There Goes The Cure

I started bereavement counselling in April, a session a week for eight weeks. It came to an end yesterday with my final session. I didn’t go into counselling expecting that it could in some way ‘fix’ me- there’s no cure for bereavement, grief and loss. Isaac’s death will always be there and that’s that in a way, what we have to do is learn to live with it and try to find a way to rebuild our lives without him. Bereavement counselling also isn’t the type of counselling where there is a flash of light as everything shifts, or falls into place or suddenly a new path becomes clear- at least that’s my experience. It has been a weekly opportunity for an hour to talk about ‘it’- Isaac, grief and loss, life going on and all the other stuff that starts to bleed in- with someone who is trained to listen and to prompt and question (at times). It’s been useful as somewhere to drop all my emotional stuff once a week. I think I’ll miss it now it’s gone but am probably better equipped to manage without it. It has helped me untangle some of the thoughts, find my way through them- and my counsellor has been really good at helping me do that. 

Our bereavement counselling has been provided by MacMillan. Their counselling (staffed by volunteers mainly) is available for any adults who have suffered a bereavement, it doesn’t have to be cancer related. I don’t think this is widely known. The occupational health team connected to my workplace didn’t know this. This also confirms to me the state of affairs at the moment. My referral for counselling to our local health care trust brought me to an assessment quite quickly but I was then advised that an appointment for counselling through the NHS could take ‘up to three months’- they don’t have the staff or the budget to see anyone quicker than that unless they are suicidal. Charities like MacMillan step in to the gap of an underfunded and under resourced NHS.

One of the most unpleasant side effects of grief, particularly present back in the period from January through to April, was a series of flashbacks I suffered. When Isaac died the three of us were with him. The consultant who had seen many people die from Covid told us what would happen and it was largely as he described. In Isaac’s last hour we were sitting on his hospital bed with him. I was sitting facing him, holding his hands and looking at him. When the moment came I was right in front of him and with him, looking at him. For some time afterwards, I would unexpectedly get flashbacks to the moment he died. They started happening on Tuesdays- Tuesday was the day he died- and would often come when I was driving. For an instant I was back in the room, holding his hands and looking at his face. I would smell the room and feel the pain. They would pass fairly quickly but for the moment the flashback was present, it was deeply unsettling and very unpleasant. I started to dread Tuesday mornings. Once it got past 12.45pm (the time he died) I would be ok, it would pass, but then I’d be waiting for the next Tuesday. When I started counselling in April I described all of this in one of my early sessions (the woman I spoke to from occupational health at around that time said the flashbacks were 'rather concerning' and commonly associated with PTSD). A few weeks ago, on an evening in early May as I pulled onto the motorway to drive to Tuesday night 5- a- side, I had a horrific flashback, the full on ‘back in the room’ experience. It left me short of breath, completely overwhelming me, knocking the wind out of me. Luckily the motorway was quiet and it passed quickly, I focussed on the road and sort of pushed it away. When I pulled in at the car park I got my phone out and wrote it down as a note, just described what had happened. I talked about it at counselling two days later and last week we went back to it and discussed strategies for dealing with it. We talked about it again yesterday and the realisation I haven't had one now for some time and about how I'd deal with one if I did. I haven’t had one since that one in May. Maybe the counselling, the talking, the passing of time and the acceptance has helped. 

I don’t mind some of the aspects of grief. That sounds weird I know. As time goes on and the raw, physical pain lessens, redcues as a permanent feature of living, as a day to day emotional state There are times and triggers when the crashing waves of grief and loss still come. Visiting Isaac’s grave does it. When we go, the sheer enormity of what has happened, of him dying, hits me anew (not every time but most). There are little things that trigger it: a photo popping up in my social media memories; the memory of somewhere we went or something we did; an encounter with someone who we haven’t seen since he died or who didn’t know; a memory of him randomly crossing my mind. When it comes I let it happen, I don’t try to suppress it. I almost welcome the fact that even now, nearly seven months on, it can poleaxe me, take my breath away, cause me to gulp and well up. It provides a link to him. I can feel it and then come up out of it, almost like diving into water and then getting resurfacing as you get through the surface and breathe air again. My counsellor described finding something to ground yourself at these moments, something tangible. The pain feels real and then it passes. 

Counselling has helped me with all of this. There’s no cure for what’s happened. It becomes a matter of accepting it and finding ways of coping. I’m relieved the flashbacks seem to have gone for the moment. Some of the other physical symptoms remain- the tinnitus is still present first thing in the morning and at occasions where it’s silent and I suddenly notice that my ears are ringing. My jaw clenching and tooth grinding is still there but also lessened, less acute than before. Sleep is still a bit hit and miss at times. But we agreed yesterday at the end of my final session that I've made progress- the fact that other, day to day stuff has become a bit more pre- occupying suggest that I'm moving on in some way, thoughts of Isaac and the grief are not ever-present like they were. She said there's still a 'heaviness' about me but I've come a long way from the person who turned up at the first session back in April. And that is good. 

There Goes The Cure

This 1993 song by One Dove with Andrew Weatherall on magic dust sprinkling  and production duties suggested itself to me while writing this post. Listening to it as I finished tidying the post up I thought it might be too close to the bone, and lyrically it is almost too much... 

'One cut too many/ One more life to go... losing a shadow/ Losing another soul/ So many echoes/ He's gone'. 

Tears come, again. But it fits very well and with those pianos and the post acid house/ comedown production, and that part where the dubby bass pushes its way through especially, it also feels like dawn has come and there might be a way forward after all.