As I mentioned last year in Five Years (Preface) , I intended to end this blog at the five year anniversary of Gail’s passing. That’s still the case and this will definitely be the last post, but the problem has been that I’ve been struggling for some months now to find a way of ending this neatly. I didn’t want to just finish it abruptly without some sort of final summation or farewell, but equally I’ve not been sure how to approach it all either.

Though I began Sign-Your-Name as a way of capturing how I was feeling and what I was going through on a daily basis, a way of encapsulating what I was posting on social media, the format of this blog didn’t really lend itself to what I was trying to do, and I’m fully aware it’s hard to imagine anyone stumbling upon this for the first time, scrolling down to the July 2018 and working their way up. A small irony is the Facebook Memories section has kept alive posts I never expected to see again anyway. Perhaps had I known the impact they would have on me or the ease in which I could relive that for myself or others, I may never have started this project in the first place.

Although I was adamant I didn’t want to end the blog after a year as so many did – as if circumnavigating the first twelve months was all you needed to know about surviving grief – the fact is that I’ve leaned there is no time frame to this whatsoever. I’m pretty sure there will be things happening to me next year (which would be our 20th Wedding Anniversary) that I could post here just as I’ve done with other random events that have affected me since 2018. In fact, one of the many people I’m in contact with as a result of this blog, has a web site still running even though, for him, it’s been over ten years since he lost his wife. His loss has actually provided him with another career.

All this meant I felt like I’m twisting in the wind here, with no definitive thoughts or conclusions just more of the same, and this didn’t seem any way to end a small project that I’ve supported since 2018. Oddly, it’s been another project of mine – my annual Advent Calendar of Christmas Songs – that has pushed me into finishing this. The Calendar goes live on December 1st and there are links on there to here, and I don’t want anyone to arrive during Advent and find this unfinished.

So where are we? Well, I’ve moved so I’m now living in a house that Gail will never see. She’s here with me insomuch as there are things she/we bought that are in the house; art work and furniture we chose are here as well as dinnerware, cutlery etc In fact I’m pretty certain she’d be shocked by how much we bought together is still here. Some things have even surprised me! I actually got the box out for the glittery silver stag’s head – the one I insisted would never enter the house, the one that I eventually bought for her as a surprise before putting it up on the lounge wall next to the TV so I saw it every day (yea, that one!) – intent on putting it on eBay. But there was a space in the hall and I thought ‘I know what will look good there’. It does too, so there it is again. I don’t want the place to look like a widower lives here anyway, so I’m happy for any inspiration, even if it does echo down the years.

People visiting the house have said they can sense Gail is here, and even if I can’t really comprehend that or feel it myself, I get enormous pleasure from being told it.

Beyond that I’ve just adjusted to what you can do when you live alone. I’ve seen places, met people, chatted online to others, and done things I would probably not have done had Gail still been here. I’m grateful I’ve had the opportunity to meet, see, chat and do them – well, most of them anyway! – even if I’m not happy about the events that led me to it, and I can still feel guilty about it too, even though I could never control the situation that brought it about.

Of course, there’s a whole heap of other things that I’m still struggling with but, as I’ve discovered, these aren’t things you can really tell anyone about either in person or on a blog – another reason for finishing this here – and it’s hard to imagine a set of circumstances that might come about to change that. I hate glib phrases such as ‘It is what it is’ but sometimes that’s all you have left.

Perhaps the best pointer as to how I’ve come, if not full circle, then to a sense of an ending, is something that occurred just this last week.

A post came up on Facebook that I’d posted five years ago; an emotional rant that had come about when my mum told me to ‘Pull myself together’. The post was a difficult read, it was something I found hard to reconcile with my Mother, particularly as she passed in early 2020, possibly of covid, and I was never able to appease myself with her or her pronouncement.

It wasn’t the post itself that grabbed my attention though. Rather, underneath was a comment from a friend of a friend who had lost her husband just a few weeks before Gail. Her comment was an introduction to her and her situation, and it was the first of many that we have exchanged over the years. Sometimes when one or other of us is finding things difficult we just reach out (arghh! hate that phrase) to see if the other has had similar thoughts or reached a similar stage. We’ve never met, and not likely too as we live half a world away, really nor do we need too, it’s just been a rewarding association via circumstances with someone I’d never otherwise have ‘met’.

This friend, like me, has had difficulty in sorting the good times through the prism of the bad, but recently has tried to, in her words, ‘put things in a box and keep a lid on it’ in the hopes of living a fulfilling life by honouring the good memories. Now, that part isn’t my story and I feel it wrong to comment either way on if it has been a success, but I can understand the idea of feeling tired and frustrated with being upset, angry or listless – almost like feeling ennui over ennui.

At the end of our last conversation I wondered if ‘Perhaps becoming just OK with things is all that’s left?’. It doesn’t seem like any deep insight and I don’t think I’d write a book off the back of it, but it seems a good enough exit to this blog. after five years.

So, thanks to those who have stuck with me through this. Thank you to everyone who has written to me and if you want to do so in the future then feel free. Be well – and don’t worry I’m OK.

I’m OK