What Abi Taught Us (11 page)

Inspiration

Inspiration keeps me going. Tales of others who have endured terrible life stories inspires me to get up and keep going. Day in day out. Charney and Southwick have found, across multiple interviews, that having a role model, or even role models, is a key factor promoting resilience. ‘Role models can be found in one's own life (like your parents) or even people you don't know who are inspirational and have been through something similar. We heard a lot about this from the prisoners of war, who when they were in prison took the other prisoners as role models—many of whom were offered early release but said none of us will go until we all are released together.'
¹⁷

In the course of researching this book, I've stumbled upon many inspirational role models who have given me the strength to keep going. One of them is Carolyn Moor, founder of the Modern Widows Club (
www.modernwidowsclub.com
). Following the sudden death of her husband on Valentine's Day in 2000, after their vehicle was struck by a car as they returned from dinner, Moor established the MWC, a community of widows aimed at empowering each other to ‘lean into life, build resilience and release their potential to make a positive difference in the world'. From just three widows meeting in Moor's home in Florida in 2011, MWC grew to include 3000 members and over 12,000 followers on Facebook by 2015. Inspiration motivates us to keep on pushing forward, to keep trying, as we notice how others have endured tremendous loss and still managed to survive.

Gratitude

Gratitude helps us deal with our grief by enabling us to focus on what we have, rather than exclusively focusing on what we have lost. Even without Abi here, I am grateful for many things. Firstly, for the family I have left—for Trevor, Ed and Paddy, and all the purpose and reason they bring to my life, but also for the love they give me. I'm grateful for the opportunity to continue to live when Sally, my dear friend, wasn't given that chance. She embodied beauty, spontaneity and generosity, and I'm determined to carry on that legacy. I'm grateful every morning I wake up to see Trevor is still alive, to have him by my side for another day. I am grateful for my amazing family and friends, for
everything
they did for us in those first few days, weeks and months. I'm grateful for their patience and willingness to embark on this long, long journey with us, and never complain at the pace of our recovery, for never expecting us to ‘get over' Abi's loss or stop thinking about her.

It's easy to see how gratitude helps me take a broader look at my life, to consider the boys as much as I consider Abi. My gratitude at having the chance to live when Sally is dead spurs me on when I'm feeling flat and lacklustre and don't really want to do anything. How can I not walk out to Boulder Bay, join friends for a drink, or prepare a family meal when she no longer
has any of these opportunities? What kind of a friend does that make me? Occasionally I put three stones in my pocket—good old Kiwi river stones—as a physical reminder of the things I am grateful for that day. Gratitude forces me to look beyond what I've lost.

Serenity

In the days after the girls died, it wasn't easy to find peace. Living with a maelstrom in my head, a house full of people, colliding thoughts and emotions, and so many decisions to make, serenity was elusive. And yet. By retiring to bed, shutting myself away in our room, picking up a book, putting on headphones, driving someone home, I did find some quiet moments. Even amid all the chaos, my brain's fundamental desire for serenity expressed itself by repeating words of an old favourite hymn: ‘Speak through the earthquake, wind and fire . . . o still, small voice of calm, o still, small voice of calm'. Those words kept urging me to find some stillness and calm amid the madness.

Humour

Trevor uses humour all the time, and I'm glad to say there's plenty of it. I have never felt bad about laughing, even in those
first few hours after we were told of Abi's death. Sitting in the back of the police car, as we were driven five hours to the hospital to identify our daughter, Trevor, Ed, Paddy and I shared stories of our beautiful girl—how much she'd made us laugh, how ridiculous and infuriating she could be. Whoever said never speak ill of the dead? We have laughed and laughed about how annoying she was, pushing her food around her plate, pathetically attempting to brush the massive knots from her hair, how easily baited by the boys she was, how she'd scrunch up her face in fury. Her mad dances, made up on the spot, but allegedly forged from hours of practice.

It's easy to see how laughter bonds us to others in the face of grief; it cements our memories and brings us closer. There's now even good evidence explaining why we sometimes find ourselves laughing at inappropriate times—laughing in the face of death. Proper, cackling laughter (Duchenne laughter, as psychologists refer to it) has been shown to be significantly associated with reduced anger and increased enjoyment among bereaved spouses, as well as with increased enjoyment, better social relationships and disassociation from distress. People who genuinely laughed and smiled more when talking about their loss coped better over the first two years of their bereavement than those who did not.
¹⁸

A few months after the girls died, I was invited to go to a local school's LipSynch night. Knowing that the onstage entertainment meant I wouldn't have to spend the evening talking to the entire community, but could just watch the acts, I went along. I also went because I knew that it was always a fun night out, and having a bloody good laugh would help, providing some
respite from the frequency and intensity of negative emotion, and topping up my quota of positive emotions.

Love

There's always been love during the pain of our bereavement. Bereavement is about love, after all—the love you had for another person. The love you have for them still. The great thing about love, of course—its evolutionary purpose—is that it connects us to others. Feeling love prompts us to reach out, to include others, to look beyond ourselves. Love broadens us and builds our social resources. When the worst happens, it is our social networks and resources that we rely on. In the face of Abi's death, I have vowed to love more.

Exercise in finding positive emotions

Because positive emotions are fleeting and often go unnoticed—unlike negative emotions which tend to hang around—there's much to be gained by actively seeking them out. Don't get me wrong: I'm not suggesting that while you are experiencing a prolonged bout of depression you beat yourself up about not wanting to attend a comedy club. What I am suggesting is that you try to recognise these emotions as they occur in your life, and notice the opportunities to experience more of them.

I have come to think of experiencing positive emotions as investing (i.e. paying deposits) into my psychological piggy
bank—which, let's face it, I am now raiding regularly, with daily, at times hourly, bouts of sadness and worry. Knowing my resources are being constantly depleted helps me to focus on re-investing in them via sleep and positive emotions. It reminds me to give space and opportunity for positive emotions to arise: to find the time to explore things that make me curious, embrace humour and feel the cathartic nature of laughter, to use moments of serenity to take stock and feel gratitude for the good things; to look up at the sky, the weather, the moon, and down at the caterpillar and daises with awe. All these emotions were given to us for a reason. Value and feel them all.

Taking a look at the full complement of positive emotions listed below and spend a moment considering where and how you can find these in your own life:

Chapter 8

Distraction

IN THE FIRST YEAR
after Abi's death, my near-constant thoughts of her almost drove me mad. My immediate thoughts on waking would be of her—nothing concrete, nothing in particular, just a profound knowledge that she's not here anymore, that she's gone forever, and a deadness, a longing gnawed deep inside. I used to play games in my head, resolving that, instead of thinking constantly of Abi, I'd redirect my attention to thoughts about my (incredible and living) boys. What are
they
up to right now? What are
their
favourite clothes, what are
their
opinions of this or that? What do
they
look like? How do
they
smell? Essentially, I would attempt to transfer the type of questions that would circle round and round in my head about Abi to them—just to give myself a break from the constant obsession with her, which was exhausting, not natural and made
me feel quite bonkers. Less than a minute into this exercise I'd call it off, accepting the futility. Frustratingly, I simply could not dwell on them and the minutiae of their lives in the way I kept thinking about her.

This habit of dwelling on negative thoughts, chewing them over and over in our minds, is referred to by psychologists as ‘rumination'. When rumination is short-lived it can be useful, helping us to organise our thoughts, work out what went wrong and how we can avoid similar situations in future. But, when we ruminate over long stretches of time, covering the same ground over and over again, rumination is not beneficial. Chronic rumination can amplify our negative mood, exacerbating the pain, and rarely leads to effective solutions.

In the face of such endless rumination, I therefore had to find other things to consume my attention. Work helped. Being with other people and talking about other things helped. When my thoughts of Abi, and the constant longing, became too oppressive, I'd contact a friend or colleague and ask to meet, to walk the dog, catch up for a ten-minute coffee break, make a Skype call to discuss some aspect of work that required my total concentration. Anything to pull me out of the introspection and allow my brain some time off.

Accordingly, I was pleased to read an academic paper suggesting that ‘coping is embedded in everyday life experience, which involves taking time off from grieving, as when watching an engrossing TV programme, reading, talking with friends about some other topic, or sleeping'.
¹
The researchers, Margaret Stroebe and Henk Schut, regard grieving as a dual process as we oscillate backwards and forwards, at times confronting and at others avoiding our grief in order to get some respite. The dual
process refers both to this oscillation between confrontation and avoidance, and to the fact that the bereaved have to cope with two types of stressors:
loss-oriented stressors
and
restoration-oriented stressors
. In other words, we have to deal with the loss experience itself (thinking about the dead person, remembering life as it was, looking at old photos, going over the circumstances and events surrounding the death, crying about the loss) and the stress of working out how we are going to live without the deceased in the future (dealing with finances and loneliness, perhaps moving home, learning to cook, paying the bills, and so on).