Christopher would have been forty-seven today. It still seems so wrong that he died so young. I found today rather difficult. I really struggled to get out of bed this morning; I was pretty depressed and really did not want to move. However, I’d taken the precaution of arranging for a couple of workmen to […]
You sometimes read in the papers about houses, or just bedrooms, which have been left untouched by the occupants since the original owner died, many years earlier. That really doesn’t strike me as very healthy. I may have a huge Christopher-shaped hole in my life, but preserving the house as it was last August is […]
It took a while to decide what I should do for Christmas this year. I knew that, whatever I did, I was likely to find it difficult, but I also wanted to mark it in some appropriate way. In the end it was my Gran who spurred me into action – she sent me a […]
It was exactly a year ago today that we learned that Christopher had oesophageal cancer, and not acid reflux or a stomach ulcer after all. I was trying to write my Christmas cards over the weekend, and it made me reflect on all that has happened in the past year: an urgent operation to stent […]
I wrote earlier about the canonical text on bereavement, and how I thoroughly disagree with the underlying thesis, at least as applied to my own situation. I don’t think that trying to find some Grand Unified Theory of Grief is helpful. I have however come up with an empirical hotch-potch of practical strategies which I […]
Chris had been a member of the company pension scheme since he first started work for them about 18 years ago. It’s quite a small scheme, as it only contains those of us who were working for the company when it was privatised some ten years ago – at which point the rather good final […]
One of the things I’ve needed to do is to sort out and dispose of Christopher’s clothes. That’s a really tough job, so I’ve been taking it slowly and doing it just one shelf/drawer at a time. I’ve been sorting the clothes into a number of categories, each of which I’m dealing with separately: Clothes […]
I’ve been lent a book by Kubler-Ross and Kessler called “On Grief and Grieving” which is apparently one of the standard texts in Bereavement Counselling. Their basic thesis is that there are five stages of grief Denial Anger Bargaining Depression Acceptance Apparently people are expected to go through all five stages of grief so that […]
Chris didn’t come from the sort of family who had £43M Chinese vases sitting on the bookcase, but he did have a few things belonging to his grandmothers which he strongly believed should be kept in the family. Indeed, he explicitly left them to his sister in his Will. So today I met up with […]
Christopher’s tax affairs really ought to be straight forward. There is no inheritance tax to pay, as he left almost everything to me. If anything, he should be due a small income tax rebate for this current tax year – the pittance of interest earned on his savings was well below the tax threshold, but […]
