According John, to the thanatologists – death experts – there are five stages of grief. I think most of us must be somewhere between the first and second at the moment; that is between denial and anger.
I have considered the possibility of dying too. Without you, life has very little purpose. It’s simply a series of routines carried out repeatedly. Some things bring more comfort than others.
The final stage of the cycle is acceptance. Quite honestly, I have no desire to accept that you are gone. I recognise that in this terrible pain, there is some kind of solace – bizarrely. That may not make any sense whatsoever! I mean that I recognize the terrible hurt and aching is the flipside of the very positive feelings we have for each other. I know that this feeling of emptiness and loss is terrible, but somehow I feel closer to you – and I am scared that if it fades, so will my memories of you. And I couldn’t bear that.
I have been in an endless cycle of conversations about you, your death, how you felt, what was troubling you. Your friends are shocked and sad that you didn’t speak to them – especially Jimmy and John. I am not sure they realised how difficult it was for you to see P, your son; the endless wrangling and how she refused to even answer the phone or respond to your texts; or claimed P was sick and then said you couldn’t see him.
I have considered the possibility of dying too. Without you, life has very little purpose. It’s simply a series of routines carried out repeatedly. Some things bring more comfort than others.
The final stage of the cycle is acceptance. Quite honestly, I have no desire to accept that you are gone. I recognise that in this terrible pain, there is some kind of solace – bizarrely. That may not make any sense whatsoever! I mean that I recognize the terrible hurt and aching is the flipside of the very positive feelings we have for each other. I know that this feeling of emptiness and loss is terrible, but somehow I feel closer to you – and I am scared that if it fades, so will my memories of you. And I couldn’t bear that.
I have been in an endless cycle of conversations about you, your death, how you felt, what was troubling you. Your friends are shocked and sad that you didn’t speak to them – especially Jimmy and John. I am not sure they realised how difficult it was for you to see P, your son; the endless wrangling and how she refused to even answer the phone or respond to your texts; or claimed P was sick and then said you couldn’t see him.
In fact the last day I spent with you – Saturday 10th Feb, you were locked in a fruitless conversation with her about gaining access to P as you were due to have him on that day. And the merry go round continued because she spent almost two hours on the phone to you – you put her on loudspeaker, so that I could hear. Unbelievable. Not one straight answer, just all this ridiculous hypochondriacal rubbish about P being unwell – had a virus. But she couldn’t tell you which one. Just spent a lot of the conversation saying how she was dealing with everything and she had no money. In reality, she seemed very preoccupied about herself. Denied that she had made allegations in court of drug abuse. Refuted that she had ever said it. It was so frustrating to listen to. It felt like she enjoyed the game of messing you around. And still she refused to let you go to the house and see P. And then she told she thought you were loaded and laughed. And she kept laughing. It was, quite frankly, John, appalling.
Your biggest fear was that she would turn your son against you, and to a certain extent you felt that was already happening. Poor P had already expressed his change of football allegiance from Liverpool to Everton – because your wife’s family follow the latter. He said he wasn’t sure that your sister’s children, his nieces, were his family any more, even though they have always been so close. This really troubled you, naturally and we all tried to reassure you, but clearly this weighed too heavily on you – you simply couldn’t see a way forward. You assumed she would always make it difficult for you – and until this point in time, it proved to be the case.
My own repeated assertion was that she is mentally ill. Her behaviour was text book passive aggressive: constantly talking about herself, how her life was so awful, how you had abandoned her and P. She still wanted you back – despite her allegations in court that you were an unfit husband and supposedly put P at risk. She made it clear to you before you separated that if you did ever leave her she would never let you see P - although you took that as a comment made in jest. You told me that you didn’t believe she was entirely serious, as she laughed when she said it. And then you began to realise that it was true. Her currency was emotional blackmail and she used P as a pawn to hurt you.
Even now John, after your death, she is doing the same. As you will know by now, she has organised a Requiem Mass for you at the Church where you got married. You hated that Church and you hated organised religion, having a particularly negative opinion of the Catholic Church. Still, apparently, we are having a Requiem Mass for you because your son is a catholic and that is what you would have wanted! Of course, I won’t go there. I have no desire to participate in the charade. We will cremate you afterwards. And the hypocrisy continues – she doesn’t want P to go to the crematorium because she claims it would be too upsetting – though is perfectly happy to put the poor child through the ostentation of a full blown Requiem Mass.
Incidentally, she didn’t contact any of your friends, just all your aged relatives first! In all of this, I really do feel for your sisters as they have had to deal with her and still she continues with the manipulative behaviour. Apparently, you committed suicide because I had left you and it was my birthday. Not. As we know, she is about 7 weeks out on that one. Still, she tried. In fact I can tell you they are the first words she uttered to your family when she called them. Very concerned that she believed you had everything you wanted – “wasn’t he happy?” Well, she knew that you weren’t as she had refused you access to P for almost a year and even when the court ruled that you should have contact with him, she simply didn’t turn up. Thankfully, you documented this, keeping a diary as we had all advised you and then lodged this information with your solicitor. At least it is on record somewhere.
The initial theory fell flat, as no one could give it credence – she still had been unable to ascertain whether you or I had maintained our friendship, or whether it had moved on to the next level – and boy did she try to find out! But nobody would tell her. Within 24 hours, there was another call to your family – this time, she claimed there must have been an intruder who had broken in and killed you. This was put forward as a theory at the same time she asked whether or not you had left a will. I don’t believe that at this point, some two days after your death that she had offered condolences or sympathies to your grieving family. Once again, the sociopathic desire to self protect took over. She reiterated her wishes for a small funeral – wonder why John? Of course we know why, the less people that come, the easier it is for her.
I hope half of Liverpool comes – you had stacks of friends and people that loved you as we now know – not just the three women that were close to you before you left us. Don’t fret, special man, they will all come to say goodbye. How could we all leave you just floating around?
Your biggest fear was that she would turn your son against you, and to a certain extent you felt that was already happening. Poor P had already expressed his change of football allegiance from Liverpool to Everton – because your wife’s family follow the latter. He said he wasn’t sure that your sister’s children, his nieces, were his family any more, even though they have always been so close. This really troubled you, naturally and we all tried to reassure you, but clearly this weighed too heavily on you – you simply couldn’t see a way forward. You assumed she would always make it difficult for you – and until this point in time, it proved to be the case.
My own repeated assertion was that she is mentally ill. Her behaviour was text book passive aggressive: constantly talking about herself, how her life was so awful, how you had abandoned her and P. She still wanted you back – despite her allegations in court that you were an unfit husband and supposedly put P at risk. She made it clear to you before you separated that if you did ever leave her she would never let you see P - although you took that as a comment made in jest. You told me that you didn’t believe she was entirely serious, as she laughed when she said it. And then you began to realise that it was true. Her currency was emotional blackmail and she used P as a pawn to hurt you.
Even now John, after your death, she is doing the same. As you will know by now, she has organised a Requiem Mass for you at the Church where you got married. You hated that Church and you hated organised religion, having a particularly negative opinion of the Catholic Church. Still, apparently, we are having a Requiem Mass for you because your son is a catholic and that is what you would have wanted! Of course, I won’t go there. I have no desire to participate in the charade. We will cremate you afterwards. And the hypocrisy continues – she doesn’t want P to go to the crematorium because she claims it would be too upsetting – though is perfectly happy to put the poor child through the ostentation of a full blown Requiem Mass.
Incidentally, she didn’t contact any of your friends, just all your aged relatives first! In all of this, I really do feel for your sisters as they have had to deal with her and still she continues with the manipulative behaviour. Apparently, you committed suicide because I had left you and it was my birthday. Not. As we know, she is about 7 weeks out on that one. Still, she tried. In fact I can tell you they are the first words she uttered to your family when she called them. Very concerned that she believed you had everything you wanted – “wasn’t he happy?” Well, she knew that you weren’t as she had refused you access to P for almost a year and even when the court ruled that you should have contact with him, she simply didn’t turn up. Thankfully, you documented this, keeping a diary as we had all advised you and then lodged this information with your solicitor. At least it is on record somewhere.
The initial theory fell flat, as no one could give it credence – she still had been unable to ascertain whether you or I had maintained our friendship, or whether it had moved on to the next level – and boy did she try to find out! But nobody would tell her. Within 24 hours, there was another call to your family – this time, she claimed there must have been an intruder who had broken in and killed you. This was put forward as a theory at the same time she asked whether or not you had left a will. I don’t believe that at this point, some two days after your death that she had offered condolences or sympathies to your grieving family. Once again, the sociopathic desire to self protect took over. She reiterated her wishes for a small funeral – wonder why John? Of course we know why, the less people that come, the easier it is for her.
I hope half of Liverpool comes – you had stacks of friends and people that loved you as we now know – not just the three women that were close to you before you left us. Don’t fret, special man, they will all come to say goodbye. How could we all leave you just floating around?
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