Today marks one year since my husband’s diagnosis. 365 days, since life changed in an instant. You can read about what led to my husbands diagnosis here.
The reality is that when you are forced to face something scary, your body has this amazing response of protection. Your body goes into a kind of survival. As soon as the Doctor quietly said the words ” Daniel you have cancer” nothing was about Me anymore. Everything I did, everything I said, only became about my Husband and the devastating news that we just heard. As a wife and as a Mother, I ignored the impact of what was happening and how it would affect Me.
In the hours that followed the diagnosis I recall a numbness. An emptiness. Daniel and I just lay on the bed silent. It was the loudest silence I have ever felt in my life.
When I think back to those hours of stillness and desolation, I’m aware that it was my body trying to protect me. My heart rate slowed. My breathing slowed. My hands and feet so cold, it was my body’s way of safeguarding me from pure fear, The threat. It was my body’s defence and attempt of survival.
I think it is easy for us as loved ones of cancer patients to push our own feelings aside. To promise to deal with them another time, but when does that time come ? From the diagnosis you go onto treatment, to chemotherapy, radiotherapy and then bad news and then more bad news, until treatment stops because it’s failing and then He is gone. There isn’t time to even consider your own feelings and to really delve into what you as an individual are going through. What life now looks like for you.
It isn’t until the stillness and the aftermath that you can really start to unravel what you went through. I think that’s why this grief process is so difficult, because it’s not just the grief of losing your best friend and Partner, it is the trauma of that first diagnosis and everything in between. It’s finally making sense of what you went through and dealing with the feelings that your body protected you from for so long.
I think it is important that I address the trauma of the diagnosis. Like most days, I will try to be kind to myself. I will sit with my thoughts a little bit longer, let the tears flow, scream in the shower, remember the conversations with Daniel, the love we shared, whatever I need to, to get through another difficult day.
There is hope though. There is hope that when it is 2 years to the day of Daniel’s diagnosis that it won’t be as hard as it is this year. That facing my feelings head on today will give me some clarity for next year, It will always be difficult on these significant days, but maybe it will be just that little bit easier next time.
Surviving Widowhood 