Future imperfect

Two things happen when your partner dies.  The first is that you lose your partner. The second is that you lose yourself.

All those plans that you had for the future, big and small, the things you were going to do together, are gone.  The trip to Pisa, renovating the kitchen, enjoying watching your children fall in love, becoming grandparents, arguing about where to retire to.  Even just those early Saturday and Sunday morning games of tennis at the courts round the corner from the house.  All of it wiped away.  The future a blank.

When you’re younger, in your 20s, and you have your whole life ahead, there’s a sense that you can do anything. The future is unknown but rich with possibility, and it feels exciting.  Aged 60, the future landscape looks bleaker, more arid, less bountiful.  Yet it’s accompanied by a sense of urgency.  For me anyway, the long learning curve that life takes us on through our 20s into the more confident 30s is a luxury I don’t have.  I want to do things now. But what?

Two books I’ve read recently have given me some insight into this dilemma.  Neither is due out until March –  a perk of my job is that I get to read books before they’re published- and regardless of whether you’re a bereaved person or not, they’re both worth making a note to buy.

The first is a novel called My One True North by Milly Johnson.   One of the characters, whose husband was killed in a car crash, is telling her boss that she can’t find the place in life where she used to be. He says: ‘You have to find a new place and that takes time. More than you think. Three steps forward, four steps backwards mainly in the beginning. But there will come a time when you find you’re one step in front and you don’t slip back.’

Good advice.  It’s advice I’ve given to others in my position on many occasions.  But when you’re the bereaved person time seems to move both quickly – how can it already be another month without him? – and as slowly as treacle running up a hill.  And when you’re 60, every day counts.

The other book is Things I Learned from Falling by Claire Nelson. It’s a true story about a thirty-something woman who went for a hike alone in the dessert, fell, shattered her pelvis and lay severely injured and undetected for several days.  She obviously survived, because she’s written the book , which is part record of the terrible ordeal she went through, and part voyage of self discovery. 

There were so many things in her character that I recognised in my own, flaws that floated to the surface for each of us in our individual tragedies.  As she recuperates, she realises that she’s lost the sense of fear that has always held her back.  Now, things that would usually be too challenging for her to ever contemplate doing, she’s tackling. Because she has known the greatest fear, that she might die, and nothing could ever be that scary again.  So no matter whether things work out or not, she’s at least prepared to try them.

Applying that thought to my situation, I’m experiencing one of the greatest losses, so what else do I have to lose?  If I want to try out things to help me find a new path in life, does it matter if I make a few mistakes along the way? I’m lost already, so what if I take a few wrong turns in an effort to find myself?  Except that each wrong turn uses time.  But then, perhaps the wisdom of age will help me recognise that painful though those wrong turns can be, they’re not the end of the world, and in fact are often part of what shapes personality, character and the future.  It’s a quandary…

MY NICE THING THIS MONTH…SO FAR

Well it’s only the start of February but already I’ve had a wonderful evening at a wine tasting organised by my local Women’s Institute.  It was run as a ‘Call My Bluff’ type of quiz, and since I have absolutely no wine knowledge and a totally undiscerning palate, I just enjoyed drinking wine, eating cheese and being with friends.  But I have more plans for February, so watch this space!