The retreat

 The variation manoeuvre.

I’ve mentioned earlier about how we didn’t row or argue. We did however end up going for counselling at one point. In the “early days” when we were playing online a lot, role playing our characters we both wanted to be online. That did cause a certain amount of friction, and because we role played so hard our characters became real people to us. I certainly spent more time online than Jill, with the excuse that I had admin duties as well. We talked about it a lot, and found it difficult to resolve. So in the end we went for some counselling, probably four sessions? No more than 6 certainly. We talked and worked it out, we just needed a third party to direct our conversations. Far from weakening our marriage it just made it so much stronger, and we had both learned how to phrase conversations in a collaborative way. It was always us against the situation, rather than her v me. Because we were so closely attuned anyway it was very easy to be empathic.

It was a difficult time - obviously - when Jill was first diagnosed. I think the worst thing was having to learn how to lie to each other. I’m sure Jill kept me in the dark about her condition whenever she could. She certainly stopped telling me what the test results were, and I pretended that I hadn’t noticed that. And I in turn lied about how I was coping. The drugs she was on caused personality changes, and she could fly off the handle at a moments notice, saying some vicious stuff. It didn’t really bother me, because that wasn’t Jill, just some drugs. I know it did shock other people, understandably. Her hair never entirely fell out, though it did thin out. The steroids she was on made her balloon up quite a lot, in the last days.

The winter Jill died was an awful one, with a lot of snow. We were planning to go up to Liverpool for a family celebration. We both knew that it would be the last time everyone would be together. Unfortunately I came down with flu really badly, I was absolutely flat out. With the help of our friend Samantha they went around a bunch of pharmacies to get me the drugs I needed, and she was less concerned about missing the party and more worried about me. She was also in a lot of pain, all the time; she was quite good at lying about it, but I was better at seeing through it. She loved having visitors, and they’d always ask how she was (she was dying ffs! How do you fucking think she was?) and she’d always shrug a little and say lightly “oh, I’m a bit tired but fine”. She would be really chatty and laugh as always, as though she didn’t have a care in the world. And as the friends left they’d often say to me that she was looking well, and I’d agree she was. You lie. It’s what you do. You lie to each other and you lie to the very closest of friends. Because I knew when I went back in she would be totally exhausted, and it would take her two or three days to get her strength back up. I’d almost have to literally carry her to bed. They were dark days; the feeling of isolation was tremendous, not only between us and everyone else, but between each other. There were things we wanted to say to each other but we simply couldn’t. Despite all that unbearable pain both mentally and physically we still didn’t break. I lost my temper once I think and smashed a mug onto the floor, but my anger was immediately dissipated when she held me.

One of the feelings you have with grief is anger. This is going to sound awful and shocking, but if you are grieving a murder victim, you have at least the murderer to whom you can direct that anger. With cancer, where do you go? Where does it fucking go? It’s not Jill’s fault, or mine, or cancers even. There’s no god, so I can’t scream at it. There is literally no-where that anger can go. It just sits here. I think I changed a lot after Jill died. I became much harder, but also more anxious and playing things safe. If life with Jill was a ten, the most I could ever get is a 5, and that’s an exceptional day. I went from every colour possible to a muted and faded pallet. However, even if it is only a 4 of a day, or an event, if that’s all I can have, that’s still 100% of everything that’s available. I know what I mean, even if you don’t. I like being in love; it’s the best feeling in the world, knowing there’s this other person out there. To care for, and be cared.

So to bring it back to me, I have so much unresolved anger, very unresolved grief issues to name but two. People often say that things get better, and I’m sure they mean well, but they really don’t. All that gets better is your ability to control the pain. It’s exhausting. And that pain never stops, it’s always sneaking around waiting to pounce when I see, hear, smell, sense Jill. So every memory is, for me, like a time bomb. what the hell sm I supposed to do with it? I have no idea. My therapist says I should sit with them. No freakin’ idea what that means. Sit and observe and accept. Accepting her death is not what I do. I understand it, factually I know it happened. I was kind of involved. So this is one of the things I want to do on the retreat, is to sit and observe, and to allow me to decouple my brain for a while and let me get on with sorting it out. Besides, as I mentioned yesterday part of my memories are made up of, or affected by her memories. Which as far as I’m concerned means I’m carrying her memories with me. I can’t specifically identify which ones, which is as it should be, because we have, in a very weird and metaphysically sense merged together a little bit. We changed each other; we grew together politically, our interests merged or we created new ones between us. Of course, that happens all the time; we are in part products of all the interactions we have with other people, but sometimes I think it’s more, and god knows I’ve been told enough our relationship was unique, so I’m going to go for “we are a good part of each other.” But if I have some of Jill’s memories in my mind, I’m going to go out on a limb and say that I’m taking her with me into this experience. This makes me want to do it even more.

So I have to have an “intention” for this trip. I’m wrestling with this. Focus on my childhood, where my anxiety started, abandonment issues, grief, anxiety? I think I’m overthinking this. It needs to be simple, encompassing all of those things. But those things are backward looking, and I want to be forward looking. How about something like “coming to peace with my past and giving it permission to go”?

I’ve thought about it for a while, and it’s a very hippie thing to say or think. And I bloody love it. I just missed out on the hippie era, but I think I could have fitted in really well. But it was such a lovely time. Innocent, pure and probably gullible. Jill was a few years older than me, so she was closer to that time. We would go to Carnaby Street, Camden Town, and Kensington Market. She especially liked that one, as she would go there with her friends. It was on about three stories I think, with lots of individual market stalls and shops and the music was all from the 60s and early 70s. The air was heavy with incense and I rediscovered my love of patchouli oil. And we would wander from stall to stall, floor to wall. I’d love to go back to then. The irony is, the chosen never know they are the chosen. So I think Jill would wholeheartedly approve of this intention.

I loved listening to her telling me stories about her past. The archaeology digs she took part in at Cirencester, how she met her friends, the stories of their lavish dinner parties, the plays she’d been to (including an early showing of Rocky Horror with original cast) and the bars she’d drunk in. She was so exciting, as well as beautiful. And funny and sexy as hell, and clumsy in such a delightful way. I remember being scared after I asked her to marry me, wherever that was Gaynor, and wondering if I’d done the wrong thing. Was I trapping myself into something? What if it didn’t work out? It did worry me, maybe for a few weeks. But I trusted myself, and I trusted Jill. It wasn’t hard to shed the concerns in the end. I’d love to know what she would think about taking psychedelic drugs. I think she would have done what I did, which was research it, though I think she would have gone far more into the chemistry and biology of it all. But now, I’m loving that part while doing my own research, I’m doing what she would have done. Hmm, maybe it’s bit too metaphysical even for me. I think she would certainly have tried them once she’d satisfied herself as to their safety. I think we would have a discussion ending up with me going first because if there was a problem she was a first aider and I wasn’t. I think she would have loved it; she cared about the rules about as much as I did. She was certainly happy to try weed, but it didn’t really agree with her, so she’d become trip sitter for a few people. I mean, we weren’t criminals or anything, but we ignored a lot of societal norms, not through defiance, simply because we didn’t care. We had each other, and if we had each other, nothing else mattered.