'There was no opportunity for a bucket list. We instead made a list of things we would do when Ben got better. 'He died less than a month before his 40th birthday, making me a widowed mother of two at the age of 38.'
The sun warms my skin through the open patio doors as I feed our youngest daughter. The paramedic, the third to arrive at our house in the past 30 minutes, asks whether I would like him to resuscitate my husband should he go into cardiac arrest.The reality is he is dying and it is happening much quicker than either of us are prepared for. “It’s not like it is in the movies and he is in a bad way,” the paramedic explains, as tears fall from my cheeks onto our daughter’s face.
The learning curve was huge for us both. My role became the caregiver, advocate and doer of things to help Ben stay alive. His role was to survive. But through it all, his desire to live pushed him on. He only once spoke of dying and his concern wasn’t for himself, but for those he was leaving behind.
There is no preparation for this, nothing that can soften the blow. When you wake and realise your husband is no longer just sleeping, but dead, everything changes.. Not one single part of your life is left unscathed by the cataclysmic event. It is like a tsunami has hit, its epicentre smack bang in your heart and the waves reverberating through every layer of your being.
I struggled the most when the girls were in bed. Nighttimes became my nemesis. The evenings would stretch out ahead of me and I was taunted by memories of what I would be doing with Ben if he were still alive. I tried to lose myself in glasses of red wine. Everything becoming uniform – no peaks and troughs, just flat.
Sometimes, I wished that life was as it had been before. There were wonderful moments when I woke up in the morning and briefly forgot Ben was gone. Something would happen and I’d think, “Ooh, I must tell Ben that when I get home.” I kept picking up his favourite thing in the supermarket then remembering I didn’t like it, so I put it back. I kept looking for his car on the drive.
When the worst thing imaginable has happened in life, letting go of any control is huge but the relief and freedom in doing so is amazing. It took me a long time to realise that I cannot control everything and to stop trying to control everything. I had been looking in the wrong place for safety and security all along. I was looking outside of myself when I needed to be my own place of safety and security.
France Dernières Nouvelles, France Actualités
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