Grief

Denial
Anger
Bargaining
Depression
Acceptance

These are the supposed "5 stages of grief"

Talk to almost anyone who watches television and they'll recognise some form of this from a show they watch, for me it's the episode of Scrubs, My Five Stages, in it J.D. and Dr. Cox go through the five stages of grief with their favourite patient, Mrs. Wilk, who is declining in health.

Let me tell you something about the 5 stages of grief,

It is 

B
O
L
L
O
C
K
S

Now I'm not saying it won't be that way for some people but it is portrayed as the way grief should be dealt with and I believe that can be very damaging as we all process death and loss much in the same way as we process everything, differently

I for one have never dealt with denial or bargaining, I can't deny Elizabeth died, it happened, I was there and who can I bargain with? God? HA! I gave up believing in fairy tales long ago

Anger and Depression though, they my two new best friends. I hate them both but like a bad smell they are determined to linger and they don't take turns or go away afterwards. I have been angry multiple times in the last five months, sometimes at people, sometimes at myself, lots of times at completely random objects. The tin opener broke on me a few weeks ago whilst I was halfway through opening a tin and boy did I have a good ten minutes where I hulk smashed that useless thing until it was in multiple pieces and my hand was sore

Acceptance... I don't think I'll ever get there, how am I supposed to accept this? I'll never get to hold her hand again or smell her hair as she snuggles close to me in bed, I'll never get to see the look of pride on her face as Guenhwyvar does something new. I even miss the way she would get so annoyed at the smallest things and I just don't think I'll ever accept that she's not here to do those things or any of the other many things that made me love her so much.

We don't talk about death enough, we're all so terrified by our own mortality that we shut it out. We may not have to deal with our own death but those we leave behind do, I'm not suggesting long depressing conversations about funerals and the meaning of life but we all go at sometime and burying our heads in the sand hasn't worked so far so maybe it's time to change the way we think about it all.

Hi Angel Face

I stood at the sink this afternoon doing some washing up and I started crying, hard. It was the hardest I've cried in a few months. There was no reason, no song that reminded me of you, nothing remotely sad to set me off but I bawled my eyes out like my wife had just died, oh wait...

Seriously though, as I said last time I haven't had enough time to myself to process this and right now I just want to wallow a little and be sad, you were everything I ever wished for and I'm really feeling your absence right now. Three years ago we were in Tenerife, we'd just found out you were pregnant and our life was pretty damn good and today I spent my fourth straight day without leaving the house, I think The Squidge is getting cabin fever!

I do my best to avoid interacting with people, you know me, I hate everyone and everything seems stupid to me but you didn't get annoyed with me or force me to go to places/things I didn't want to. If I did go to something with you 95% of the time it was just because I wanted to spend the time with you and you luckily had a handful of friends who I actually liked, who have all contacted me at various stages and I have been terrible at replying to them, got some apologies to make to them.

Love you Angel Face 😘😍

This came on in the delivery suite when Elizabeth was in labour with Guenhwyvar

and we both instantly loved it!

A tremendous cover of a fantastically written song

Broken

Hi Angel Face,

I've sat down a bunch of times in the past week to write something but every time I have walked away from the keyboard having either typed a few words or nothing at all. I've never been the greatest person at articulating my thoughts and feelings, it was one of the most underrated things about you, you had a knack of knowing what I meant even through my incoherent ramblings! But being unable to get anything out but not knowing why was really having a negative affect on me but laying in bed last night I realised what was stopping me,

Quite simply, I'm broken and I really don't know how to not be

For the past five months I've put on the brave face and dealt with the avalanche of shit that has descended on me since your death, I filled the forms in, made the phone calls, waited for responses/decisions, chased responses/decisions and I've done all this whilst trying to be a parent, something that, no matter what everyone tries to tell me, I've been failing miserably at. I have done nothing fun or exciting with The Boy when he comes here, I've been content to just let him spend the overwhelming majority of the time in his room on his Xbox because it's easier for me.

The Squidge doesn't know what has happened, seriously if you walked through the door this afternoon her reaction would be exactly the same as it was before, she'd shout "MUMMY" then run and fling herself at you. I made a really conscious effort in the early weeks to keep everything as normal as possible for her and I think I did an alright job at it but as time has gone on I feel like I'm just doing the basics and honestly sometimes barely managing that. She's fed and has clean clothes, well for about five minutes until she finds some way to get herself dirty, but I don't interact enough with her, I'm short tempered with her and let stupid little things she does irritate me way more than I should, she's two for goodness sake, doing stupid things is a toddlers job! She's having a nap right now but I've cleared the floor in the lounge and after she has some lunch I'm going to get the paints out and we're going to get messy. It's a small step but I know she'll enjoy herself

What I've not done in the past five months is take any meaningful time for myself, sure I've had days where The Squidge stayed out and I've done things either on my own or with others but they are barely sticky plasters over a gaping wound, I feel normal for a short while but the the darkness descends on me again and the despair of living without you gnaws away at me. I never feel guilty for trying to enjoy myself but not being able to talk to you about it afterwards crushes any enjoyment I felt.

The best way I can emphasise how I'm affected by everything is by explaining that in the past 10 days I've watched Rangers reach a cup final and beat a team who were Champions League quarter finalists last year and telling you that I barely reacted to either win, you commented a few times that you envied the passion I had for Rangers but it just seems so "meh" now. It's all meaningless without you, hell I even take it back when I said I'd choose bacon over you!

I need some time away, preferably in a remote location with no distractions where I can find an empty field and scream or a room where I can curl up in the fetal position and lose myself in the blackness for a while but I've been saying this for months now and there's constantly a handful of things at all times that's stopping me being able to do it. Obviously there's The Squidge, I can't just leave her own her own with a weeks worth of cheese, the stupid little admin stuff that still hasn't been sorted because other people, people who would say that they loved you and only want the best, are holding up for reasons that may sound reasonable to them but when held up against any normal person logic are quite frankly shoddy at best, reasons that where you here to listen to would make you livid. Livid but not surprised (Yeah, I know you are reading this, though it seems a tad hypocritical seeing as you wouldn't answer my calls and have blocked me from contacting you...)

I'm broken and some of the pieces have been lost forever, I'll never be "fixed" I do wish I had the chance to sort through the pieces

Love you Angel Face 😘😍
(I know I incoherently rambled but you'd get it, and fix it)

Oh, by the way I've decided that I'd have dropped enough hints about the Lego® 1989 Batmobile that you would have bought it for me so I'm gonna do that... Thank you 😁

In honour of MCR reuniting and me clearly not being okay...

Hell if you can't watch this video and listen to the lyrics and relate then you are obviously a lizard person