Black hole

My first post since my return to my adopted homeland. Why? Because, for once, I actually have no idea what to write. My life has been turned upside down. My nine days of being nurtured and cared for to strengthen me for the immediate times ahead have been rendered worthless in one fell swoop.

I was hoping that some time away, and apart from Olivier who is grieving so very differently to me, would do us some good. Would he miss me and be overjoyed to have me back? Hmmm. No. How wrong could I have been. I came back giving hugs, taking his hand in mine, sitting on the sofa wanting to talk. As I have said before, I am a planner and I need some concrete concept of a potential future, ANY potential future, to hold onto and to work towards. For me, I feel we had made our gorgeous William and we will NEVER forget him, but I have an intense and innate need within me to have another baby. Another baby with Olivier, my husband.

From what I read there is not a 'good' or 'bad' time to start having these thoughts. For me, my age is of course a huge factor and I need to know if there will ever be a chance of this. As I mentioned before, if Olivier denies me this chance, will I end up resenting him? Could our marriage survive this? I felt I'd advanced enough and gathered enough strength over the recent days to broach this subject again - back to France, new beginnings etc.

But Olivier will not countenance the idea. His response, for a man not usually known for his locquaciousness, was to launch into a diatribe about how he can't stand 'family life' any more, the routines of things like eating together round the table, eating at a certain time (very important in France), morning routines, other peoples' children, and, worst of all, being part of a family in general. (He, who has just spent the whole week I was away at his friends' houses, eating round the table with them and their little children... whereas I am going out of my way to avoid these situations). He wants to be alone.

Well hey - welcome to my world!! I can't stand any of that either!  But I AM HIS family - he IS MY family. So what is he saying? And I have the responsibility of Izzy so I have to keep my part of the family operating as normally as possible. Is he relinquishing all responsibility?

In our household it has always been very much the fact that Izzy is my child and I do everything (90%) for and with her, but William was OUR child so we shared the responsibility equally. It was often hard for me to see him lavishing such love and attention on William while giving Isabelle a perfunctory kiss on the top of her head in the morning. We'd spoken about it, but Olivier is not naturally a 'kid person' and found it hard to bond with Izzy. Step-families are hard work, as I am sure many of you know.

Now, Izzy is making such an effort to give Olivier hugs and kisses - I think she understands that she is all he has left. She'll jump into his lap for a cuddle and he'll stay stiff as a board, ams by his side and give her a couple of little pats on the back. So sad to see.

But I do need to say here that I think I have been pushing Olivier too early to move on. Whatever the concept of 'moving on' is, as my friend Kate remarked insightfully this morning, at the same time noting that our concept of this is a very Anglo-Saxon one, whereas the Mediterranean way of grieving may be very different. It brings to mind all those summers I spent in Malta, an extremely Catholic nation, where, once a widow, you wore black for the rest of your life. That's it, you're grieving. I almost wish we still wore black armbands to signify our state of grieving, as we did in the past. Then I wouldn't feel the need to spurt it out, to explain my sorry state, every time I break down out there in the real world.

Olivier's mum sent me a really good link (in French) to an article about how men grieve - http://www.traverserledeuil.com/comprendre-le-processus-de-deuil/dossiers/dossier-du-mois - this went into much more depth than anything else I have read. Most of it says to leave them alone, no pressure etc. Modern society's expectations of 'man' are to BE strong, STAY strong, look after those around them, not to crumble, not to ask for help etc. So that's what they do. In our case, add in the whole Mediterranean twist and a pinch of typical French arrogance and inherent mysoginy and you have one helluva situation for isolation.

So I KNOW I need to step back. But by doing that we are growing further apart. So we are going round in circles.  Will we find each other again in time (there's that word again)? Or will this be the end of us? I feel we need to be working at least a little bit in tandem to get through this horrendous nightmare together. And I want to talk! But he doesn't and now I'm getting advice from all directions about it being important for us to talk and then this new information that says step back and leave men alone!

Well, even though the link above spoke mostly about leaving men to get on with their grieving and throw themselves into work and other projects, it did also say towards the end that talking CAN help. So now I finally have some good news. Olivier has agreed to go to see a professional and has an appointment next week. To protect his privacy, I won't say any more than that. But let's just hope that this is a tiny step forwards for us as a couple and as a family.

Because right now, all I can see is a big black hole where my future should be.