Grief and life within the 5th year

My late husband died in November of 2020 but my grieving process started months prior to his death. You see when someone becomes suddenly unwell and sick in Cookies instance a dramatic decline of a very healthy fit young dad to sleeping 20+ hours a day you start Anticipatory Grief.

When your partner turns into a shell of their former self and your caring, bathing, changing and doing all the caregiving things / for someone who at 29 could do for themselves only weeks ago you GREIVE and start to grieve so hard for what life used to be. It’s been a journey and if you’ve been an OG follower from the start you’ve seen me at the absolute depths of darkness.

I’ve openly shared my highs and the lowest of lows - the kind where you just wish it had of been you and not your partner.

Cookie was taken to Geelong Hospital in late October 2020 and that’s where we were told there was no way he was well enough to have any kind of treatment and it was time to take him back closer to home to spend the rest of his days with family and friends. We organised that following day to spend the whole day surrounded with everyone he loved with advice from his care team and he honestly had the best time. He could slightly still string words together, he tried to stay awake for every second that he had his loved ones around him. It was so so beautiful.

The next day while sitting by his side a tear rolled down his face - the only tear I’d seen him ever shed in the past 11 weeks since our world was turned upside down and he just whispered I’m so tired babe. It broke me… it felt like the longest near 2 weeks watching him slowly die. He tackled this journey with such strength, positivity and was always smiling with the she’ll be right attitude. I could have never been that strong but there he was still giving a thumbs up or knuckles. Showing that even in his final days he will always be stronger then I’ll ever be. 

The night Cookie died, when he took his last breath a new grief started surrounding me. He’d held on in palliative care for 12 days and from memory hadn’t eaten for over a week - his body still so young but his Brain Cancer slowly shutting down every part of him. His room decorated in his favourite things, handrawn pictures from the kids and loved ones. Family photos, football jumpers and letters. Minutes after he died the brightest rainbow appeared outside his palliative care room. We never spoke about signs but we took it as one - especially for the kids. To this day whenever we see a rainbow the kids are filled with so much excitement and joy. Mum it’s daddy working his magic again..

While taking all those special things off his hospital room walls only hours after he’d died - cookie in the same room still laying so peacefully looking nothing like he did hours before.  I found myself thinking about all the things he didn’t get to do. All the things we didn’t get to do. How could this happen to us? Why him?

I gently pull the covers up over Cookies shoulders, kissed him one last time, said goodnight babe I love you and turned the room lights off just like it was any normal day. Walking down the hall of the local hospital it felt like the longest walk of my life. All his special memories packed into a little bag - our life broken, shattered. I turned to my mum and yes grief does weird things but I said to her I don’t want to be  lonely for the rest of my life like Nana. Nana was widowed midlife and hadn’t repartnered. This is the crazy thing about grief that there’s absolutely no rule book. No right or wrong way to do it. Just one second at a time, then one minute, then one hour… one foot in front of the other.

That foot in front of the other lead me to home where all the kids where soundly sleeping and I anticipate the question in waking them up near midnight to tell them their daddy had gone to heaven. I let them sleep. They awoke in the morning with cuddles in bed and conversations of where daddy now was. Your grief is one thing but your kids grief that is something else, it absolutely tears you apart. That day while organising all of Cookies things I came across a bucket list in his phone - outlining all of the things he wanted to do. I didn’t know about this list until then. It was so beautifully heartbreaking.

Flowers, home cooked meals, sympathy cards and loved ones filled our home - even with all of this I still felt so lonely the best part of me for the past near 8 years was gone. I was waiting for him to just walk back through the front door and tell me all about his day.

The next few weeks of life after that was a blur it still is. Filled with organising Cookies funeral. Covid-19 holding heartbreaking restrictions on every single aspect of life the fact of needing help and support in a time you couldn’t even visit someone else’s house. Let alone have therapies face to face. Days felt like years, I didn’t sleep. I constantly wrote in the notes of my phone messages to Cookie. Telling him about that day and the struggles we faced. How the kids were doing and how I just wished he didn’t die. I went to bed with a light on for months and always had an oil diffuser going. If I did get sleep I’d be jolted awake from the flashbacks of him struggling the last few days of his life. They were rough really really rough - and one thing I never got told about when someone is dying is they can get the Death Rattle and when that began to happen it absolutely horrified me. Was he in pain? does he know what’s happening? It still haunts me to this day.

After the funeral I said to my parents that we’re staying with me to go and get some rest. My mum and dad had supported and looked after our 3 little kids for the past 3 months  along side mums sister who stayed for the time cookie was in hospital they needed some rest and I honestly thought I could tackle being alone with the kids on my own.. I could to a certain extent but it was hard. All I remember from this first few months is slowly crossing off Cookies bucket list the one id found in his phone the day after he died - we brought our first caravan, I ordered a new dirtbike and continued designing Brain Cancer Merchandise in his memory. I sought out therapies, physiologist, physiatrists, kinesiology, reiki and phychics. Medications upon medications. Appointments after appointments. My Instagram community became some of my biggest support along side my family. Nothing eased the pain, nothing could ever fill that void and you don’t want it to. That first year was hard. I have no memory of how I even functioned.

12 months later I dabbled in dating. One of cookie wishes he voiced to not only me but loved ones is he wanted me to find love again. And although at the time I did not want to hear it, I couldn’t imagine life without him- I look back and that man was just so selfless he wanted us to have a family unit again even if he wasn’t physically here to see it… the thing is  nothing ever felt right. I probably wasn’t ready but I didn’t even know myself. I was a completely different person. I couldn’t even recognise myself in the mirror. The medications, the grief, the absolute train wreck of my life I was so deeply unhappy. I didn’t want to be on medication anymore I didn’t want to look the way I looked anymore. I was all our kids had left and I was so unhealthy. I scheduled myself for gastric sleeve surgery in May of 2022 and 6 weeks before my surgery date I weined myself off all my medication against the advice of my physcairrist. But it was hands down the best thing I ever did for myself, in that part of my life 27 years old 3 kids / 2 years widowed I look back and I’m so freaking proud of her. I could finally cry again, I could grieve and feel all the feelings. My parents holding the fort, my brothers listening to me on a call for hours on end. I was trying to rewrite the future we had planned. And it was so hard trying to do it alone. I found that making decisions was near impossible. I didn’t have my person to bounce ideas off and come to the conclusion of what was right or wrong.

In this time I’d also opened up a shop in our little town. Brain cancer merchandise, kids clothing and toys, home decor and a beauty salon. I never stopped working it kept my mind so busy and I enjoyed every aspect of it.. we started renovating our home and finishing off all the things Cookie had started himself - we planned to be here forever. But I hated going home. I hated pulling into the same street. I hating pulling into the driveway knowing he was gone. I just wanted to pack up and run away. I thought once the house was finished it would be different and I would want to stay but it was far from my expectations. The house absolutely beautiful- set out just the way Cookie wanted it. But I had to sell I had to get out. I closed the shop continued to do a little bit online Merchandise while taking the kids away in the caravan traveling and doing all the things Cookie wanted. We put the house on the market wnd sold our home. In 2023 after house hunting for months and missing out on many homes id fell in love with - a little hobby farm 20 minutes out of town popped up off the market. I pulled up out front and thought no noway i would buy it. But Upon walking inside i fell in love. It needed some work but I could see new memories being made and bringing the kids up on a bit of land with space to run around. Catching butterflies, watching the cows in the dairy farms near by, ride their motorbikes for hours on end. Sold.

 In those 3 months before settlement we got to move in to my parents place something I’m forever grateful for. So many beautiful memories of the kids being right next door to their grandparents it was truly amazing but it was also hard. We were crammed into a 2 bedroom unit the kids all sharing the same room. And like always grief rearing its head. I spiralled towards the end have I made the right decision, will I be able to cope being so far out of town and away from mum and dad my biggest support. But when moving day came around I knew I had made the right choice.

We did a few little renovations on the place, a lick of paint on some of the rooms, new blinds and it was starting to feel like home. I spent alot of nights outside while the kids were inside sleeping around the fire pit outside drowning my sorrows in alcohol. Singing and dancing all alone.

 I think the one thing that I’ve never really voiced but I can’t talk to cookie. I can’t actually sit there and say anything outloud to him but I can write and it’s the notes I read back on that got me through these days. It was such a dark time in my journey. I just didn’t know what to do. I had a new found confidence with losing so much weight from my surgery and I was a completely different person.

 3 years had gone by. We’d lost so many family and friends this particular year to different illnesses, age and it was damn right hard. The last funeral I went to I said no I’m done I am not attending another one for a very long time and thankfully I haven’t. I don’t know how I’d even got to this point but I was starting to become very happy with being alone. Very happy with bringing these kids up on my own and facing what life had to throw at us. It was such a beautiful time - I had started back providing eyelash extensions services to my clients and slowly getting things re landscaped outside turning the place into a vision of mine.

 I think this is where I had this idea overcome me. I’d never just sat with the grief and sad emotions. I had always tried to mask it whether it be with medications, alcohol, dating, food, work - I learnt to just sit with it. In that moment of longing for things to be different and things to be changed I just sat with it. I stopped doing what I was doing, I cried, screamed, laughed and it felt so good. This is the point I realised there is no 6 stages of grief there is a million different layers deeply embedded within each other co existing while navigating through life without your person.

Only months after moving out to our new place one of the boys set our bin on fire and nearly burnt our house down, it ended up being a meet and greet with all the local farmers after the CFA came in and made sure nothing else was one fire.. everyone  was absolutely lovely and helpful. Thankfully I got the bin outside before it spread to any other part of the house. Going to bed that night feeling like I have failed so much as a mum. I was outside mowing the lawns and doing the gardening when this happened, once again grief emmersense me deeply that night. I’m here doing it all on my own again.

Little did I know that there was a man that had been doing some works on the farm that runs along side our property. He’d seen me outside but me with my blinkers on happy with the life we were creating I didn’t take much notice. He did though.  Weeks later we met and I can remember thinking to myself where has this man been. I mean i come with a lot of baggage. I have my days of being good and my days of being absolutely miserable. But he continued to show up, be a shoulder to cry on, be a hand to hold, an ear to listen and a fixer of any problem that arised. The kids met him an feel in love, just like I was.

Nothing has ever been to much for this amazing man, he has brought flowers for my late husbands grave, his cleaned his headstone, his supported me in creating new Brain Cancer Merchandise just when I was ready to give up especially in this economy. When the days are heavy and hard to carry he is there picking up all my broken pieces and trying to put them back together. And I just will never be able to put into words how incredibly lucky but unlucky I feel at the same time.

Grief can give you so many things and I’ve learnt that happiness and sadness can co exist. That your heart will always have room and be big enough for more love if that’s what you choose. But if you don’t choose that it’s also ok.

This is my journey and mine only to tell. It’s all been at my fingertips I am the only one that’s been able to pull myself out of the ruins, try and be the best mum I can and support the broken hearts of the children when they can’t hold their grief anymore. If I hadn’t of made all those choices years ago, it woukdnt have lead me to the story I’m telling today. If I didn’t sell the house, I’d I didn’t do all the work on myself to make me better, if I didn’t open my heart to new opportunities I wouldnt have what I have now. And only a short few days ago this man that was working on the farm next door asked me to be his wife and I said YES! 

I know my story has given so many others in situations hope, and never stop dreaming of those days. Never stop giving  up hope. You are only one decision away from different life. It’s a bloody short go around and although this is only a tiny insight to all the sleepless nights, the end less tears, the longing to just rewind time. It’s something we can’t change, it’s not in our control. But we can choose to live and make this life the best we possibly can.

 I never thought that my 5th year in grief would be written in this way. And with this next chapter of life I know deep within my heart and soul Cookie would be absolutely amazed at where we are in life. A great father figure for the kids, telling them he will never replace Cookie, showing them he will give the kids any opportunity he can, guiding them in how to treat their mum and others with respect and love. A true gift that I will forever be absolutely grateful for.

No not everything happens for a reason sometimes there is not a silver lining, it’s just a shitty card you’ve been dealt and you can only try and do the best you can to navigate the unknown. No matter the loss, a partner, soulmate, sibling, a divorce, a trauma or unexpected life experience.. you don’t have to settle for anything less then you deserve. Surround yourself with the people that love and support you, the ones that want to actually sit at your table and fuk everyone else. 

I’ll never be able to thank every single individual, business or organisation that has helped and guided us through this journey but this is my Thank You. Thanks for all the support in the hard times thanks for everything my family has done for us, the gifts, letters, photos sent into our POBox. The people that continue to show up and share stories with the kids. We appreciate you all. Take care Chloe