Triggers

Bracing myself for a wave of grief becomes almost second nature when the potential triggers are obvious. Significant events, anniversaries, etc. Sometimes a photograph or an object springs a memory from the undergrowth of routine and it sails through my mind in sharp focus, only to be brought down by a discharged shot of reality.

The day after I last posted here the twins celebrated their 14th birthdays. There was cake and gifts, love and best wishes. But there was also a memory that clamped itself around the occasion. Not tight enough to squeeze the joy from it, just a grip that left the fingerprints of sadness. On the eve of the twins’ 13th birthday Mags told me she wouldn’t be here for the 14th. We both knew it to be true but the advantage of learning to live literally one day at a time is that the far off future remains totally greyed out. Unavailable for planning of any kind.

On Easter Sunday Heather laid on a lovely spread. Chocolate eggs were exchanged, there was laughter and it was good to feel the warmth of close family. The poignancy drifted around us though. The previous Easter Sunday was the last time Mags had felt well enough to travel the short distance from ours to theirs.

I have a kitchen cupboard that I open every day to retrieve something or other. Today, when I opened it to fetch a clean tea towel I couldn’t help but see the shelf stacked, as it was this time last year, with medication. Liquid morphine, pancreatic enzyme supplements, lorazepam, beta blockers, omeprazole, metoclopramide, steroids and, tucked to one side in a separate bag, anticipatory meds only to be administered by a doctor or district nurse.

So the triggers keep on coming. I keep on bracing myself. Sometimes, it turns out, for nothing. Then, just as my shoulders drop and everything seems lighter and easier, grief sits on my chest in the middle of the night or catches me around the neck with a lasso of longing. As I see it, at least for the foreseeable future, I must be prepared to be unprepared.