, for everything that held me back and stopped me from healing.

I realised my life could not be restored by another relationship or by being busy. So if it could not be instantly fixed, it just needed to be faced.
No-one is here. No-one is coming, and you're going to be alright
, I told myself.

During these darker days, as my sense of connection with the living Julian grew fainter, I constantly forgot to remember that small bird on my shoulder.

I often thought about the counsellor's profound observation, but positive thinking about my own life did not always come naturally, I had to work at it. After Julian died I found it very easy to see all the things that I didn't like or wanted to change, and to fall into a trap of despair and self-pity.

I often wondered, what if it had been me who had been diagnosed with cancer. How would I have chosen to live? Would I have really cared that the house wasn't tidy, that the children stayed up too late or forgot their reading books? If I had been facing my own mortality, how would I have wanted to spend my days and what would I have focused on? The washing-up?

I was conscious too that I was not living in a way that honoured Julian. I thought back to the desert walk and how I had found a deeper sense of self there, and decided I needed to get outside. In the early mornings, I began to ramble around the hills and forests of Kangaloon before the children were up, enchanted by the light and the morning sky. It was nature which brought me back to life again, and every time I went outside I would wake up a little more.

Having small children during such a seismic shift brought its own challenges and rewards, and the joys of having them around me far outweighed everything that was hard.

Unlike me, they were present in every moment, their lives a series of magical discoveries: a leaf, a trail of ants, and the
joy of swinging effortlessly on a rope. I found it hard to pull away from the responsibilities of motherhood, but when I did allow myself to fall into their slipstream, everything became so much easier. I envied that at times, their ability to just live without any other concerns, and they had such wonderfully simple philosophies regarding the bigger mysteries.

The girls were looking at photographs of me one day and Charlotte said, ‘Where was I in this photo, Mum?'

‘Oh, you weren't born then,' I said.

‘No we weren't born then,' Meg said confidently.

‘Well, where was I?' Charlotte asked.

‘You were with me and we were in heaven, packing our suitcases getting ready to come,' her sister replied.

•••

As I got better, I began to realise that there was something dangerously seductive about the status of widowhood. Without knowing it, I sometimes used my pain as a way of connecting to others and receiving their kindness. While there was a time when I had craved this, I knew it was not healthy in the long term. I tried to be more conscious of how much I was also allowing Julian's absence to keep me stuck in a state of sadness in which I had become quite comfortable. It took me a long time to understand that letting go of my grief did not mean letting go of him as well.

One sign that I was changing was that I began to find other people's pity stifling, and I had more energy to engage in what was happening in the lives of those around me as well as in my own. I discovered that sometimes it took more courage for me to surrender to deep and painful emotions, than to hold them at bay with a bright and brittle smile.

My gradual restoration and healing was a communal effort. Friends began to talk more openly about their lives, their concerns, and their occasional disappointment with their partners. It helped me to realise that no matter what the circumstances, there were many people who were deeply frustrated and quite lonely at times.

I no longer believed that everyone had it easier than me, and as my strength returned I no longer felt I was a special case, and I was able to give back to others some of the kindness I had been given.

My slightly wicked sense of humour began to emerge as well. Whereas before I would have been quite cast down when someone said, as they often did and still do, ‘Oh, it must be so hard doing this on your
own
,' now I would smile and respond mildly that it was not all bad, that in fact there were many aspects of being a single parent that I loved. Meanwhile, in the back of my mind, I'd be thinking,
Keep your pity to yourself. Actually, life must be so hard for you . . . because you're married to a complete idiot
.

I decided that I would no longer look at the far horizon of where I wanted to be – getting there seemed just too daunting. I began to heed the sensible advice of those who said, ‘Just deal with what is in front of you. Take one day at a time, put one foot in front of the other, and just keep going.' Or, as my father would say, ‘Onward, ever onward.'