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MyBaby2Bump Podcast: The Widowed Dad

7th September 20207th September 2020
by Mark Wilcock

Here is the link my last ever ‘Grief’ share – it practically includes everything on my checklist, it’s as raw as it gets in all honesty.

It is in the form of a podcast, for those new to this media.

It has no edits, lots on the charity ‘Widowed and Young’.

Enjoy

Mark

Main link –https://www.mybump2baby.com/podcasts/fiftyshadesofmotherhood/the-widowed-dad
Via Spotify – https://open.spotify.com/show/2ZzMmFzjg1EsPlGZ8mdYyr

Via Apple – https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/fifty-shades-of-motherhood/id1517280582

Via TuneIn – https://tunein.com/podcasts/Kids–Family-Podcasts/Fifty-Shades-of-Motherhood-p1331099/

Via Stitcher – https://www.stitcher.com/podcast/fifty-shades-of-motherhood?refid=stpr

ViaGooglehttps://podcasts.google.com/feed/aHR0cHM6Ly9mZWVkcy5idXp6c3Byb3V0LmNvbS8xMTQ0ODIwLnJzcw/episode/QnV6enNwcm91dC00Mjg5Mjcz?hl=en-GB&ved=2ahUKEwip1vORhJrqAhXJilwKHZcYAiUQjrkEegQICRAU&ep=6

Being ‘Strong’

Chicken Dinner

25th September 201925th September 2019
by Mark Wilcock

On Friday 20th September 2019, I was in Liverpool to attend the 2019 Positive Awards ceremony at the Hilton Hotel. Little did I know I would actually leave as a winner in the ‘Resilience’ Category for this blog.

I was always very honoured to have been originally nominated at the beginning. To actually be placed in the final four of the ‘Resilience’ Category and then go on to win it was a massive shock. Especially against so many other inspirational people I was up against.

Receiving this award is just simply wonderful in itself and more so for everyone who knows me and my daughter.

Though my blogging days are over I just wanted to write something to let everyone know I won and to say a big THANK YOU. A thank you to everyone who had taken the time to vote and to write so many lovely words. It means more to me than you probably realise.

You have all made my world a very shiny and proud place to be.

Accepting the new you

Man down

5th April 20195th April 2019
by Mark Wilcock

As I approach the second anniversary of my wife’s death, I anticipate the multitude of emotions that will no doubt, return. There has always been attention paid to grief and its connections to health and illness. My experience and the impact between mental wellbeing and grief was pretty much textbook.

It wasn’t too long ago, I looked at myself in the mirror and acknowledged that my life will never be the same as it once was. I could face the fact that life, in general, doesn’t’ always go to plan. No matter what our story is. My life went in one direction and within a blink of an eye, it faced a different one.

I never planned it, and I never once asked for the direction it went. However, it wasn’t’ just my life that changed direction, it was also a range of other elements, such as my wellbeing.

The concern around my mental health was a common theme in my grieving.
From the beginning, the loss of my wife generated huge vulnerability and mental limitations. It had shaken the foundations of meaning and produced considerable suffering for me. My mind found reality too traumatic to deal with and too painful. My brain spontaneously took the action it needed to protect its host.

I did have days when my head would be overloaded with torturous thoughts and visions. One specific thought I duelled with constantly was how Katherine would have managed if I had been the one to have died. How would she have coped and was I content for me to live in this pain and not her? I also tortured myself during milestone moments with my daughter. I would imagine in my mind just how Katherine would have responded and expressed her happiness observing Margot’s behaviour.

Apparitions would appear during moments when Margot took her first steps, spoke her first words, had her first birthday, went on her first holiday. Even the more obscure and funny moments with my daughter would be bittersweet. It would break my heart into pieces when I’d think about it too much. It really did bring tears to my eyes.

Loneliness was a massive factor in my wellbeing. I always remember when I began to sink emotionally. During the weeks and months after the funeral as most people, apart from family, had started to drift away. The loneliness officially started to kick in. I felt that I was no longer part of the couples’ world and I had no one who understood what I was going through.

At first, I refused to seek help or change course for the deviations I noticed. Instead, I decided to go away with friends for a winter holiday to Spain. My aim was to clear my mind and create some happy memories for me and my daughter. Each day was meant to be filled with fun and laughter in the sun. In reality, I just ended up duelling with my mind more so than ever. I returned home and all of the facades of doing OK came apart and the depression took over. Everything came crashing down on me. I became dependant on alcohol and I cried, a hell of a lot; I was incredibly sad and lonely.

Spain 2018, Daddy & Margot (the brave ones)

After dropping my daughter off at the nursery in the morning, I would drive into work, park my car, sit with my head on the wheel and stir at my knees as my eyes rained onto them. It would take at least ten minutes each day before I could get myself out of the car and go to work.

It was only when I discovered support from the charity sector and from a specialist service that my wellbeing started to change for the better. This didn’t happen overnight, it took dedication and openness to find mindfulness. One key element that really helped me was discovering somebody who had been through what I was going through. Someone who was also a widower and a single parent. I had found someone who had come out the other side and it gave me great hope. Margot was going to be ok. I was going to be ok.

From my support days, I really want to touch upon a broad component of widowhood that I have observed. I had discovered that expressions of grief were sometimes very deeply gendered. I found that some men would grieve in a way that can only be described as a masculine practice. It was almost as if some felt judged and alienated to show raw emotion. All I could think of was the term “man-up” as some adopted a form of toughness. The feeling of crying or even attending a support session resembled some sort of weakness.

I understand we’re all very different and express ourselves in our own way. However, when expressing and releasing grief, I think it’s really important for men to open up. It is equally important to know there’s nothing wrong with tears. It’s ok for a man to cry, in fact, it’s more than ok to cry. I say this in the contest to the perceptions of male grief and the entire ‘Harden up’, ‘Man up’ and ‘Suck it up’ medals of honour.

I can’t emphasise how important all of this was for my journey. Timely support protected me against the risk of poor mental wellbeing. Please don’t have any shame in seeking specialist/professional interventions. Grief cannot simply be suppressed. It will eventually catch with you at some stage in your life.

I recalled a story more recently describing how Prince Harry revealed that he sought counselling after twenty years of bottling up his grief. He had unhealthily suppressed his emotions after losing his mother when he was twelve and came close to a complete breakdown. In an ideal world, I guess if our society was to understand the impact of bereavement better, it would be more geared up to support those in need and to prevent any form of depression from grieving.

Being ‘Strong’

Kindness to strangers

22nd March 201922nd March 2019
by Mark Wilcock

I often take great pleasure in seeing how Katherine lives on in our daughter, Margot. As a 2-year-old, her ego state hasn’t even been developed yet. The sense of happiness and innocence is in free flow throughout her entire being. Nothing really phases her, she simply lives in the moment. The world is a happy and bright space to be in. It’s a beautiful thing to be around.

As adults, isn’t it strange how we see the world in our ego state? The entire pattern of our thoughts, feelings and behaviour is all we can process and understand. We have all these routine variables in life we must strive to accomplish or commit to. From my own perspective, this is just the way we’ve been programmed to see the world from a young age. Even when dealing with the concept and experience of bereavement and its trail of destruction = grief. My point being, that we’re never really shown or taught how to deal with a sudden life-changing event and the endless questions around it. We’re all just cast out into the wide world with big fat ‘figure it out for yourself’ sticker.

The past 12 months I think I’ve figured it out in my own way, I’ve tried to be more ‘Margot’ in my outlook. When I realised I could offer my insights as a widower and as a single parent to help others. I knew I could turn my negative energy into a positive. This is exactly what my wife Katherine did after she passed, she helped others!

Picture the scene if you will. A room, on a ward in Boardgreen Hospital, Liverpool. It’s May 2017 and I’m sitting next to my wife who was being kept on life-support. I’m holding her hand tightly as I’d already been told it’s over. We’d left our house that day a family of 3 and we had to return a family of 2. I was trying to absorb the concept of the unthinkable. A specialist nurse arrives and introduces herself as part of the Organ Donation Team. She opens a private conversation with me about my wishes for Katherine’s organs. This came as quite a shock, as it wasn’t something that we, as a married couple, had ever discussed in life, why would we? Things like this don’t happen to people like us, right?

I recall the Nurse reeling off a list of organs to me. My focus started to blur as the world around me started to collapse all over again, I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. With my head in my hands, I replied to each organ in the slowest way you could possibly imagine, “I don’t know”, “I don’t know”, “I don’t know”, even to the important ones. Throughout my life, I’d never even considered my own body as a donor and here I am debating which parts of my wife’s body I’d like to give away. As the conversation continued, I’m not sure how, but in some form, I eventually found some mental courage. In my mind I knew I had to sharpen up, listen and ask the right questions to this specialist Nurse, she was only doing her job in the best way possible.

Having spent the last few days in an ICU ward surrounded by dying patients, I knew the importance of what was being asked of me. I recall the nurse also asking about Katherine’s eyes for a medical research purpose. At that moment and my current state of mind, I expressed great dissatisfaction. I wanted to explode into a ballistic rage. The thought of my wife’s eyes even being considered for lab work increased my blood pressure dramatically, even to this day. Those eyes were mine, they still are. Katherine had the most beautiful and distinguished eyes, they smiled and sparkled like stars from every angle, no matter her mood.

Towards the end of the conversation, the Nurse left the room and then suddenly returned 5 minutes later to inform me of some news she’d discovered. Katherine had already made my mind up, she had apparently made the decision online 3 months before she passed. To my surprise, it wasn’t even a new donor registration, she’d just renewed her 5-year-old membership. I had no idea.

From the initial feeling of shock, I strangely felt proud that she had made this generous and unselfish decision to donate her organs, and I was happy to respect her wishes. The fact that the decision had already been made for me relieved the stress and possible uncertainty this would have caused at what was a very difficult and traumatic time. It wasn’t long after when the Nurses told me that they had found recipients for her organs.

Eventually, during the early hours of the morning, the Transplant Team arrived, and Katherine’s life support would have to be withdrawn. It was time for me to say goodbye and leave. Being given a time allocation to say goodbye to a spouse is probably the heaviest feeling you can carry. I could hear every tick from the clock on the wall as the seconds and minutes flew by.

As the months went on, I received a letter which gave me some bittersweet ‘anonymous’ information about what had happened with Katherine’s organs and the recipients. Without going into a lot of detail she helped a 48-year-old man, a 35-year-old woman (the same age as Katherine) and 9-month old baby (the same age as our daughter). My wife, Katherine, had brought a better life for somebody else, a better quality of life, if not survival for them. As emotional as it all sounds for me, I had to remember why those decisions were made by Katherine. And effectively the whole process I’ve described in this post, apart from the circumstances, it was exactly what she wanted. To give life after death.

I’m at a stage in my life when I feel comfortable to write about these times, I want to remember them and the important details. I know other widowers will read them and take what they need from it. I know I did from the resources I discovered. But mostly I do it for my daughter, Margot. I want her to read them in years from now and understand what we went through together.

I’ve also become an organ donor.

1st Anniversary

Companions in the Darkness

15th March 201915th March 2019
by Mark Wilcock

The entire premise of this post is to give some direction to those who are currently supporting a young widower. If you have not had the experience that your friend or family member is going through. There is simply no way of “making it better” when someone has this type of life trauma. The awful truth is that such agony can only be endured, not cured. This kind of pain is inconsolable, but this doesn’t mean your impulse to help is futile. I hope that what I share here will also help those recently widowed too. I urge you to read it, save it and share it.

Katherine and I were like two young trees that grew up intertwined. But then one tree died and was removed, leaving the other appearing deformed. This was the only way I could illustrate to my friends on how difficult the sense of loss was to me. Still, it was simply impossible for my friends to understand the depth of the pain caused by grief. My friends and family really felt powerless to change the conditions that generated my pain. When I go back to the beginning I was so lonely. Being the surviving parent, my daughter didn’t need to grieve, why would she, being just 9 months old. I had to carry the weight of what she’d lost on my back too. Most of my days consisted of an endless one to one loop with her. She had no interest in hanging out with me, being a baby, she was just doing what she was supposed to do, and I don’t blame her.

We all experience grief differently, we respond to it in our own way too. Some days I would become snappy, grumpy and the thought of being pitied would cause me to explode. I absolutely despised being pitied by people. I wasn’t always the nicest person to be around at the beginning. That was just how I displayed my distress. If I’m really honest now, having visitors was one of the things I found comfort in. particularly when they sat and quietly listened whilst I reminisced or verbalised something that was occupying my mind at that moment. I probably wasn’t the best company, but I really appreciated the empathy.

Often the best way to help someone grieving is to just be there. Anniversaries being a key time to arrange for yourself or others to be with that person. Such as a wedding anniversary or a birthday. These are times when we experience the extreme sense of emptiness and sadness. Try not to drift away and leave that person alone for too long. I understand everyone needs space and time, but not widowers – if anything, we need company. Especially a grieving single parent. I was always particularly touched by the actions of one of Katherine’s closest friends, Emma. She took the initiative to regularly visit us and she always asked how I was coping emotionally, she became my soundboard for a lot of things, even to this day. Katherine would have been so proud of her!

Last year I stumbled upon this poem titled ‘Hold me close and go away’ written by Emma Cobb in 2002. This is probably the most accurate way of describing how I became ‘difficult’ company for my friends and family at the beginning. I’d like to think it might also help you understand the mindset of someone you’re supporting.

Hold me close and go away,
Please visit me and please don’t stay,
Talk to me but please don’t speak,
I need you NOW – come back next week.

Emotions muddled, needs unknown,
To be with others or on my own?
To scream out loud? To rant and shout?
Or hide away and push you out?

I smile at you – “She’s not that bad”
I shout at you – “She’s going mad”
I speak to you – “What do I say?”
I show my tears – “Quick, walk away”

It’s not catching, the grief I feel,
I can’t pretend that it’s not real,
I carry on as best I know,
But this pain inside just won’t go.

So true friends, please, accept the lot,
I shout, I cry, I lose the plot,
I don’t know what I need today,
So hold me close and go away.

The offer of assistance is something to really consider, but like me, many will hesitate to take you up on the offer. You should try to be proactive and take care of something that would be of help to your friend–cleaning, gardening, cooking or even just entertaining a child. Let them know you’re willing to watch their children if they need some time alone or help in other ways.

Here are some gentle but powerful do’s and don’ts that will help you reach out to your family or friend. This information was prepared by the charity ‘Care for the Family’. It’s not going to quell the discomfort of grief. Believe me, when I say, this list is better than nothing. It really helped me and my friends after I shared it with them. It’ll at least help provide you with a starting point on how to support them from day to day. Please also use the links I’ve supplied on the ‘Widower Support’ page of my blog.

Always remember you’re not a bad person for not knowing what to do.

Accepting the new you

5th March 20199th April 2019
by Mark Wilcock

One thing I’ve learnt as a widower is that much of my experience has common elements with that of other widowers, but we each also have some very unique components in our individual journeys. For those who are supporting a grieving friend or family member, I’ve got some bad news for you. A life-changing chapter of this category will change that person.

When someone experiences bereavement, especially with a version of sudden death to a loved one like I did. Most of your identity and traits will be stripped apart and they become something totally new. The Mark all my family and friends knew had faded like a dead star, I’m no longer that person they all knew. My daughter will never ever know the person her Dad used to be.

When I emerged from the deepest and most painful first few months, crazy was the new normal for me. I quickly realised that I hadn’t a clue who this new person was. The external labels of ‘widower’ and ‘Father’ were all I had left to define me. Most of my friends didn’t know what to say to me anymore. Though I was off work at the time, I was desperately trying to step back into some sort of routine, but I just didn’t feel the same. I was confused about my purpose. Everything I knew about my life was set in the old ‘pre-grief’ world. If ever a rationale for temporary insanity was needed, it was certainly found each time I looked back at myself in the mirror. Even during the dark days, I would selfishly ponder if I even wanted to continue as this ill-defined broken-person that remained.

When I think about it, I guess we all experience and struggle with it in indifferently. It just looks different on everyone because we all experience and express it in our own way. I found that once I understood and accepted that my wife was dead I could then begin discovering this new person I’d become. I felt a level of mixed emotions about the one thing the new me had managed to retain, my sense of humour. I guess that actually sounds ironically funny in the form of the old Mark.

Naturally my outlook on how precious life was had magnified dramatically. The importance of money became pathetic, it was just a plaything to enable some ‘fun’ and get the things my daughter and I deserved. A new garden, a new car, holidays, clothes and lots of toys. Whatever I wanted I bought, I just lived in the ‘now’, tomorrow didn’t exist. This was when I really started to feel like I was losing it.

As the months went by, living as this new person was hard, you have to make your own blueprint to adjust. I knew I had to keep myself mentally engaged, I wanted to choose life and meaning. I had to quickly come to terms with the new me and learn to adapt to what I was now all about. Having a child, I couldn’t afford to stop because I’ve got someone who depends on me. Every day I could hear Katherine’s voice in my mind saying, ‘You can’t just give up, I won’t let you’.

To process what I’d become, I knew I had to embrace my grief first. None of us wants to be sad, alone, delusional, lost, or without purpose. And yet, that is often exactly what we need to experience in order to process our grief.

I don’t have an exact answer for this topic, I just really want to emphasise the importance of change you’ll experience. Everyone will reinvent and discover the new you differently, this is just my story. You should always do it at your own pace. There is no need to rush it. Always allow yourself time and space to do this in a way that supports your situation. And take comfort, at some point, things should get easier to adjust. An important part of healing and adapting to your new life is discovering the role your loved one will play in your life after a loved one’s death.

My season of grief has left me a little bit wary, a little bit wise, and a little bit crazy, but stronger!