Читать книгу When Bad Things Happen in Good Bikinis - Helen Bailey - Страница 17

I have accepted Jane’s death from the moment it happened, but I haven’t accepted my new life yet, and this will take a loooong time. ~ Marieke

One of the things I find heartening about internet bereavement groups is not only the support they offer, but the way in which people who feel shattered and flattened with grief still manage to summon up enough energy to participate in discussions. This is particularly the case when a subject sparks lively debate; we may feel we have no interest in life, but the indignant feelings some subjects provoke show me that there is still life in us, even if we don’t like the life we now lead on Planet Grief.

One topic that recently piqued my interest was about acceptance, and whether it is ever possible to accept the death of our partners. I think it is fair to say that this subject divides the bereaved like Marmite. When a widow wrote on an internet bereavement forum that for her the only way forward was to accept the death of her husband, someone fired back, ‘You’re wrong. Acceptance is when you agree to something. I didn’t want my partner to die hence I’m learning to live with it.’

The strength of the initial sentence, its assertion that this widow was wrong to advocate acceptance, had me looking up the definition of the word ‘acceptance’ in the Oxford English Dictionary: whilst acceptance can mean agreeing to something, there is another definition listed: ‘Willingness to accept an unpleasant or difficult situation’.

From the very early days of my ‘widowing’, I was clear on two points:

1. Whilst my life would be forever shaped by what had happened, it would not be defined by it.

2. If I was to live any sort of meaningful life, as I couldn’t change what had happened, I had to accept it.

For me, at not yet five months, both points are difficult to adhere to, and I believe that there are some for whom acceptance may always be too much to ask, such as those whose loved ones have died at the hands of others either through malice, negligence or ignorance.

Last night, during one of my daily trawls around the internet, torturing myself by putting the word ‘drowned’ into Google, I came across an article in The Telegraph about the death of Elspeth Thompson, the gardening expert who, suffering from depression, drowned herself in a manner reminiscent of the suicide of Virginia Woolf. In the article, Elspeth Thompson’s husband, Frank Wilson, talks about how he and his young daughter are coping with the sudden death of his wife. It is moving and tragic. Reading it, one of Frank Wilson’s comments resonated with me. Talking about advice his mother had given him he says, ‘She taught me that one has to accept. Even if you can’t understand.’

I’m holding on to those words.