Photo courtesy of Cambridge-news.co.uk

The day after George’s funeral was the hardest day of all. Patricia had been in a daze for over a fortnight. From that sudden realisation, when Lucija, George’s colleague, had urgently called her that evening to tell her of George’s accident – he had been rushed to hospital after a bicycle on rue de la Loi had collided with him and knocked him unconscious – Patricia’s recollection was a blur.

Now, sitting in the kitchen, the morning after George’s funeral, Patricia was in denial. This wasn’t the way she and George had talked about their future together. George was supposed to be retiring soon; to have more time for his family and friends, and his pastimes; to leave behind that wretched ERA he had devoted the better part of his life to.

“No, George”, cried out Patricia in a high-pitched voice. “I won’t let you do this to me!” she added, as she broke down into tears. Her eldest daughter Beverley rushed towards the lounge.

“Mum, what’s the matter? Who are you shouting at?” she called from the passage, expecting to find her mother on the phone.

“You yourself told me a thousand times how dangerous that cycle lane was in rue de la Loi!”, Patricia blurted out. “You said…”

“Mum, hey Mum, shush, it’s me, calm down, it’s alright,” interjected Beverley.

Beverley looked at her disconsolately, wondering if the medication Patricia had been offered to help her cope with the shock of losing George, in such a tragic and unexpected manner, was disturbing her whole person. Patricia’s eyes flinched and she gave a sad glance towards her daughter.

“He told me a thousand times how dangerous that cycle lane was,” she repeated. “He’s not the type of person who would ever get himself into any trouble like this.”

Beverley sat down beside her mother and reached for her hand. “Mum, Dad’s gone. The bike hit him. Knocked him over. On rue de la Loi,” she spluttered. “And he’s gone.”

Patricia bowed her head and sobbed: breaking into tears the only way she could find to escape from the agonising contradiction she was experiencing.

“But how, how can they say that George is dead and buried…” thought Patricia, “….when he is still here?”

Patricia’s prolonged erratic behaviour in the first few months after George’s passing prompted her children to take turns keeping her company, either sleeping over at their mother’s, or inviting her to stay for a week or so at their homes. While this helped them share their own grief, they had also to witness how Patricia, so uncharacteristically, began lashing out, during what they referred to, amongst themselves, as, her “Why me?” moments of anger. Patricia, they all agreed, was still finding it hard to come to terms with reality.

In time, her verbal tirades with George became so intense that Beverley approached Patricia’s family doctor to seek his advice about her mood swings and the medication she was taking.

“I quite understand your anxiety, but I see no reason to change her prescription,” began the doctor in his quiet monotone. “You see, many bereaved need to go through this phase,” he continued. “Indeed, Patricia’s mental health may be suffering”.

Seeing what suffering her mother – rather than her mental health – was going through, the doctor’s observation seemed cold and detached.

“Let’s keep an eye on it,” he said by way of conclusion.

“Yes. Let’s,” replied Beverley, as she paid her €65 and thanked the doctor for seeing her.

But as more days passed, the children could also observe how their mother started a more wholesome form of reminiscing, involving more and more presence of mind, about the times she had spent together with George, in student gigs, and plays, and punts down the river, during their days in Cambridge; about their time as young professionals working in London; and about moving to Belgium, bringing up the children, their family and friends and their varied activities.

Patricia herself found that bringing back positive memories, of the life the two of them shared, had a therapeutic effect on her, giving her more inner calm and helping her to reconcile herself with the physical absence of her husband. The intensity of these recollections reminded her of an exercise she had once practiced in a yoga group in her university days, and she began to treasure these moments of imaginative, inner activity in the presence of her husband.

“Next best thing to having a conversation with George,” was the best way she could find to describe her experience, whenever she took the time to reflect on what she was doing.

“After all, we’d never leave each other without some way of keeping in touch, would we?” she would whisper to George.