Post Mortem Self Care

Within weeks of my husband passing away I snapped into self-care mode. Better than I have ever done in my entire life before. It resulted from the thought that this is certainly what my husband would have wanted me to do. Had he been able he would have driven me to the chiropractor and paid with his own credit card. And not just looking after my health: I got my hair sorted out, I bought some new skin care products, I bought a few new things to wear - and not just the cheapest ones. I knew from experience that if I looked like crap and felt like crap that it would be more difficult to pull up when I was in a slump. Fixing my appearance would just be a great help to managing my mood and emotional state going forward. I made a point of taking time to just sit in the garden and drink a cup of something.

I rearranged my bedroom and removed most of his things. For the sensibilities of some it might have seemed a bit soon, but the dynamics of our shared world were that he was a bit of a hoarder and I was a bit of a compulsive organizer. In my mind I shared with him a chuckle over how I could now organize this space to my heart's content and he need no longer feel any guilt about creating a temporary pile that I would glance at tight lipped. In fact, regardless of whether his stuff surrounds me or not, this home is something that we have conspired together to build and there is plenty enough of him in its construction to keep alive in me a sense of his presence here. And even if, in some unforeseen time, I might depart from this place and live somewhere else, this co-creation that we have forged together has its blueprints and foundations in my body and soul.

It might not sound like self-care to dispose of the belongings of a departed loved one, but I know this about myself: I need my space, I need my sanctuary. When you are a couple you each stretch and compromise to create a mutual space in which you can have intimacy. My bedroom was no longer to serve this purpose. Its new purpose was to be a place for me to retire into solitary comfort. I removed his clothes from the wardrobes and moved mine in, taking up space and creating a better arrangement for my things. I removed most of the things he had kept on the tops of the bits of furniture in the room and tidied them away into drawers, revisiting them from time to time to sort them and dispose of things. I took down some of the paintings that had hung there and replaced them with colours that were calmer and less bright. I removed the purple counterpane and replaced it with a pale grey to create a more neutral and calming centerpiece for the room.

In time I even removed the portrait I had painted of him to the downstairs TV room. I took off my wedding ring, wearing it on my right hand for a couple of weeks, until it was too uncomfortable to continue and then I put it in its box.

Of course I stopped working immediately, letting my clients know what had happened. They gave me space. And in the following months as work trickled back in there was no anxiety for me about the lack of volume of work. Time to be slow was more precious. I also didn't force myself to do the mother-overachieving stuff I love to do, like baking and balanced meals. Early on our kitchen was full of snack food that we had bought and that neighbors had brought us so there was not much preparation to be done anyway. I even went out to buy some really nice artisanal bread to replace the homemade bread I would ordinarily have made. And it's not as if the bread making is all manual, it's just popping the ingredients into the bread machine and switching it on. The effort that I had saved myself was not having to worry about whether or not there was bread and whether the children would have something to make lunch with. It was a relief of a small burden from my mind. I also knew I would simply forget to do it and then feel bad so I gave myself permission to not do it.

One of my adult daughters told me about a book she had read about celebrating small wins. She said I should simply congratulate myself if I remember to bath. And anything else I managed to do as it presented itself to my awareness. If I had the energy I would do it knowing that the metabolism of domestic tasks would keep my body moving enough to help me to prevent some nasty potential health issues down the line. Always, from the very first moment, something in me chooses life.

In my world on a mundane level this means getting out of bed in the morning to feed the dogs, to let the chickens out, to water the plants, to feed the cats, to collect the eggs, to pull out some weeds. Then taking on some of my husband's chores like taking care of the pool, fixing things that were broken, buying things to do with home maintenance. Slowly I returned to these things, but ruminatively, therapeutically, thanking lock-down for teaching me how to do this.

I also had an unconscious habit of telling strangers that my husband had recently passed away and it attracted to me the kindness of strangers which was a nourishing resource too. People can be kind, I sometimes forget.

I bought myself a multivitamin for women over 50 and some herbal remedies to fix my liver which soon became overwhelmed with the adrenaline driven coping mode I was in for weeks upon weeks. I made a plan to fix my broken sleep to allow my body to have those precious sleep hours to repair and restore itself. That took a long time. As soon as I could cope with the discipline of it I began to do yoga and Pilates again, wanting to be healthy and strong. Yes, wanting that because I am again a single parent upon whom my younger children now solely rely, but also for myself. Herbs for calm and trauma also were part of my daily regimen. I drew on the wisdom of friends and family and my own studies into the subject. Most of this material came straight out of my own medicine closet.

As time passed I realized that I either already had everything I needed to cope with this journey or I had easy access to the learning and skill building that I would need going forward. I was not lost.

I accepted invitations from friends and neighbours to share a meal or a cup of tea. I trusted that they knew that I would be awkward and strange and that they would forgive me because they too had experienced loss. I discovered that there were more widows in my community than I had realised. And it's not that I hadn't known that they were women alone, it was just that until I myself became a widow I did not understand this part about them. They rallied around me gently and persistently. I bless them. And I suppose that that is a kind of support group.

They are friends, now. Nearly three years later, though I still remember his body as I fall asleep, I absolutely have grown around the grief. And these friends and neighbours have kept me out of isolation, shown me how much more I have to offer the world. I suspect the loss of a nearest and dearest represents some loss of personal significance – what vain creatures we are. Eighteen months of antidepressants. Some solo adventures, some revisiting of older wounds in childhood places. Signing up for courses, learning, travelling. Plenty of courage.

Slowly my brain returns. Old tricks are possible again, new tricks are learned. I let myself fall in love again – with food, colour, textures, art and music. I feel daily gratitude rise on waking instead of the cortisol shock. After the long season of storms, my inner weather turns dappled-sunny and pleasantly predictable.