pauline
Forum Replies Created
-
Posts
-
Dear Lainy, Darla, Marion and Clare
Thank you for your lovely replies and for the support you provide. I think of you often and known that we share so much and understand each other well. It has been a tough time for me again this summer and there are still lots of tears when I am alone with my thoughts and memories. I feel calmer now that I have left London where all those terrible events took place and can relax in surroundings that held happier memories.
Take care everyone and thank you again.
With love
PaulineComing back here has made me feel I want to contribute in some way again. I thought I needed time away from cc but, actually, I now realise I need the warmth of your support, Marion, Darla, Lainy and everyone and, hopefully, I can give something to others who are suffering too. Only we really understand what we have all been through.
How terribly distressing it is to read of so many others still suffering and, if I’m honest, I am stronger but am still suffering too.
I just wish you were closer rather than all that way across the ocean!
Sending you my love from a very beautiful and very hot Tuscany.
Pauline xxDear Marion, Lainy and Darla thank you for your comforting replies. I felt that it was more than a dream too, Lainy. I often think of our meeting in Barcelona, Marion and, of course, I often think of you, Darla, as you know.
I have been absent for a while as I found it hard to focus on cc for a while but I will be back now and will try to contribute in whatever way I can.
Thank you again.
With love
Pauline xxOh Julia, I’m so sorry to hear about Susan. I have just read these posts and am so sorry for your loss and also that I didn’t check these posts sooner.
Although I only met Susan once I thought she was a lovely, interesting, vibrant woman and also a very brave and determined one. I know you will miss her terribly and I hope you have a lot of support from your loved ones. You were an amazing support to Susan throughout her illness and I could tell from that one meeting that she thought the world of you as you did of her. If you would like to meet up for a coffee and a chat at some point, I will be there.
Take care!
With much love
Pauline xxThank you everyone for your kind replies. It is so helpful to know you are all out there in different parts of the world undestanding how hard life can be. I am forcing myself to work and to keep busy but this is getting harder and harder and is not helped by the fact that the UK has virtually come to a stand still due to snow so I can’t get into work at the moment.
Teresa, Italy is so beautiful and Verona is certainly no exception. I am keeping away from Italy at the moment as I have found it too hard without Anthony lately. However, I have told myself that I will go if I am not going to be alone, so perhaps we should do this together next year. Everyone is welcome! Darla, we always seem to go through these stages together, don’t we?
Anyway, thank you again. I am thinking of you all!
Keep in touch!
Love
PaulineHello everyone,
Time is running on again and I am wondering how you all are. I am struggling to keep going. The adrenalin that semed to accompany my grief to keep me moving, wore off in July and, I am now prepared to admit, that what has followed has been very hard. I seem to have lost my desire to keep busy and would gladly curl up and hibernate from the world.
I am finding it very hard to face the fact that I have to struggle through all those anniversaries for a third time. This month Anthony and I both had our birthdays and mine would have been an important one this time as it was the date we had agreed I would retire. We had so many plans and I have not been able to avoid thinking of what might have been. So what next? Another cold winter, another Christmas, another new year, another wedding anniversary and another spring with memories of Anthony’s pain leading to the terrible trauma again of his final weeks to be followed by another lonely empty summer. I feel I have been brave and have done all this twice now and am finding doing it all for the 3rd time somehow even more difficult, without that adrenalin to force me on.
So there we have it. This is all so hard and some days I feel I just can’t be bothered. There have been a lot of tears!
It would be lovely to hear form you all, my friends as I know you are going through it all too.
Take care and do keep in touch!
Love
PaulineDear Claude,
I am very sorry to hear about your father’s prognosis. Of course, with cc it is very hard to predict how long your father may have with you. He may do a lot better than the doctors think and there may be other treatments he can benefit from.
There is so much time for sadness later. In my view this is the time to be positive and to reflect on how much your father means to you, to think of all the things you want to say to him and to plan how you can make the time he has left as happy and as meaningful as possible. I realise you are in shock at the moment but in a little time, hopefully, you can avoid thinking of the future and live in the present, creating beautiful memories that will help to sustain you all in the difficult times that may lie ahead.
With very best wishes,
PaulineHello my friends!
How are you all? I am thinking of you and, especially, of you, Darla as the second anniversary of losing Jim approaches. I hope you will try your hardest to replace the painful memories with beautiful ones of the good times spent together for so many years.
I am still in Italy, surrounded by such beauty and history that is hard to describe. I have tried to keep myself busy since Anthony’s second anniversary and to be a bit more sociable. This has helped a bit and next week it’s back to the UK and work. I find these transitions very hard and am having trouble facing the thought of another academic year beginning and the same routine continuing – onto the tred mill again! I have decided not to give it too much thought and I suppose I’ll just have to get on with it.
I would love to hear how you all are so please keep in touch!
Take care!
Love
PaulineDear Margaret,
It is good to hear from you. Please don’t ever feel you are intruding. You have lost your husband to this terrible cancer too and we are all here to support each other. I am sorry you didn’t have access to a forum like this seven years ago. We really find it very helpful to link with people who understand how we feel and I hope you will too.
I wonder if you are a teacher as you have this end of term problem too. For me it coincides with the anniversary of the last few weeks of my husband Anthony’s life and I find it such a difficult time, compounded by everyone else’s joy at the start of the long summer break.
Like Darla I still don’t think I have really grasped what has happened and, even though Anthony and everything that happened to him, is constantly on my mind I still feel very confused about what has happened.
I thought of going to the hospital today where Anthony spent so much time. I thought I might just sit in the cafe by the main entrance and watch people pass by and let the memories flood in. However, I still feel unwell and didn’t want to pass on my germs. I then thought of going to the garden of the hospice where Anthony died but I thought this would be too painful. In the end I looked at some photos of happier times and felt a bit better.
As Darla says, Margaret, we have a lot in common, so please come back here at any time and tell us how you are.
Take care
With love
PaulineThank you Teresa, Darla, Marion and Julia for getting in touch with me. I really value your support. I just wanted to let you know that I have taken it very slowly this week, partly because I have got a bit of flu as well, and am feeling a bit stronger again. I have reflected and have spent some time doing some work on the albumn I have been making of our life together. I can’t often bring myself to do this but it helped this time as I remembered lovely, happy times.
I am going to Italy on Tuesday and have had supportive messages from my neighbour who were worried when I told them I wasn’t going this week as planned. It is good to know that people understand.
Thank you again everyone for your support. Let me know how you are!
With love,
PaulineHello everyone,
I am thinking of you all as usual and hoping you are getting along as best you can. For Darla and I this is our very difficult time of year, isn’t it, Darla? Anthony and Jim were both living their last weeks 2 years ago at this time.
This terrible time coincides for me with the start of the school summer holidays. On Friday the schools in Leicester, where I work 4 days a week, broke up. Everyone was wishing each other happy holidays and asking where people were going. I remembered how this day used to be when I would rush excitedly home from school to see Anthony and get ourselves ready for our drive over to Italy for the summer. That first evening in London, prior to setting off, would usually involve a rather spicy curry from the local take away and a few glasses of red wine, either French or Italian. A few days later we would set off and spend a night in France and another with Tony’s brother in Switzerland en route to our home in Tuscany. Such happy times!
On Friday, I returned from Leicester at about 6.00pm and I arrived at St Pancras station where I get the local train home. However, this time I didn’t want to continue my journey. I didn’t want to go home. I sat in a cafe in St Pancras thinking of the empty summer ahead, of going to Italy once again alone and just cried for the life and the love I have lost. After a while, I pulled myself together and came home. I had a plane ticket booked for Italy for tomorrow but realised I just didn’t want to go. I have come off the conveyor belt that keeps me moving and takes me nowhere and I just want to stand still for a while and cry.
So that’s what I’m doing. I will go to Italy next week but for now I am reliving the last days and nights I spent with my lovely man. So much pain and torment, a few beautiful moments and such overwhelming sadness.
I will be back soon to speak some more.
With love
PaulineHello everyone,
How are you Teresa? I have been thinking of you and everything you ‘ve been through. It is so hard and I hope you are getting a lot of support. How are all of you Darla, Janet, Sue, Joyce and everyone? It would be lovely to hear from you.
I continue to fill my time with work and other things but I know I’m not really getting anywhere. I still think of Anthony all the time and wonder how all this has happened. For Anthony’s second anniversary I am trying to get his last book published, which will be a meaningful memorial as as people will learn from it and Anthony’s ideas and work will live on.
I can’t believe another year has nearly gone by without him and all I have done is fill in time. I have tried to avoid going back to the calendar to look at what was happening each day at this time 2 years ago but I still recall the events and the trauma returns. The long days and warmer weather bring such sadness and I have no perspective on the future. I doubt this will ever change.
I hope you are all ok and I expect you keep busy as I do. Do you find that you always have to have a next step planned? I never live in the present, only in the past and the near future.
Take care everyone and do keep in touch!
With love
PaulineDear Teresa,
I am so sorry to hear that you have now lost your husband as well as your son. The sadness in life is so hard to bear and you are having to bear so much. You have been a great support to all of us and now we are here for you, understanding how you feel and ready to help in any way we can.
You sound completely exhausted with all you have been through. Please try to get some rest. You have given so much and I’m sure your support helped your husband to carry on for that extra 18 months. I am pleased you had that time together and hope there will be lots of lovely memories for you to cherish as time goes on.
I am thinking of you at this time.
Please take care. I hope you have a lot of support around you.
With love
PaulineDear everyone,
I can’t believe it is so long since I posted on here. I thought it was just a few weeks ago! I keep so busy that I lose track of time and do tend to forget when things happened and when I did things. This isn’t good and I must work at it!
I hope you are all ok. I am alright but do just keep busy and still can’t think beyond the short term. The future frightens me so I just carry on filling time, with something in my mind seeming to tell me that Anthony hasn’t really gone and that he will be back. I suppose I still can’t believe that the world can really go on without him. I still look for him in crowded places because it seems that, if so many people are there, then he must be there too.
Last night was the first time I have spent a general election night without Anthony. He would have been there with me expressing his views and discussing it all with me. I watched it all alone and tried to imagine what he would have been saying. I hate the fact that the world still goes on and that he misses so much – it is so unfair! He kept predicting this huge crisis of capitalism and never lived to see how it would unfold.
Work is still my life line and I often spend several hours a day travelling by train to get to Leicester, where I do a lot of my work. One positive thing is that I have forced myself to get back into reading again. For so long I found myself saying to people that I couldn’t concentrate to read. Eventually, I decided just to force myself and it has worked. I still lose concentration while reading so it is a slow process but I am sticking with it because otherwise I think my mind will turn to mush! So far the books have to include themes of death and grief that I can relate to!
Anyway, enough about me. How are you Darla, Joyce, Sue, Janet and everyone? I an thinking of you all!
Take care!
Love
PaulineHi everyone,
I hope you are all ok! I have been working very hard and have had a horrible dull headache for the last 5 days that just won’t go away so that’s getting me down a bit because it’s hard to work well and very hard to sleep. I can’t even have a relaxing glass of wine at the end of a hard day!
Spring might be finally on the way here. We have had some sunshine and the weather is just a little milder. The spring flowers are late though! It will be a relief to get this hard winter over. I feel as though I have been hibernating for months and months!
About that get together. You could all come over to Tuscany in the summer! It is very beautiful and relaxing and I will be there throughout the month of August. So, what do you say? I know it’s a long way, especially for you , Janet, but what a chat we would have!!
Take care everyone!
Love
Pauline
