I was working today, completing an assignment, absorbed. Late in the afternoon I paused to make lunch, fresh sardines in the fry pan and bread in the toaster. Out of habit I looked at the floor around my feet, and no, there was no little dog looking up at me.

My house and particularly the kitchen is empty without my wee dog, Shortbread. She loved sardines, she would throw her head back and swallow the little fish in the style of a hungry seal. I miss her love of sardines, I miss sharing with her. I feel so alone, I miss her and wonder if I gave her enough, loved her enough.

That’s how a bereavement is, person or dog, somedays the loss catches you unprepared.

I find myself questioning if I am enough. Was I enough? Could I have loved more? Shared more? Been more devoted or attentive? Could I have been bigger, greater, more generous? Should I have given over more sardines? Did I love enough while she was here? I could have done more, I wish I had…

My questions are not only about my dog but about other roles, daughter, sister, friend, colleague or aunt. Am I ever enough? Not ever close enough to perfect- I sigh, resigned to not being enough. As good as I can be I could be more, regrets consume my best efforts – not always but tonight. Enough.

I do what I can knowing it’s never enough and what is just is. I am and it is.

Early in the book Joan Didion refers the pyschiartrist Karl Menninger’s work Man Against Himself, and his concept of exaggerated value. Exaggerated value, is a term that reverberated with a recognisable knell as I read it. Apparently Dr Menniger uses exaggerated value as an explantion for some suicides “…had an exaggerted value, so that when there was even a threat that they might be lost, the recoil of severed emotional bonds was fatal.”

I don’t know the fatal recoil of severed emotional bonds, but I am familiar with the, less deadly, stricken recoil of severed emotional bonds. That recoil is what I identify as grief with all of its miserable symptoms and sadness.

The two terms, emotional recoil and exaggerated value, allowed me to frame my reaction to Shortbread’s death. Sense making. I had invested an exaggerated value into one little dog, she was a Birthday gift from Mottsu – a link with the past. The loss of Shortie has left me feeling more alone than I have before, our little family pod of a couple and their two dogs is all but gone.

From the moment I first held Shortbread, as an unnamed puppy, I cupped her in one hand and gently protected my treasure. I was already afraid I would lose her, most of her life I dreaded her death. Of course dread was not my only emotion, it was present. I also adored her presence and being, we were sympatico each feeling nurtured by the other. We enjoyed a fabulous life my dog and me.

Is that what happens? Do we place an exaggerated value in people, pets, and possessions, the things we love most? I do, that’s why losing those special people, pets and possessions is so awful, so hard to bear. I’m grateful to Joan Didion who provides the words, in her pages, to give expression to the experience of loss.

Shelley explained her Dad has been on anti-depressants since being diagnosed with complicated grief after her Mum, his wife of 50 or more years, died. Apparently he couldn’t stop crying. If I were he, I might have had the same reaction. If happiness is going along where life takes you with a particular special person, then grief on the death of that person might be vast and enduring.

Complicated grief is also known as abnormal grief. Shelle’s Dad’s reaction doesn’t sound all that abnormal to me, but I wasn’t there. I can’t really say how he experienced his loss, I can imagine it. I also can’t understand how 5 or so years later, well after he stopped weeping, he is still on anti-depressants.

Something in me is offended by the term abnormal grief. I know grief is complicated, almost by definition. The loss of someone close changes everything.

I believe we are more resilient than we think we are, I know that was true for me. I didn’t always feel resilient but there was something strong willed in me that helped me to cope and continue. Grief is a persistent state, there is something unyielding about being in the grip of grief. Grief can also be unknown and frightening, many confided to me that they did not know if they could make it through what I went through. That’s where resilience comes in, I kept going. Call it resilience, whatever I drew on it was my choice to navigate through grief and loss as best I could, I did not give myself other options. I did not believe I had a physiological disorder that could be treated with drugs, I didn’t even think to seek medical advice.

Another concern I harbour about Shelle’s Dad is about his ongoing medication, he has been taking medication for more than 5 years now for his complicated grief, or should I say his deep and enduring grief. I know that antidepressants can take time to take effect, it can take a month or more before receiving a therapeutic effect. Antidepressants alleviate symptoms but do not address underlying psychological causes for moods. I don’t know about the continuation of antidepressant medication, and how long you might expect take treatment for. My impression was even after years, this was ongoing medication. Is that how it goes? Can you not resume life without medication at some time?

I am troubled by Shelle’s Dad’s story for many reasons. The thing that occurs to me is that grief is a time when you should ask very little of yourself and when others should not ask too much.

When we first formed, years ago, we planned to be a book club focused on the books we read together. We find that we do discuss books and often there are other things happening in our lives that draw us into a conversation more rewarding than talking about the book. That was the case yesterday with a significant life change unfolding for one of us whose husband had died, and her daughter – our loved Book Club convener and her Mum – have been plunged into grieving, that’s the experience we shared and talked about yesterday.

As they talked I was reminded of the heightened sense of feeling and emotion that comes with grief and how our ability for joy is not lost when grief floods in. Everything changes, each day presents its own challenges. You learn you can be more sad and more lost than you ever imagined, and there are amazing moments when laughter is the only possible response. The best analogy I know of, for this surprising unknown experience, comes from Joyce Carol Oates Memoir, A Widow’s Story.

I heard her speak about her book recently and when she spoke of the absurd and surprising things that happen during grief, she talked of things familiar and known to me. I was surprised and then reassured that they were part of her experience as well. Joyce Carol Oates described playing in King Lear, she felt she was playing out a tragedy with the script and the lines as they are supposed to be read but with such odd things happening it was sometimes like the Marx Brothers had centre stage. Some things that happened would almost only make sense if framed as a tragic black comedy directed by the Marx Brothers.

When your world is turned inside out by the death of someone close, normal takes leave, there is no normal to fall back on.

It’s an unexpected shared experience of some widows that such odd things happen when we can least put up any resistance, that we have to sometimes laugh through our tears and then wonder what the world will present us with next. One day and then the next. It was good to share our stories at Book Club.

Another shared experience, in my very small sample, is:

“Of the widow’s countless death-duties there is really just one that matters: on the first anniversary of her husband’s death the window should think I kept myself alive.” Oates, J. C. (2011). A Widow’s Story: A Memoir. New York: HarperCollins Publishers.

That’s why we have friends and book clubs, to share with and to be with, to help keep ourselves alive…

I’m struck with sadness for my friend in her grief. The sudden loss of a daughter is too much to bear, and it is borne nonetheless, while numbed by grief.

I can’t be silent, I do want to replace isolation with community, and my way is to write about the unpopular issues that surround us. I want to allow our darkest times to be shared, understood and appreciated for what they are.

This is the fourth death by suicide that has touched me, through friends, this year and that is a very big number. A lot to bear, when things that only happen to other people happen to you.

A string of somewhat coherent thoughts cruised through my head and left me picturing Wally. I remembered him sitting by the car one day and shaking, his whole body trembling and his little face set with misery. I closed my eyes remembering dear Wally and the way he trembled in the world, and I sighed loudly releasing air. Longing…

I (still) grieve hard for Mottsu and today I am thinking of his (our) little dog, Wally. ‘There’s only one little Wally” we used to sing to the tune of Guantunamerra, “…one little Waaa-lllll-eeee, there’s only one little Waaa-lly.”

Wally was our dog, he was Mottsu’s dog, a one dog fan club. Let me tell the story behind the memory of him sitting by the car shaking.

The day we moved in to the big country house, Mottsu’s dream house the place from which he was going to build a new career and enjoy a tree-changed life, was a day happy on the surface and dark and swirling beneath that.

There was too much invested the house, too much money, too many hopes for a different life, Mottsu was grapsing at a future beyond depression. Maybe he had already lost his centre, I don’t know, I think he was battling the high seas of depression and was helpless to make headway.

The morning of the move, we packed up one house and waited for the movers with their truck. I stuffed the car with loose bits and items, the pieces not secured in boxes. Mottsu drove off, our precious flotsam pushed up against the car windows, he went to get the key, drop off the bits, and was to be back before the movers had loaded their truck.

Mottsu left.
The movers arrived.
The movers loaded up the truck.
No word from Mottsu.

I was overcome with a seemingly irrational fear. A full body wave of terror swept over me and drew everything out, I perched on the toilet seat seasick green, clinging to notion that I was being absurd, and at the same time ill with fear. This was three weeks before he left without coming home again. That sunny Saturday morning, my body sensed before my mind had formed the thought, that Mottsu might not come home again.

Mottsu drove up.

Relief broke out and I laughed, Wally wagged and we all piled into the car and followed the movers to our new house.

We spent the day unpacking, sorting and putting things into place.
Amid the boxes and mess I didn’t see Wally for most of the afternoon, I found him outside sitting close to the car and shaking.

Wally just wanted to go where we went, he wasn’t going to be left behind. The mood of the move was distressing, a big exciting move to be celebrated with an unnamed darkness underscoring it all. Our new home was supposed to be a safe place, with paddocks and views and dreams filling every room. Somewhere below the visible reality things didn’t feel so welcoming.

Wally picked it all up, sensed the shadows and trembled, he wanted to go home, to our regular city home, I did too.

I miss Wally and his big little dog heart, his love and his fear. I love and love, I grieve. Still and on and on. The price for loving well is grieving hard.

That’s just how it is, love well, grieve hard, long and hard – and on and on…

Rainy days evoke memories of Mottsu, maybe because I love how the rain falls and quietens a day. Everything shushhed, like the sound of car tyres on the wet road. I think those are days when you huddle in closer with someone, share an umbrella, shelter together. Rainy days and Mottsu and I would slip into a cinema for the afternoon. Rainy weekend evenings we’d cook, bake, roast, time in the kitchen warm and safe, nurtured. Together with nowhere else to be.

Memory days, are different to anniversaries and birthdays, or special occasions. Days when you perhaps have anticipated the remembering of someone who’s no longer here but you can just feel them present. They are days I feel more alone – if it’s possible to be more alone than everyday regular alone. Importantly I feel wistful more than bereft, and that’s comforting to recall.

He is quietly remembered and I am grieving differently. I like to remember him well.

Val is going home tomorrow, she will be under the care of a palliative nurse who will help moderate her morphine levels. Val is not quite ready to knock on heaven’s door, but she is walking up the steps.

She has no illusions about what is happening to her, and she is afraid of dying, she said. I agreed it must be scary, I would be scared.

The thing that hurts her most are the tears in the eyes of her children when she talks to them, she said.

Val’s children love her they can’t witness her death without tears in their eyes. We can only do what we can do, and they can’t help the tears.

Who of us knows how to die? Who of us can witness the slow death of someone we love without tears in our eyes?

I reached for Val’s hand and we clung together with warmth, caring and fear.

Inside was a quote by Virginia Woolf:

“Each has his past shut in him like the leaves of a book known to him by heart and his friends can only read the title”

That quote was especially poignant to me in the light of suicide, it helped reassure me about my not understanding of what happened.

Bud Tingwell in the opening chapter of his biography, written by Peter Wilmoth, hoped that he would be forgiven for not acknowledging all the kind cards that were sent after the death of his wife. He just wasn’t up to it, at the time. I wonder now if it was the opening chapter, that’s how I remember what he said, a loud and lingering regret.

I was driven by what had haunted Bud and I was determined not to harbour similar regrets. I had enough regrets to live with, not sending thank yous didn’t have to be one of them.

There are two schools of thought, Miss Manners thinks sending notes is the decent thing to do. and one that says Miss Manners is WRONG about thank you notes for condolence cards. It’s up to you.

I listened to a war correspondent talking today about war and the effects on soldiers. He said that war, like grief, was something we don’t ever recover from. He meant that when you go through war (or grief) you never get back to where (or particularly who) you were. Grief, he did say grief I caught it as a quick mention and it started me thinking.

It’s interesting because I do think there is something a little wrong (or at best not quite right) with the idea of fixed or better. There is not enough room for being different. As a society we are fixated on being fixed, I mean as in getting back to where you were, as much as possible returning to who you were before the traumatic war/grief event. I think there is too much emphasis on being fixed and not enough on allowing ourselves to adopt an identity that integrates and accepts our experiences.

Recovery, from grief at least, is over rated. Maybe it is the same with bouts of depression..