Cherry's
funeral took place on 5th December. We started the day with the service
for immediate family at West Wiltshire Crematorium in Semington, and you can
see the order of service here.
In the afternoon, we had a much larger Service of Thanksgiving at our
local parish church, All Saints in All Canning's, attended by friends and
family from around the country. You can see that order of service here.
During
the Thanksgiving Service our son-in-law, Chiff, gave a wonderful tribute to
Cherry, and you can see the text of that here.
The day finished with a reception at the local pub, The King's Arms, during
which people were able to leave comments and memories, which were then added to
the many comments and memories I'd received over the preceding weeks, and all
collated in a Things
They Said document (nicely formatted by my publishing daughter-in-law,
Ruth).
Hopefully
those links above worked, but I've copied the full links at the bottom of this
blog. If you're having any trouble viewing the various documents, I'm
very happy to email them out on request.
Finally
it occurred to me that although there seem to be quite a lot of blogs by people
dealing with terminal illness, such as Cherry’s, there don’t seem to be many by
survivors about how they cope with the loss and open a new chapter in their
lives. So, with the encouragement of friends and family, I thought I would have
a go. I already keep a diary but that’s usually scrawled out at the end of the
day, is often late, not particularly thoughtful and certainly not intended for
anyone else to read. It’s just a bald record – little more. This occasional
blog which I'll call 'A Survivor's Tale' will try to be more reflective.
A Survivor's Tale
Beginning
to Come to terms....4th January 2018
Cherry
died over five weeks ago and the ferment of the family’s activities in
arranging for the funeral and memorial service, keeping everyone informed and
so on was a kind of distraction which kept me in a daze, interspersed with
occasional tearfulness when reminders hit. And then it was Christmas when the
house filled up again and there was a lot of noise, eating, drinking and
laughing. I really hadn't fully appreciated before that it's perfectly
possible for grieving people to enjoy themselves. Perhaps it's part of the
defence mechanism for people to be able to laugh and find things interesting at
one level while being really sad at another - and all at the same time. One
level doesn't exclude the other. But this protective mechanism is much harder
for me to construct when I'm on my own of course. Then the new reality becomes
much harder to forget, even temporarily.
I
thought it would be a good idea to get away myself and so booked in for 3
nights at Rosa’s delightful cottage in Higher Clovelly, Devon. It’s familiar (I
think I’ve been there 16 times already over the years) but sufficiently
different for me to better able to do some initial thinking about how to come
to terms with the situation. Some hopes! I found the exigencies of living and
surviving ferociously cold and windy weather, and to get in the necessary local
visits to beaches and cliffs kept me too busy for much in the way of
reflection.
Things
didn’t go to plan anyway. First of all, I reached the second planned
stop, Tarr Steps on Exmoor and realised that I had left behind the suitcase
that had most of the essentials for the stay, so I just turned round and drove
all the way home, arriving after dark and almost giving Jennie (house and cat
sitter) a heart attack by banging on the door for admission. I grabbed the
case, with profuse apologies, and drove straight back to Devon, with only a
brief coffee stop at the Bridgewater services. 430 miles more or less straight
off! By the time I had settled in, it was well past midnight. The following
morning in wet and blustery weather, I was suddenly blinded by a shaft of
sunlight on the windscreen and drove straight into the elevated kerb of a
traffic calming island and burst one of my front tyres. I was lucky in that there
was a lay-by for me to limp into. I needed the RAC as it was impossible to use
the jack but the very competent mechanic arrived in 30 minutes and quickly
sorted me out, giving me detailed instructions on where to get a replacement in
Bideford. I was lucky there too as the wheel wasn’t damaged and there was
no-one else waiting. I even did my shopping at the Morrisons over the road
while it was being put on and managed Hartland Quay in what remained of the
afternoon. Heavy sleet deterred me continuing a coastal walk afterwards.
The
following day was fine. I revisited all the familiar places we used to go to,
reliving the memories, and took the necessary photos. They included Morwenstow
church and coast.
That
evening a cosy fire in the woodburner and I read some of a naval book
that Julia over the road thought I might be interested in. I was - not
least because I had taken one of my very rarely watched naval battles DVD to
watch that by a strange coincidence was directly relevant to it. It was time to
go home on the day after that and I decided to go by way of Exmoor as I'd
missed out on that on the way down. Bad mistake! I spent my time dodging
fallen trees and at one point driving through brown axle-deep water on a back
road whilst wondering what I would do if I stalled. There was no phone signal
of course. My favourite coffee-shop in Dulverton turned out to be closed. I was
glad finally to reach the comparative security of a dark and busy motorway
hissing with torrential rain and covered in the spray of the lorries I passed. After
all that Wansdyke Cottage did seem very much like home. After that a few
days of recovery before my fantastic family reappeared and Christmas, with all
of its endless treats and distractions, was upon us. These included local
family walks to Stonehenge and the Downs.
One
thing I have found to be true, when such distractions are not available, is
that, as Shelagh my sister-in-law remarked, is that in such circumstances one's
brain turns to mush and even immediate priorities become very hard to
establish. I find myself going from one room to another and then forgetting
what I went there for. A nice example of this mushiness occurred on the 13th
December when I parked at Roses the ironmongers in Devizes, bought something
and left the car there while popping in for a blood test at the Doctors' next
door. When I got back, in steady rain, I found I had left the car unlocked, the
driver's door wide open and my wallet and phone on the rather wet seat. It's a
good job Devizes is such an honest place to live - unless of course the local
heavies thought it too much like a honey trap.
So
one unexpected aspect of a life without Cherry is a stern determination to be
more orderly, to have agendas and lists for every day, although finding the
right list at the time I want them still presents something of a challenge.
Another is a determination to get to grips with all the procedures required to
run a household which she managed almost exclusively with such artless
expertise. Where did she get the bird-seed from; when does the oil-lorry
appear? How much does the window-cleaner get? But all this is another story
and for another posting…
Links
Crematorium
Order of Service: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1ioTRnh8ZVHw62VhYf1vcNL_7N-kIKVt8/view?usp=sharing
Service
of Thanksgiving Order of Service: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1J8L5CAVdt7E6s2moMoXxHxkDI-DgsztU/view?usp=sharing
Things
They Said About Cherry: https://drive.google.com/file/d/1AT_7ZSLxDJSw64B7z1kFfUmvKMbIt68t/view?usp=sharing
No comments:
Post a Comment