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BBC Life After Death: How I coped becoming a…

7th September 20208th September 2020
by Mark Wilcock

Early this year I received an invitation from the BBC to be involved in the creation of a short documentary around the topic of grief. Well, male grief to be more specific with my own flavour. The creation of this miniseries was to bring together a number of people who had been affected by mental health issues and bereavement.

After 6 hours of filming in my home in Southport and down in London. I was expecting a little more than 9 minutes of footage to be included in the final edit. I’m guessing the whole Covid-19 lockdown played a big part, or maybe it just wasn’t meant to be. It really did make me think twice about ever doing something like this again. Especially considering the amount of time, effort and personal information Marco and I had initially put in.

Anyhow, that’s enough grumbles from me. I hope this finds the right people out there, even if it just 9 mins of empathy.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/stories-52910362

Best wishes

Mark x

The power of now

Opening up again

30th August 201930th August 2019
by Mark Wilcock

I have (yet again) shared my story of widowhood and beyond – in this week’s Chat Magazine (TI Media). It covers a lot more about that day back in May 2017. I speak more about my duel as a single parent and facing grief. Of course lots of insight into the importance for other young widowers to reach out for support.

Also, I’m currently at the halfway point of my first draft for my book. I’m ‘bang-on’ schedule to have it finished for early next year. Margot and I are very excited about it.

Feeling isolated

Writing to reach you

31st July 201931st July 2019
by Mark Wilcock

A few days ago, a fellow widower asked me “I need to address a few things, I’ve shelved so many feelings of my wife’s death because I just don’t know how to deal with them,” “what did you do Mark?” I was so unrehearsed for this query, I realised I hadn’t even asked myself this question. I was even more off guard with it being off the back of our laid-back chat about Football. So, my reply went “Wow, that’s some question. I’ll tell you what, read my blog next week and I’ll try my best.”

I’ve thought long and hard about his query every day since he asked. With him being at such an early stage of his grief, I wanted to give him the one tool that helped me the most. I had previously done and strained so many different types of therapeutic practices around my own grief. After some deliberation with my past and present efforts; I now feel poised to give my best and probably my most obvious response.

Now, before I share this, let me start by just stating that my grief has been so overwhelming for me since day one. Whatever support or therapy I’ve received, I have never expected to just wake up one morning to realise that all my grief had just vanished into thin air. It will never do you any favours as it certainly doesn’t’ work like that. Instead, the reality is, it will continue to be a drain on you, but on different levels, as time goes by. Always remember, self-therapy will just soften your emotions and teach you to understand them.

Even as I pace through my third cycle since Katherine’s passing. I have found that early grief had always made me feel confident about my emotions at one stage and then desperately insecure with them in the next. Confidence may not be something that everyone associates with bereavement, but it’s something I have certainly felt more of as time has gone by. Maybe this is just how my therapeutic practice has helped me embrace my past and my future.

So, if I could share some insight into my best emotional therapy. It would be this. I found and used a tool that we all have at our disposal. A very important tool that can potentially help any of us cope in any situation: writing.

Writing down my thoughts while grieving boosted my entire immune system and increased my emotional and mental health. This was even before I started sharing them on my blog. During the beginning, when I first started to document my thoughts. I noticed straight away that it triggered my strong emotions. I would even go as far as linking its release to the same sensation as crying or like the moments when I have felt extremely upset. It gave me a self-therapeutic benefit for just “letting off steam”. Especially when I didn’t want to speak to anyone about them.

I always had to remember that most of the people around me found it uncomfortable to discuss. Especially when it came down to the nitty-gritty details of Katherine’s death. My friends would talk to me about “getting through it” and “moving forward” and “healing.” They would shy away from talking about her actually passing, not out of cold-heartedness, but out of natural fear. I guess most people just don’t want to say the wrong thing; death is just downright scary overall. This made me understand why there is so much coverage of celebrity grief and movies about loss: they seem to create a public space where everyone can safely talk and feel something about another’s loss.

As the weeks and months went by, my writing was now the instrument of self-exploration, self-expression, and self-discovery that provided me with a safe space to simply be the grieving single parent widower I felt like. I didn’t need to attempt to talk to others as It was catering for all the things that were left unsaid, my unshared emotions, and those tricky questions for which I had no closure.

Of course, all my written efforts had to happen mostly in my head. Maybe this is one reason I wrote about my loss in real-time, so to speak. Writing seemed to help me puzzle through my bewildering change. It sparked my strength to let go of Katherine’s funeral and to help me bridge the stark boundary between my inner sorrow and my outer functioning.

I like to view everything that I’ve written on my blog as an internal psychological exploration of my grief. I have always felt that I wasn’t just writing about the loss of my wife and my daughters Mother. I was also mapping the intimate contours of this mysterious transformation I was experiencing. I even decided to share it with a lot of other people to, like yourself, reading this post now.

I’m no expert and I am not saying that writing is a substitute for professional therapy, it’s simply not! It has just provided me with a pathway to explore and discover my journey and all the courage and strength I’ve gained to build myself back up again. This was what I ultimately wanted, a more resonant description than any of the stages of grief could offer. One of the most beautiful things about it was the fact that no one could even judge me too.

While writing, I noticed that it became more of a ‘state of mind’ to address and reflect on what is actually going on, logically. Writing down my thoughts and feelings after I lost Katherine allowed me to express myself freely and safely. I had discovered a very rare and safe place to reflect on the meaning of life and death, which relieved me from my shackling thoughts and released a heavy burden in my chest.

With this massive release, it has been a lot easier to not only make it through the day but the weeks and the months. Easier, in the sense that I have full acceptance in the way everything in my life is now. Most of the ‘head banging’ questions have gained some much-needed closure too.

I guess if I hadn’t documented my grief I could have possibly been left slightly paralysed, muted and unable to comprehend my loss. Yet, I am now able to speak — to breathe, to sleep, to eat, to go for walks in the sun, to find myself laughing with my family and friends — to fall in love again — to even marry again.

Embracing Love again. Me and my beautiful wife, Nicola. (June 2019)

So, maybe you’re thinking of writing about your grief? I’d say go for it, or even just give it a try?

Here are some concepts I used. Maybe they might help you if you don’t know where to start:

• Always write down thoughts and feelings about yourself and the one you’ve lost (Carry a pen and paper with you or use your phone).

• Try to sort and list any conflicting emotions.

• Develop an understanding of things that have been suppressed inside.

• Make room for other thoughts and feelings.

• Try to be honest and think deeply about what you would want your loved one to know and acknowledge.

• Always express your regret as a way to bring closure

• Respect any change of thought and feeling you have about death and yourself.

• Reflect and understand yourself in a new light.

• Simply just be yourself. Remember your words will remain private and confidential and wouldn’t be published for public consumption. Unless you want it.

My child’s memory of her mother

The Positive Awards 2019

29th July 201929th July 2019
by Mark Wilcock

My blog has been nominated as a finalist into the Positive Awards 2019.

Overall, my grief support work has been nominated for an award in the ‘Resilience’ category. If you would like to cast your vote and/or share the link with others it would be much appreciated.

Click here to VOTE

**Please click ‘Don’t know’ on other categories if you wish only to vote for me alone**

I’m hoping that its nomination or even chance of winning, will help spread the word with the aim of it reaching more of the people it might be able to help.

Thank you all

Mark & Margot

Being Mum and Dad

Speaking out

11th June 201911th June 2019
by Mark Wilcock

As it is ‘Men’s Health Week’ and also the run-up to Father’s Day I have shared my story of widowhood and beyond – in this week’s Bella Magazine. In the article, I speak out about being widowed, facing grief and the importance for other young widowers to reach out for support.

Accepting the new you

Man down

5th April 20195th April 2019
by Mark Wilcock

As I approach the second anniversary of my wife’s death, I anticipate the multitude of emotions that will no doubt, return. There has always been attention paid to grief and its connections to health and illness. My experience and the impact between mental wellbeing and grief was pretty much textbook.

It wasn’t too long ago, I looked at myself in the mirror and acknowledged that my life will never be the same as it once was. I could face the fact that life, in general, doesn’t’ always go to plan. No matter what our story is. My life went in one direction and within a blink of an eye, it faced a different one.

I never planned it, and I never once asked for the direction it went. However, it wasn’t’ just my life that changed direction, it was also a range of other elements, such as my wellbeing.

The concern around my mental health was a common theme in my grieving.
From the beginning, the loss of my wife generated huge vulnerability and mental limitations. It had shaken the foundations of meaning and produced considerable suffering for me. My mind found reality too traumatic to deal with and too painful. My brain spontaneously took the action it needed to protect its host.

I did have days when my head would be overloaded with torturous thoughts and visions. One specific thought I duelled with constantly was how Katherine would have managed if I had been the one to have died. How would she have coped and was I content for me to live in this pain and not her? I also tortured myself during milestone moments with my daughter. I would imagine in my mind just how Katherine would have responded and expressed her happiness observing Margot’s behaviour.

Apparitions would appear during moments when Margot took her first steps, spoke her first words, had her first birthday, went on her first holiday. Even the more obscure and funny moments with my daughter would be bittersweet. It would break my heart into pieces when I’d think about it too much. It really did bring tears to my eyes.

Loneliness was a massive factor in my wellbeing. I always remember when I began to sink emotionally. During the weeks and months after the funeral as most people, apart from family, had started to drift away. The loneliness officially started to kick in. I felt that I was no longer part of the couples’ world and I had no one who understood what I was going through.

At first, I refused to seek help or change course for the deviations I noticed. Instead, I decided to go away with friends for a winter holiday to Spain. My aim was to clear my mind and create some happy memories for me and my daughter. Each day was meant to be filled with fun and laughter in the sun. In reality, I just ended up duelling with my mind more so than ever. I returned home and all of the facades of doing OK came apart and the depression took over. Everything came crashing down on me. I became dependant on alcohol and I cried, a hell of a lot; I was incredibly sad and lonely.

Spain 2018, Daddy & Margot (the brave ones)

After dropping my daughter off at the nursery in the morning, I would drive into work, park my car, sit with my head on the wheel and stir at my knees as my eyes rained onto them. It would take at least ten minutes each day before I could get myself out of the car and go to work.

It was only when I discovered support from the charity sector and from a specialist service that my wellbeing started to change for the better. This didn’t happen overnight, it took dedication and openness to find mindfulness. One key element that really helped me was discovering somebody who had been through what I was going through. Someone who was also a widower and a single parent. I had found someone who had come out the other side and it gave me great hope. Margot was going to be ok. I was going to be ok.

From my support days, I really want to touch upon a broad component of widowhood that I have observed. I had discovered that expressions of grief were sometimes very deeply gendered. I found that some men would grieve in a way that can only be described as a masculine practice. It was almost as if some felt judged and alienated to show raw emotion. All I could think of was the term “man-up” as some adopted a form of toughness. The feeling of crying or even attending a support session resembled some sort of weakness.

I understand we’re all very different and express ourselves in our own way. However, when expressing and releasing grief, I think it’s really important for men to open up. It is equally important to know there’s nothing wrong with tears. It’s ok for a man to cry, in fact, it’s more than ok to cry. I say this in the contest to the perceptions of male grief and the entire ‘Harden up’, ‘Man up’ and ‘Suck it up’ medals of honour.

I can’t emphasise how important all of this was for my journey. Timely support protected me against the risk of poor mental wellbeing. Please don’t have any shame in seeking specialist/professional interventions. Grief cannot simply be suppressed. It will eventually catch with you at some stage in your life.

I recalled a story more recently describing how Prince Harry revealed that he sought counselling after twenty years of bottling up his grief. He had unhealthily suppressed his emotions after losing his mother when he was twelve and came close to a complete breakdown. In an ideal world, I guess if our society was to understand the impact of bereavement better, it would be more geared up to support those in need and to prevent any form of depression from grieving.

Accepting the new you

The reality of learning to love again

29th March 201929th March 2019
by Mark Wilcock

When you think about love, it isn’t exclusive. It’s not exclusive to one thing or one being alone at any given time. Within our short little lives, it is endless and ours to express to whatever and whomever we desire. In terms of experiencing a bereavement of a spouse, widowers can choose to lock it away forever or to eventually give it to someone new. The right is ours alone.

I have read a lot of fascinating stories about how widowers have found love again in short spaces of time. It is very common for young widowers to find sudden love. It was only 2 days ago I was reading a very interesting article on the Huffington Post about how ex-Sky Sports presenter, Simon Thomas found love again within 12 months of his wife’s passing. Another celebrity status widower in the form of Patton Oswalt, again he was engaged within 12 months of losing his wife. Each with their own story on how they heal and embrace their new lives.

Ex Sky Sports presenter and fellow widower – Simon Thomas

Being a single windowed parent in my 30’s I wanted to live my life too. I wanted to live my life the way Katherine would have wanted me to. I was not destined to remain in mourning forever. I did not choose to shut down, wear black and become a miserable and bitter father to my daughter. Instead, I chose to grieve in my way, in my time and to move my life towards my own design – a design that happily included new love and new adventures.

If you have also chosen a similar pathway and you’re equipped to grip the opportunity by the balls. Be prepared to generate a level of shock reaction from others. This will usually come from the people who I like to refer to as ‘observers of grief’. These individuals generally fall into the categories of friends and outsiders. For me, it was mostly a selection of my wife’s friends, 2 even being bridesmaids at our wedding. Exposing just how shallow and selfish some people can be during a time of transition and openness. More than likely they’ll probably want nothing more to do with you or your children again. I have touched upon this topic in my previous post about grief and friendships not mixing.

During my experience, I noticed an array of remarks and comments from various people in the form of “it’s too soon”, “how could he do this to her” and “he’s just not grieving properly”. As if ‘they’ defined a universal grieving time period from their book = ‘The Idiots Guide to Grief’. It is criticism like this that we, the widowers are attuned to.

The reaction of others begged an obvious question from me to them. Since when did ‘learning to love again’ translate into ‘forgetting’ our loved one?

Exactly just how long is ‘long enough’ before we’re allowed to live again in the eyes of the observer. Is it 1 year, 2, 3, 4, maybe 10 or even 20 years until they’re totally satisfied to let us move on in life, to find happiness again? The honest truth is, only we can make this decision and it has nothing to do with anyone else around you. However, no matter what time frame your heart and soul has chosen, you can’t win. It could be in 5 years’ time and the reaction from the observers will always remain the same. I always knew that their reactions would be a selfish one. No matter how you feel just remember that If they had gone through a loss like ours they would never judge a person for wanting to fall in love again.

In broad society, it’s quite common how we accept a stage of our life to be over before we can start the next one. Our thinking is very linear in how we understand our own emotional states. The thought of overlapping grief with love to the observer usually is impossible to grasp. Not being directly linked to the bereavement, how can they? They will feel like you’re being disloyal or minimising the loss of the person. They could even think they’ll fall into this category if they show a level of support towards you.

As widowers we all know we carry our grief with us forever, it cannot simply be removed or forgotten. We are not required to conclude our grieving to begin a new relationship. The love in our hearts isn’t moved to one side to make room for someone new. If and when it happens an addition is built on. The heart becomes greater. We don’t have a capacity or limit to the amount of love we can give in our lives, love is infinite.

Since my wife passed, the love I have for her has never moved, it’s still firmly cemented into my entire being. It will remain that way for the rest of my life and will never go away. Not ever. Not with the passage of time. Not with the introduction of a new person into my life. I am honouring Katherine’s legacies of love and service by continuing to move forward; by modelling the best example that I can for my daughter, by building a family unit and living a life with my new partner, whom I love deeply. By doing all of these things, I am indeed honouring the legacies of love and service that Katherine left for me to carry forward.

I believe that all young widowers can do the same, if and when you choose to do so. There is no time limit when the time is right. When it does happen, and you let it in. Embrace it and carry forward the legacies that were entrusted to you by your late spouse. If you choose it, living your new life can include companionship again… and love. Just choose carefully, choose wisely — and love again abundantly.

Because you can!

Being ‘Strong’

Kindness to strangers

22nd March 201922nd March 2019
by Mark Wilcock

I often take great pleasure in seeing how Katherine lives on in our daughter, Margot. As a 2-year-old, her ego state hasn’t even been developed yet. The sense of happiness and innocence is in free flow throughout her entire being. Nothing really phases her, she simply lives in the moment. The world is a happy and bright space to be in. It’s a beautiful thing to be around.

As adults, isn’t it strange how we see the world in our ego state? The entire pattern of our thoughts, feelings and behaviour is all we can process and understand. We have all these routine variables in life we must strive to accomplish or commit to. From my own perspective, this is just the way we’ve been programmed to see the world from a young age. Even when dealing with the concept and experience of bereavement and its trail of destruction = grief. My point being, that we’re never really shown or taught how to deal with a sudden life-changing event and the endless questions around it. We’re all just cast out into the wide world with big fat ‘figure it out for yourself’ sticker.

The past 12 months I think I’ve figured it out in my own way, I’ve tried to be more ‘Margot’ in my outlook. When I realised I could offer my insights as a widower and as a single parent to help others. I knew I could turn my negative energy into a positive. This is exactly what my wife Katherine did after she passed, she helped others!

Picture the scene if you will. A room, on a ward in Boardgreen Hospital, Liverpool. It’s May 2017 and I’m sitting next to my wife who was being kept on life-support. I’m holding her hand tightly as I’d already been told it’s over. We’d left our house that day a family of 3 and we had to return a family of 2. I was trying to absorb the concept of the unthinkable. A specialist nurse arrives and introduces herself as part of the Organ Donation Team. She opens a private conversation with me about my wishes for Katherine’s organs. This came as quite a shock, as it wasn’t something that we, as a married couple, had ever discussed in life, why would we? Things like this don’t happen to people like us, right?

I recall the Nurse reeling off a list of organs to me. My focus started to blur as the world around me started to collapse all over again, I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. With my head in my hands, I replied to each organ in the slowest way you could possibly imagine, “I don’t know”, “I don’t know”, “I don’t know”, even to the important ones. Throughout my life, I’d never even considered my own body as a donor and here I am debating which parts of my wife’s body I’d like to give away. As the conversation continued, I’m not sure how, but in some form, I eventually found some mental courage. In my mind I knew I had to sharpen up, listen and ask the right questions to this specialist Nurse, she was only doing her job in the best way possible.

Having spent the last few days in an ICU ward surrounded by dying patients, I knew the importance of what was being asked of me. I recall the nurse also asking about Katherine’s eyes for a medical research purpose. At that moment and my current state of mind, I expressed great dissatisfaction. I wanted to explode into a ballistic rage. The thought of my wife’s eyes even being considered for lab work increased my blood pressure dramatically, even to this day. Those eyes were mine, they still are. Katherine had the most beautiful and distinguished eyes, they smiled and sparkled like stars from every angle, no matter her mood.

Towards the end of the conversation, the Nurse left the room and then suddenly returned 5 minutes later to inform me of some news she’d discovered. Katherine had already made my mind up, she had apparently made the decision online 3 months before she passed. To my surprise, it wasn’t even a new donor registration, she’d just renewed her 5-year-old membership. I had no idea.

From the initial feeling of shock, I strangely felt proud that she had made this generous and unselfish decision to donate her organs, and I was happy to respect her wishes. The fact that the decision had already been made for me relieved the stress and possible uncertainty this would have caused at what was a very difficult and traumatic time. It wasn’t long after when the Nurses told me that they had found recipients for her organs.

Eventually, during the early hours of the morning, the Transplant Team arrived, and Katherine’s life support would have to be withdrawn. It was time for me to say goodbye and leave. Being given a time allocation to say goodbye to a spouse is probably the heaviest feeling you can carry. I could hear every tick from the clock on the wall as the seconds and minutes flew by.

As the months went on, I received a letter which gave me some bittersweet ‘anonymous’ information about what had happened with Katherine’s organs and the recipients. Without going into a lot of detail she helped a 48-year-old man, a 35-year-old woman (the same age as Katherine) and 9-month old baby (the same age as our daughter). My wife, Katherine, had brought a better life for somebody else, a better quality of life, if not survival for them. As emotional as it all sounds for me, I had to remember why those decisions were made by Katherine. And effectively the whole process I’ve described in this post, apart from the circumstances, it was exactly what she wanted. To give life after death.

I’m at a stage in my life when I feel comfortable to write about these times, I want to remember them and the important details. I know other widowers will read them and take what they need from it. I know I did from the resources I discovered. But mostly I do it for my daughter, Margot. I want her to read them in years from now and understand what we went through together.

I’ve also become an organ donor.

Accepting the new you

Bacardi & coke and a pint of grief, please

19th March 201919th March 2019
by Mark Wilcock

When Sudden Arrhythmic Death Syndrome (SADS) first introduced me to grief, alcohol was everywhere. For the first 7 months, during the evening’s, once my daughter had gone to sleep I would frequently self-medicate. I became dependant on it to help numb and avoid my pain. If I’m honest, when the silence came so did the darkness. Alcohol was the only thing I knew I could use to beat grief away just so I could avoid or postpone it that little bit longer. Without it I knew as soon as I took my ‘Dad’ hat off, I would crumble. Grief was a new beast I’d never encountered. I just wasn’t ready for it. Alcohol was my weapon, without it I’d simply be punching smoke.

For me, using alcohol to sedate myself was just one phase of my widowhood I had to go through. Especially when dealing with the sudden death of my wife. It was only last weekend when I started to think about just how cohesive alcohol is in all our lives. It’s so deeply integrated that we don’t even notice how acceptable it is. Life is good? Have a drink. Life is shit? Have a drink. Out celebrating, are we? Have a drink? Cooking a nice steak at home tonight? You don’t have to drive – roll out the bottles of red. At a wedding? Oooh, free drinks. Wetting the baby’s head? Have a drink. Big match on the television? Then it’s beer o’clock. At a funeral? You guessed it – drinks! It’s probably safe to say unless you work in a pub or restaurant, your place of work is the safest place to avoid alcohol.

This grief self-care medicine created a massive gap between knowledge and behaviour. At the back of my mind, I always knew it was a risk to become dependent on drinking the pain away, it wasn’t a healthy coping skill. Being a single parent, I had responsibilities. I had to be Mum and Dad. I knew people would be looking at me to see how I was coping. Plus, who has ever made a good decision when drinking? Somehow, I just found a deeper connection between rationalisation and alcohol. It addressed the symptoms of my grief, not the underlying problems. It made a real exploration of the underlying issues more difficult, masking them with a temporary “fix” and delaying me from addressing the feelings I should address. It put me at high risk for developing dependence. It put a strain on my body and more importantly my mind.

I’ve always loved craft beers and fine wines, I still do to this day. I’d be one of the biggest hypocrites in the world to say you have to cut it all out of your life. It is really important to highlight that your grief can always put you at risk of developing a problem. I feel nothing but shame when I look back now. Once I could eventually break the cycle I knew I could embrace my grief and make it part of my life. This is what I described in the analogy of grief I shared last week. I can always recall the groundhog day feeling each morning I would wake up after drinking, the grief was still there looking back at me, it never went anywhere. This is when I soon realised that the only way to release my strong emotions is to feel them. This made me discover more self-awareness and it enforced more moderation of certain things into my life.

1st Anniversary

Companions in the Darkness

15th March 201915th March 2019
by Mark Wilcock

The entire premise of this post is to give some direction to those who are currently supporting a young widower. If you have not had the experience that your friend or family member is going through. There is simply no way of “making it better” when someone has this type of life trauma. The awful truth is that such agony can only be endured, not cured. This kind of pain is inconsolable, but this doesn’t mean your impulse to help is futile. I hope that what I share here will also help those recently widowed too. I urge you to read it, save it and share it.

Katherine and I were like two young trees that grew up intertwined. But then one tree died and was removed, leaving the other appearing deformed. This was the only way I could illustrate to my friends on how difficult the sense of loss was to me. Still, it was simply impossible for my friends to understand the depth of the pain caused by grief. My friends and family really felt powerless to change the conditions that generated my pain. When I go back to the beginning I was so lonely. Being the surviving parent, my daughter didn’t need to grieve, why would she, being just 9 months old. I had to carry the weight of what she’d lost on my back too. Most of my days consisted of an endless one to one loop with her. She had no interest in hanging out with me, being a baby, she was just doing what she was supposed to do, and I don’t blame her.

We all experience grief differently, we respond to it in our own way too. Some days I would become snappy, grumpy and the thought of being pitied would cause me to explode. I absolutely despised being pitied by people. I wasn’t always the nicest person to be around at the beginning. That was just how I displayed my distress. If I’m really honest now, having visitors was one of the things I found comfort in. particularly when they sat and quietly listened whilst I reminisced or verbalised something that was occupying my mind at that moment. I probably wasn’t the best company, but I really appreciated the empathy.

Often the best way to help someone grieving is to just be there. Anniversaries being a key time to arrange for yourself or others to be with that person. Such as a wedding anniversary or a birthday. These are times when we experience the extreme sense of emptiness and sadness. Try not to drift away and leave that person alone for too long. I understand everyone needs space and time, but not widowers – if anything, we need company. Especially a grieving single parent. I was always particularly touched by the actions of one of Katherine’s closest friends, Emma. She took the initiative to regularly visit us and she always asked how I was coping emotionally, she became my soundboard for a lot of things, even to this day. Katherine would have been so proud of her!

Last year I stumbled upon this poem titled ‘Hold me close and go away’ written by Emma Cobb in 2002. This is probably the most accurate way of describing how I became ‘difficult’ company for my friends and family at the beginning. I’d like to think it might also help you understand the mindset of someone you’re supporting.

Hold me close and go away,
Please visit me and please don’t stay,
Talk to me but please don’t speak,
I need you NOW – come back next week.

Emotions muddled, needs unknown,
To be with others or on my own?
To scream out loud? To rant and shout?
Or hide away and push you out?

I smile at you – “She’s not that bad”
I shout at you – “She’s going mad”
I speak to you – “What do I say?”
I show my tears – “Quick, walk away”

It’s not catching, the grief I feel,
I can’t pretend that it’s not real,
I carry on as best I know,
But this pain inside just won’t go.

So true friends, please, accept the lot,
I shout, I cry, I lose the plot,
I don’t know what I need today,
So hold me close and go away.

The offer of assistance is something to really consider, but like me, many will hesitate to take you up on the offer. You should try to be proactive and take care of something that would be of help to your friend–cleaning, gardening, cooking or even just entertaining a child. Let them know you’re willing to watch their children if they need some time alone or help in other ways.

Here are some gentle but powerful do’s and don’ts that will help you reach out to your family or friend. This information was prepared by the charity ‘Care for the Family’. It’s not going to quell the discomfort of grief. Believe me, when I say, this list is better than nothing. It really helped me and my friends after I shared it with them. It’ll at least help provide you with a starting point on how to support them from day to day. Please also use the links I’ve supplied on the ‘Widower Support’ page of my blog.

Always remember you’re not a bad person for not knowing what to do.

Accepting the new you

Understanding grief, an analogy

11th March 201911th March 2019
by Mark Wilcock

Grief is like a ball in a bucket. To begin with, it fills every space, and there is no room for anything else. But over time the bucket grows. It becomes a room, then a floor, then a whole house. The ball never gets any smaller, but your life grows and you have more space to move around your ball.

Over time there are days when you may not see the ball at all. Other days you open a door in your life and it trips you up. Some days it corners you. But as time passes you have more space to move the ball out of the way.

I’ve heard people say that the ball grows smaller and smaller and eventually vanishes. That is not the case. It will always be the same size.

For me, on anniversaries and similar reminders, I seek my ball out. I carry it around with me, and I hold it. These are the days I want and need my ball with me, no matter how much it hurts. And when I put it down again, it’s no longer crammed into a small space but it’s encompassed into my new life, becoming part of it.

1st Anniversary

Grief and friendship don’t always mix

7th March 20198th March 2019
by Mark Wilcock

Someone once said that being a widower is like living in a country where nobody speaks your language. I hope I can translate one of my bad experiences into something you might understand or have been through. I feel it’s very relevant as no one seems to give it the time it deserves in widowhood.

We all lose friends and gain friends throughout our life. Whether you have been friends for six months or 30 years, you do not know how your friendship will hold up during a crisis. Some friends step up and the bond becomes unbreakable and they’ll be there for the long haul. Despite what you may have thought, some friends will leave you when you need them the most. Perhaps they just don’t know what to say or how to act.

After speaking to other widowers, I’ve realised that we all faced unique and similar circumstances with our friends. It had only been a matter of months after my wife had passed. Some of her friends started to drift away, going back to their own lives, having babies, taking holidays, having parties – life just carried on and I could taste the lack of empathy in the air. Occasionally some would text, but the cards and visits stopped, especially for the important days, even for my daughter. I guess in my mind I knew what Katherine would have expected from them?

The more you ignore me, the closer I get by Morrissey. How can this song not fit this post!

For me, these friendships had officially strained at the seams. Promises of help and support had been made without any intention of delivery. Katherine deserved so much more from them, we deserved better. Frankly, I was sick and tired of the stages. I’ll always recall the additional ‘unofficial’ visits I’d received from my child’s health visitor, she was unbelievable. Sadly, this is where I discovered strangers possessed more compassion than these people.

Some can’t handle the losses of others and so they draw back. It really is one of those ‘life events’ that will show you who the true friends are. You have to just go through every experience that comes your way, face it, feel it, try to learn from it and then continue to carry on the best you know how. Just remember the good people keep coming back!

Many people will want to help you, but very few know how? I’ve already started to document an array of ideas and materials which I can share next week.