I’ve noticed that many of the grief blogs I’ve looked at stopped after a year. It’s as if getting through 365 days is all that’s required. It’s not. In fact, after 14 months I’m starting to believe the second year may even be worse than the first.

Stripped of the opportunity to say ‘Well, this time last year’, I’ve found the days longer and lonelier and the nights darker and heavier, and while the movement of warm, sunny days to the chillier months of autumn felt somewhat in keeping with my general sense of ennui last year, this year they seem to have become more what the Germans refer to as weltschmerz; an increased world-pain and dissatisfaction. I have a growing sense that nothing I thought I knew applies anymore.

Now the difficulty I have in keeping this blog now is that I am now wandering dangerously into that territory that everyone always asks about but only those that are grieving can comprehend.

I’ve already mentioned elsewhere that I hate terms like ‘moving on’ or ‘going forward’. Not only do I not find those type of things relevant or helpful, I also believe there is an implication in the phrases that the words don’t actually possess.

Take ‘moving on’, for example, taken literally it’s barely worth saying – I mean, if you’re alive and not suicidal, then what else can you do? By dint of waking up every morning you’re surely moving on? No, what people really mean when they ask you that is, ‘Have you met anyone else yet?’ or, at least ‘Are you thinking of going out to meet someone else yet?’. For ‘moving on’ insert ‘moving upwards’; if not intentionally upwards from the relationship you had previously, then at least upwards from where you’re perceived to be in the dark pit of grief.

Now a lot of this I’ve covered in previous blogs and I don’t want to reiterate it again now, but you can always laugh at something again, have nice holidays, good days out, meet different people, see and do things you may not have even done had your loved one not passed away. (N.B. Note it’s 14 months but I still can’t use the D word!). If you live then, by definition, you’re moving on.

But that’s not what we’re talking about here, is it? We’re talking about opening yourself up to the possibilities of meeting someone, finding another relationship, and perhaps loving again. I know people who’ve done it, some of you reading this may do too. It happens. We’re talking about – arghh! I hate the word – dating.

Now we’re back with someone I mentioned previously in  My Precious – Part One the Television Presenter Simon Thomas, who gave a voice to grief when he tragically lost his wife to Leukaemia in 2017. Just today, I saw an interesting article about his new relationship and finding love after grief. In a piece in which he thanks his new girlfriend, Thomas is quoted as describing her as ‘A woman of boundless love, kindness and compassion who has loved me when I was hard to love, picked me up when I was in pieces.’ It’s touching and it would be a mean-spirited person who would deny him his happiness.

Interestingly though later – and I only saw this after I’d started this blog – I note he ‘struggles to describe his new relationship as ‘moving on’. ‘We only have two choices’ he says. I’d love to meet Simon; I’m sure we’d have some fascinating conversations.

My difficulty here though is how far I can take any experiences I have personally regarding – I’m sorry! – dating and correlate it with my grief. Has one anything to do with the other?

Just to explain this fully, I had occasion to speak to someone last week who had gone through a hideous divorce. Unable to cope with the situation, this person had eventually decided to get some counselling, and was astonished to find, in the course of his sessions, that he was diagnosed with several personality traits / disorders that meant his inability to cope with the collapse of his marriage wasn’t entirely down to the divorce itself and, in fact, these very traits, led him to discover things about himself that may even have led to reasons why his marriage didn’t survive in the first place.

While I’ve not gone the grief counselling route yet – although if things continue as they are I may well still try it – I am concerned that I may well find out things about myself that are affecting the way I think now. Frankly, it wouldn’t be a major surprise. In turn, if that does occur, then anything gleaned as a single man trying mature dating, may well say more about me and how I perceive myself, than anything to do with – look, let’s just go with once, eh? – moving on.

There is a serious danger that certain circumstances may move this from being a grief blog to one about senior dating, and I don’t want that. I’ve also not even covered the part that leads to these first steps anyway; the loneliness, the need for female company and, hell yes!, the need for sex. My parents, friends, family or my children could read this. Do I want that?

You can see why this blog took the best part of two weeks to complete. I’ve got a bit to think about here…