This is what you "need" to do...arrggh!
Entry posted by swilkinson
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I am recently widowed and mentally I am still a mess. I plod on, day by day, doing what housework and yardwork has to be done, shopping, visiting Mum, keeping a smile on my face. People are kind and rush up to me in shopping centres to tell me how they only just heard Ray has passed away, how sorry they are etc and I just want to scream. By the time I have thanked them and they move on I find I need to rush to the rest rooms and have a few tears (stress release), wash my face and compose myself before going back in to the shops to do whatever I came in to do.
I can cope with Ray's dying, I can compose myself enough to attend meetings and go out as if nothing has happened but phone calls and letters that tell me I have to fill in this or that and return it before such and such a date are beginning to drive me mad. It is changing everything over into my name, small accounts in the bank, bills with Ray as the account holder, all of that means a LOT of paperwork. I don't know how many times on the phone people have told me: "this is what you need to do before I can speak to you about..." I am getting so sick of it.
Yesterday, out of the blue, I get a letter telling me one of Mum's investments needs renewing. Mum has been in care for the past 11 years, marked "palliative only" and the call centre person tells me I need to get some paperwork signed! I did my best to keep calm but failed miserably, I was screaming at her: "I'm a new widow, I haven't time to find a justice of the peace, get a heap of paperwork signed, jump through hoops for you" and jammed down the phone.
This was a warning I think that I am beginning to let all of this get on top of me but for heaven's sake why do I have to keep jumping through more and more hoops? And why can companies suddenly swithch plans and ask for yet more paperwork? Each time I try to change details or cancel something or change it into my name I come under a whole lot of new rules and need to comply with new conditions and take out a new "plan". It seems since mobile phones have plans everything else does too. So the call centre person tells me: "I will just explain your new plan" and 35 minutes later, if I am lucky I am back off the phone. That 35 minute call is like living three weeks in hell!
Okay, I know some of you who have been widowed or divorced have gone through this so you know where I am coming from. Why do I feel so helpless, as though I have been thrown into the middle of a raging stream? I guess because I am very vulnerable, being a widow is nothing like being a wife and caregiver. I have lived on a knife's edge for so many years with Ray's many illnesses, health needs and physical and mental needs and somethow I have survived that. But now, when I am so depleted up pops another set of problems.
Warning to others, make sure you know what each company does after a death in the family. Who knew that the call centre staff were so unhelpful and when I say my husband has died they would not express sorrow or give me condolences, just tell me: "this is what you need to do"? Okay, it is a business and business is known to be hard-faced and "all about the bottom line" but I am a customer, one of the many that keeps their business going and could they not at least be polite to me?
I have had a roller coaster week, good and bad, being told Mum is "palliative only" now is still fresh in my mind. I see her lying there, barely conscious and know that is just the way things are and there is no going back. She will die in the near future and I will go through all of this again, the grief, the funeral, the transfer of "goods", really that is all there is now. I love her, I grieve for all the changes she has gone through, all she and I have gone through and yet she is still alive.
I had an afternoon tea with my daughter-in-law Edie and played with the adorable Alice, I had dinner with my daughter-in-law Pamela and played with Tori, Alex and Oliver. I am blessed. I cried after I left Edie's because I could no longer tell him what I did, what I experienced, what I felt, how moved I am by my experiences with my grand daughter and how I wish he could feel that love in his heart too. It is one of those hard things you face after a death, your loved one can no longer do the things you do, expereince the grandparent role, watch as the little ones grow up. It is so sad.
I went to the Apex40 dinner last night and the President gave a brief eulogy for Ray. Female members cried, male members came over and squeezed my shoulder or hugged me. Ray, a member with me of this Club for about thirty years, is gone but not forgotten. I am glad of that, I am glad people do remember him and will for some time.
I know I have to keep moving on, moving forward, doing all the things that needs to be done. But really I just want to get over this mountain of paperwork and see blue sky on the other side.
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