The Post-Mortem Project

The funeral or memorial service is over, family has gone home, the flowers are beginning to die, you've read the sympathy cards over and over again until you have no more tears. Visits from concerned friends taper off, and there you are, alone with your thoughts...alone in your home. What faces you every day is an empty chair at the dining table, an empty spot next to you in front of the telly, no warm body beside you in bed. You are already in a state of grief. Now you are in a state of aloneness; not loneliness, but aloneness. When you're lonely, you can fix it by meeting up with friends or family. Aloneness is when your feeling of isolation can't be fixed because no one understands your state of mind and emotion. At least, that's how I see it. I never realised until Chris was gone how truly blessed we were to find each other. He wasn't just my spouse, but my best friend. My best friend was gone. I had no one to talk to, not the way I talked with Chris. I needed to find something to do to distract me, to engage me, to keep the sadness at bay.

For some reason, after Chris died, I went on a shoe-buying binge. I have no idea why. I've never been a big shoe person - there are no Jimmy Choos or Louboutins in my closet. But, for some reason, shoes suddenly became important. Not expensive designer shoes, just really lovely shoes with pointed toes and no heels. As a wheelchair occupant, I rationalised this by observing that the first part of my body to enter a room would be my feet. So, I needed lovely shoes. But, the exercise of finding and buying soon wore thin. My closet still houses shoes I've never worn.

When Chris and I moved into our house in Aultbea, life was very busy. My daughter had recently separated from her now ex-husband, so she and our granddaughter, four years old at the time, moved in with us as we had the extra room. We never really got around to decorating the house, though. We hung art and put in the furniture, but nothing more than that. The next year found us dealing with dying parents (my mother, his father - within four days of each other!), so that took up a lot of time. And Chris wasn't feeling well. Nothing he could put his finger on. He just didn't feel well. And, of course, the next year all hell broke loose. We never really got around to doing much with the house.

When the time came, we set up Chris' hospital bed in the living room where he could watch all the birds flitting in and out of the hedge beyond. We were often visited by deer, so he would see them gracefully making their way across our front garden. After Chris died, all I could see in that room were the memories of his hospital bed and him lying in it, growing weaker and closer to death with each day.

Several months after Chris died, I called my mother-in-law and asked if she thought it would be okay to completely redo the living room. I needed to know that to do so would not erase what had happened there, but would make it a more cheerful place to while away the hours. I needed to know that she didn't think it was disrespectful to Chris' memory. She said it was a very good idea, indeed. And so it began - my post-mortem project. I bought new furniture, new artwork, each piece representing something we had shared - a place, a colour, even a feeling. There was a painting of the place we first met, one of the South Downs where Chris and I often traveled when visiting his family. I even bought a print of Charleston Farmhouse, Chris' favourite place in his native Sussex. It was the place where, in September 2019, I would scatter half of Chris' ashes. Chris even made his opinions known through actions and signs. I bought a lovely lamp with different coloured shades on five individual twisted branches. A friend was visiting when it arrived, so she helped me unpack. We were in the kitchen, and I said that perhaps it might look nice in the kitchen rather than the living room. We got out the bulbs to place in each of the five sockets and the first two broke in my hand (no cuts, thank goodness). My friend said that she was sure it was Chris saying that the lamp belonged in the living room. I agreed that it would go in the living room and no bulb broke after making that declaration. Chris had spoken. After the furniture was bought and the artwork hung, I painted some linen storage boxes for the bookcase in designs inspired by Charleston Farmhouse. This kept me busy, and as long as I was busy, I didn't feel quite so sad. I hated bedtime - that is when the grief would take over. I cried myself to sleep more nights than I would like to admit.

I lost my darling mother-in-law at the end of January 2020. She was nearly 96 years old, but sharp as tack. I loved her so much and, after Chris died, she called me every week to see if I was okay. I had lost my husband, but she had lost her son. Of course, after her death, the world changed. I got word just before lockdown that there was a brand new wheelchair-adapted apartment available for me so I could move close to my daughter. Now I had a new project to keep me occupied. But, no matter the project, there were still moments of quiet, and it was in those moments that my grief's murmurs could be heard so clearly.

I am trying to fill my days with creative pursuits. I've picked up my crochet needle again and recently ordered a table top easel so I can paint again. Even after five years, the quiet and unoccupied hours are still full of aloneness and longing for what once was. Before he died, Chris would encourage me to think about things I could do once he was gone. He even suggested I find love again. I just laughed at the very thought and told him that that would never happen - he had set the bar far too high.

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The colourful image is of a lampshade we had - one of the first things we bought when we moved to the Highlands. It was an Ikea floor lamp with a crinkled paper shade that was "customisable." Chris loved the shapes and shadows so snapped an image of the shade and then edited the image to add the colours. Clever man.