Joy is not made to be a crumb.
Widow All At Sea
by Ems
1y ago
TW: death, cardiac arrest, CPR. An edited and expanded repost from my Instagram. This time of year isn’t easy for me. Two years ago last week, Mike went into hospital with difficulty breathing. It had been happening on and off for months – he’d have a bad bout, it would settle down. He’d had some tests. They thought it was a kind of reflux and prescribed some medication which seemed to help. He’d spoken to a doctor (on the phone, because of Covid) half a dozen times – our GP, another GP at the surgery, the out of hours GP. Maybe it was worsening asthma, they said, or a chest infection. Have so ..read more
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“But I feel more than words can say…”
Widow All At Sea
by Ems
1y ago
A not-review of WAITRESS (2022 touring production) The first time I listened to the soundtrack to WAITRESS, Sara Bareilles’ musical based on the 2007 film of the same name, I cried silently at my desk for approximately 45 minutes. In my defence, I was pregnant, and a musical about the life-changing impact of motherhood was always going to get me (something Mike knew full well when he urged me to listen to it!). But even then I couldn’t have anticipated quite how important it would become to me. After my daughter was born in 2018, I struggled with pretty severe post-natal depression. It was som ..read more
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Don’t read this.
Widow All At Sea
by Ems
1y ago
I haven’t written in a long while. I think I was hoping to come back with something positive and inspirational but I’ve got to be honest – year two has been pretty short on positive and inspirational so far. In fact it’s mostly been bleak and unrelenting, which is both hard to live through and boring to read about. So, er… turn back here, I guess? I can’t even pinpoint why things have got so bad recently. It’s been almost two months since I went into this “dip” and I haven’t really been able to find a way out of it for longer than a couple of hours. Things are just… dark. I pretty much constan ..read more
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Letter to Mike – January 2022
Widow All At Sea
by Ems
1y ago
Dear Momo, It’s been a while since I’ve written here. There are lots of reasons, many too prosaic to get in to, but mostly it’s because the second year of grief is just… dull. It’s a grind. Gone are the early days of incredible pain interspersed with moments of clarity, of gratitude, of inspiration. It’s harder now to find the joy in the small things – cups of coffee, walks by the sea, time with friends, art – although I’m still trying every day to do so. A lot of people say the second year is harder and although I don’t think I agree, I can understand why they say it. It’s more of a struggle ..read more
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Email to my MP, Stephen Farry.
Widow All At Sea
by Ems
1y ago
I wrote this email to my MP, Stephen Farry, today, on what would have been Mike’s 44th birthday. Dear Mr Farry, In December 2020, while No. 10 was hosting a Christmas party and later laughing about it, I and my then two-year old daughter were mourning the loss of my beloved husband Mike.  Mike died in October 2020 at the age of 42, from a heart condition. Because of the Covid rules, he was unable to see a GP when he first started displaying symptoms, with various incorrect diagnoses being made over the phone, until eventually his heart failure became so severe that he was unable ..read more
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Letter to Mike – August 2021.
Widow All At Sea
by Ems
1y ago
Hey My Heart, Ten months came and went without me even noticing. I couldn’t believe it when I’d looked at the calendar and realised I’d missed the actual date. I thought about it in the run up, as I always do, but somehow the day itself escaped me. It was actually my first night in the house alone since you died – an incredible amount of time and a testament to the love and care our friends and family have shown me. And it was tough, I won’t lie – so in a way, I suspect my brain was protecting me by not allowing me to acknowledge the date. Combined, it might have been too much. Ten months. Lon ..read more
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Planning.
Widow All At Sea
by Ems
1y ago
I’ve always been a planner. With Mike, planning was easy. Because we knew so early on that we wanted to get married and have babies and all that good stuff, we were pretty strict about The Plan. No, we weren’t going to go on holiday because Buy A House was in the plan, and that needed all our money. No, we wouldn’t stay in London because Have A Baby didn’t really fit in to that, and we knew we wanted to do that asap. It was all about The Plan. We knew what we wanted our life to look like, and dammit, we were going to get there. Well. That worked out well, huh? I mean, it did, because I loved m ..read more
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Buckaroo.
Widow All At Sea
by Ems
1y ago
Friday was A Very Bad Day. Most days now I start off functioning okay, coping okay, but as ever, aware of the nagging presence of Grief, sitting there on my shoulder. She’s still quite a new friend to me – other people I know have learned to live with her, even to value her as a reminder of the love they shared with their lost person, and I can see how that will happen, over time. But for now, she and I are still getting to know each other. Still learning to tolerate our various quirks and hang-ups. Still warily eyeing each other up and testing boundaries. On Friday she was poking me a bit. Ju ..read more
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