I had no idea when I posted last, that the day it went live would be the day we received a phone call from the hospital to say that my husband’s mum had taken a turn for the worse. The hours drive down seemed to take days rather than minutes. My husband dropped me and Dembe off at his parents house whilst he made his way to the hospital. 

Despite knowing she was terminally ill, we believed she had more time. We had been through exactly the. same with Mr Myasthenia Kid’s, dad back in April. I know some people think it is better to know that someone is coming to the end stage of their life as they will have the time to say what the need to say. All I can tell you is that there is never, ever enough time. Just like that Mr Myasthenia Kid became an orphan and all that shared history was gone. There are things he will never know now that his parents are gone and my heart breaks for him. I know my situation is different I chose to walk away from my family after years of emotional / narcissistic abuse. I had done my mourning or so I thought. 

His loss has become my loss as I watch him constantly for signs of depression, of something more than grief. There are days I see his eyes fill with tears when something on the TV comes on that reminds him of his parents. There are days when I have to tell him the same thing over and over because he is so overwhelmed by his loss that it is impossible for him to absorb any more information. I want to wrap him up in cotton wool and take his pain away but that isn’t how this works. There are no words of comfort, just a hug or a hand squeeze to let him know I am here and I will hold us together until things get a bit better.

There are nights he wakes up at 2 or 3am re-living her final moments, he hasn’t told me much, he can’t find the words. All he says is it is the way she looked the sound of her struggling to breathe that comes into his dreams as his subconscious tries to process all he has been through in the last 7 months. He has looked as bad as he did when Frankie and Mollie ( our dogs ) passed away within 7 days of each other. I have feared that he would become seriously ill due to the grief and pain of it all. All the time my anxiety reaching new levels, whilst I cling onto anything I can control because the world feels like it is spinning out of our control.

I have managed to help him with the jobs that have to be done after someone has passed away. Many of the different companies have online forms that you can complete to be able to notify them. It is only EE the mobile phone company that have been dreadful so far. Asking insensitive questions for information like passwords to my late mother in laws accounts, which had she shared with us would have made the security of her account null and void. I let rip at that one as I was so sick and tired of the complete lack of care. Initially they told us we had a £164 debt to clear only when I got to the billing department they told us there was no money outstanding. I was only passed on to the billing department as I refused to pay had I not stood my ground then they would have made money off our grief that day.

I am grateful for the fact I have been able to help him, I could see how much it tortured him having to go over time and time again that his mother had passed away. It took over 4 hours to notify all the companies that we could. I was drained both mentally and physically after that and I wonder how anyone who has suffered a bereavement could cope having to do that all alone. I wish there was more that I could do to help him.

I really don’t know at the moment when I will post again. I am beyond exhausted and there is still so much to do. We will be moving house so we are  sorting out our current home so that we can get it on the market in January 2022.  We started having a big sort out in the summer so a lot of it has been done already but we have lived here for 18 years so we have 18 years worth of belongings to sift through. We laugh now at how huge this house seemed after moving here from our one bedroom flat. There are lots of emotions tied up with leaving this house and starting a new life in an area we have never lived before but we will have family around us so we aren’t so isolated. 

So that’s the state of play, other than all of the above we are ok. Dembe has been a champ ensuring his dad is comforted all the time. He has been sleeping in his room a lot now so that Jay is looked after. Dembe has been a huge comfort to us all through this.