Reflection

This is a blog entry on a rather personal note and not all connected with MCT-Mass-Writing project activity, - but a note nonetheless that I feel compelled to make at this particular time. It has been just over a year since my wife Doris passed away and I cannot really say that I have coped with bereavement as easily as I had hoped I would have done, - being as I am, an adult of 71 years. Of course, my family have been the greatest comfort to me in getting through my sad times. I hate even to think how difficult it might have been otherwise, had I not had their support and their concern for my well being. At the time of the funeral, the vicar had said to me that it takes something like 18 months to get over a bereavement. I had been disbelieving of that, - imagining that whilst that may be true of the grandchildren, who would undoubtedly miss their nan, I as an adult of 71 years would do better than that. I now realise that the vicar was right. Each one of us copes with his bereavement in his own way. For me bereavement, amidst its sorrow, has also been about an intense feeling of missing someone constantly. Friends and family often ask me solicitously if I am lonely. I am not in the least bit lonely but I have this intense feeling of missing Doris at every turn, whether it is in the morning when I am making myself a cup of coffee, or hoovering the front room or even shopping at Morrison's. The feeling that someone, who was always by my side and whose presence in my vicinity I had always taken for granted, should no longer be there, is a feeling of sad bewilderment and even helplessness that is difficult to describe. Certainly I had not experienced it before, either with the death of my mother or my father, both of whom passed away some years ago. I harbour every hope that I will in time get over my bereavement, not least because I have always believed in the old maxim of "picking yourself up and carrying on". Perhaps my memories of Doris and those of our years together, ever increasing in preciousness to me, and which often give me a feeling of both happiness and elation, will give me the strength to "carry on", as they say.