Petite white paws with pink beans
You stole my baby boy’s heart a long time ago
Taking up too much space in his bed at night
Hunter extraordinaire in your day
Agile and strong
Ginger fur softening as the years flew by
Over the roof and in through the window you’d go
Reluctantly accepting my love in time
A big softie underneath it all
Sleep easy, beautiful boy
March 2009 – 14 March 2005
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Tagged #acrosticpoem, #blogger, #cat, #CoralMcCallum, #grief, #IndieAuthor, #newblogpost, #poetryblog, #Pythagoras
We each set out together
Choosing a different path through the trees.
At points our paths converged briefly
Then peeled away
Taking each of us a different route through the trees
Sunlight warmed us
The leaves provided shade
The trees themselves gave us warmth and wisdom
We each navigated our way through the forest
Hearing our own messages as we travelled
Before each arriving at the end of the trail
In our own time.
Mirroring a journey through grief and healing.
(image sourced via Google- credits to the owner)
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“The taller I stood in my vulnerability, the longer the shadow of strength that fell behind me.” That sentence by Beth Kempton resonates with me.
Six months have passed since G drew his last breath, ending his and our (the kids and I’s) ordeal that was his Glioblastoma journey. It was a journey to hell and back and then some.
In the midst of the journey that lasted for just over three years, it was impossible to recognise just how vulnerable I really was. Now six months on from the journey’s end, I am slowly coming to terms with the enormity of the whole thing. People keep telling me who well I’m doing, how well I’m coping, how strong I am… I don’t feel as if I’m doing any of those things.
I feel as though I am slowly but surely picking up the shattered pieces of “me”. I’ll never reassemble them as they were before. That “me” has gone forever. This version of “me” will be different. I firmly believe it’s impossible to watch someone you love to die slowly bit by bit, day by day, and for that not to change you.
It’s recognised that a Glioblastoma diagnosis is one of the toughest to receive. It truly is! These tumours are a death sentence from the moment of diagnosis at present. Hopefully one day soon science will advance enough to change that. For now though, there is no cure. Many tumours are too advanced at the point of diagnosis to even be surgically debulked or for any life prolonging treatment to be an option. In reality, treatment can only buy so much time and tragically that can be quite poor quality of life “time”. Apologies if that seems harsh but it’s the truth….
Throughout G’s journey, I knew I had to keep going. I had to keep going to work (albeit work was in the living room rather than in the office). I had to keep going to set a strong example for my son and daughter to follow. I had to keep going for my elderly parents’ sake to stop them from worrying too much about us all. I had to keep going for G’s sake. I had to keep going for me because I knew if I stopped, I would crumble.
I kept going…
I kept working full time throughout. I kept writing, finishing and publishing one novel then writing and publishing another. I kept blogging, never missing a week. I kept journaling because pouring my emotions and fears out through the words I wrote on the pages of my journal kept me going…and so it continued.
There were many complexities to my marriage. I don’t propose to dissect it here. No marriage is ever wholly perfect. Mine, all 28 years of it, was far from perfect. Over the past few years, I’ve come to realise that society assumes everything in a relationship is a bed of roses pre-diagnosis. The truth in some cases can be a very different story.
I promised G right at the start of the journey that I would support him and whatever decisions he made to the bitter end, and I did. My love and support never wavered. I can say that with a clear conscience.
Only now though as the shadows of grief start to stretch out behind me, can I begin to appreciate the mental, physical and emotional toll that this journey has taken on me and my children. I don’t often admit it but we’re each a bit “broken”. Certain aspects have left each of us suffering symptoms similar to PTSD, but I believe that time is a good healer and with time and unconditional love, I’m optimistic that we’ll be ok. Time will tell.
I’m not very tall so I’m not sure that the opening sentence from Beth Kempton truly applies but even if I don’t stand that tall, I didn’t allow the weight of the journey to render me so vulnerable that I broke. I’ll not lie, I came close a few times but each time I would turn my face towards the sun and let the shadows fall behind me, adopting my “Sunflower Philosophy”.
That shadow that now follows me through every day has changed too. It’s a shadow compromised of resilience, strength, stubbornness, determination, empathy, compassion and unconditional love. It’s a shadow that I’m gradually learning to be proud of.
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Up until now I’ve resisted the temptation to blog about grief.
To be honest, its not a word I like.
Perhaps its me who is weird here (wouldn’t be the first time) but when we lose someone that we love I feel that their life should be celebrated not mourned. When the Big Green Gummi Bear passed away last October, he left very few instructions regarding his funeral wishes. I feel we celebrated his life in a way that he would have appreciated. I felt that the humanist service reflected him and his personality rather than being a staid solemn affair. (Some may beg to differ).
In the weeks/months since I have explored several websites and bereavement/grief forums looking for…well I’m not really sure what I was looking for. I kind of felt I should check out these places in an effort to help me come to terms with all that had happened.
I very quickly discovered that these were not for me. No disrespect to anyone who draws comfort from them, but I found them to be spaces where folk were dwelling on their loss. Places where people were content to stay stuck in the throes of death and loss. Maudling spaces. Sorry, that’s not for me.
I mentioned that the word grief makes me feel uncomfortable.
I prefer to think of myself as healing.
People tell you that you need to move on. Another strange expression…. Yes, you do need to move on, but I feel that I need to move on with my memories (good and bad) and not just park them in that space marked grief/bereavement/loss. Moving on with those memories is all part of the healing journey. Those memories have made me who I am.
I sometimes get the impression that I make friends and colleagues uncomfortable by talking openly and honestly about the Big Green Gummi Bear. What am I meant to do? Stay silent and pretend he never existed? Not happening.
If I’m to move forwards in a healthy manner, then those memories have to move forward with me too. Yes, there are still plenty of occasions where I can feel my emotions threatening to overwhelm me, but a pause and a deep breath are usually enough to see me through the conversation. Let’s face it no one wants to see you crying and at the end of the day there are only so many tears you can shed. Every storm runs out of rain eventually.
The Helen Keller quote above ties in beautifully with my philosophy here. After several rough years, I am ready to turn my face towards the sun. I’m ready to let those shadows fall behind me rather than have them consume me. I’ll never be without my shadow. None of us are unless you’re like Peter Pan but I don’t need it staring me in the face. It needs to find its proper place and that’s behind me. I’ll check in on it when I need to. I won’t forget about it.
One step at a time I’m finding my new path through this journey called life.
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Tagged #bereavement, #blogger, #CoralMcCallum, #grief, #healing, #helenkeller, #loss, #movingon, #newlife, #widow
It’s now been a few days since I surprised the world by announcing the release of my first collection of poems.
Huge thanks to those who have already pre-ordered.
To those who may have been a little disappointed that it wasn’t a new novel that I was releasing, I humbly apologise and beg that you are patient with me a little longer.
I’m going to make myself vulnerable here and explain the background to Beginnings. Since last summer, when the Big Green Gummi Bear’s health began to decline, I have struggled with writing Book Baby 8. The creative juices just weren’t flowing and the creative fire became dull embers. My original plan had been that it would be Book Baby 8 that was released on 29th February 2024 but that wasn’t to be. My creative muses apparently had a different plan.
I parked Book Baby 8 for a few weeks late last summer then decided to type up what I had written and see if that triggered a fresh burst of creativity. So for several weeks I typed…. in fact I have over 30 000 words typed up. This helped me to re-connect with the tale but things with the Big Green Gummi Bear weren’t good and the real world had to be prioritised over my creative one for obvious reasons. Family had to come first.
At the start of December 2023 I picked up my pen again and began to make some progress once more….then Christmas hit…. and I stopped again…paused not stopped.
I had signed up to take part in Beth Kempton’s online Winter Writing Sanctuary over the latter part of the festive period. It’s a beautifully gentle way to stoke the creative fires. This year though the sparks it ignited were poetic ones and almost on a whim, I decided at the end of December that I would still self-publish on 29th February 2024 but it would be a collection of poems not prose. Cue a flurry of reviewing over 30 years worth of poems and deciding which ones to include and which to save for another day. Within two weeks, I had the project typed up, formatted, the cover designed ( the photo is one of my own so no licencing issues) and the paperback proof ordered. The speed that this project came together with was scary!
The plans are now all in place. Beginnings will be set free into the world on 29 February 2024.
The creative fires are gradually building and its time once more to pick up my pen and return to Book Baby 8. I might actually treat myself to a new pen in the hope that the words flow easier from it. (Weird writer quirk…just humour me on that)
With a bit of luck and a lot of self-discipline, I will have Book Baby 8 ready to release later this year. Wish me luck!
In the meantime, if you want to pre-order Beginnings, here’s the links
Beginnings – a collection of poems eBook : McCallum, Coral: Amazon.co.uk: Kindle Store
There will be a paperback edition available in a few weeks.
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Tagged #29February2024, #amwriting, #Beginnings, #blogging, #bookbaby8, #CoralMcCallum, #grief, #healing, #IndieAuthor, #newfiction, #patience, #poetryanthology
Over the past ten days or so, I have been attending an online Winter Writing Sanctuary hosted by the beautiful Beth Kempton. This is the second year I have brought the creative new year in within the sanctuary. For me, it’s a nice way to ease into the year ahead’s creative pursuits.
A few days into the course, the daily lesson centred around “building a space”. I thought I would share my short essay response to that lesson with you here-
Oh, where to begin! That’s a question I’ve asked myself many times over the past nine weeks since my husband passed away.
There are so many “spaces” in my life that need to be built or re-modelled. It’s a daunting prospect some days.
The whole dynamic of day-to-day life has shifted forever. Even though I’ve known for over three years that this shift was approaching, it still hit hard, bringing with it a veritable maelstrom of emotions that are still swirling around me.
The “space” that I feel I lost entirely in those early days of grief was my space in the world. I felt as though I didn’t know where I belonged anymore. Wearing this “Blue Peter” badge saying “widow”, I felt as though I had been cast into a void. I’ll be totally honest I still feel that way a lot of the time. I felt that I’d lost my very identity. Watching someone you love die changes a person forever. Who was I now? I’m still figuring that one out.
Friends would message in the first week or two after the funeral to say that they were thinking about the kids and I but were giving me “space” to get my head together. “Space” alone in my head was in fact the last thing that I needed! Left in my own mind, I kept mulling everything over and over, reliving every heartbreaking moment spent in the local hospice. I kept panicking about whether I was being strong enough for my kids. I was worrying about whether they are ok or not. I still am on that one. True they are both adults in their twenties, but their dad was the first person that they had ever lost. I fretted about whether I was really ok. Even on days where I felt more like myself for a few brief hours and felt I had my shit together, I’d panic that I wasn’t being honest with myself. It was in those early days that I really would have appreciated an invite to go for a coffee or a walk, but I accept that everyone else is busy with their lives too. The world keeps turning.
Then there’s the physical “space” around me. The house needs to change to become “my home” rather than “our home”. There are DIY projects that need to be organised that have gone ignored for years while we travelled the journey that was my husband’s illness. I wrote a list…well, three lists- big, medium and small DIY projects. Big projects need a professional. Medium ones need an extra pair of “handy” hands. Small ones I should be able to tackle alone or so the theory goes. Time will tell on that. It’s a lengthy list but in time I’ll get through it. First on the list is my leaking conservatory roof.
I’ll tell you a quick story. In the early days after my husband’s death, the house was transformed into a florist’s shop. The main issue with that was that most of my vases were lining the conservatory windowsills catching drips. The solution – all the bouquets of white flowers were put into those vases then placed back on the windowsill. Voila! Self-watering flowers that in actual fact lasted for weeks.
Other rooms in the house needed attention too. There were belongings to be packed away, thrown away or donated to charity. It was an emotional task … Maybe I’m nesting in a way, but I need to reclaim the physical “space” as my own, while not wiping out all of the past. It’s a delicate balance that needs to be struck.
I’m trying to look at my home for the past twenty years as though it were a new house and I’m just moving in. It’s hard, emotionally hard, but I accept that I need to go through the pain of these changes to heal from the loss.
I need to reclaim my creative “space” and my creative time. Working from home at the day job in the same space that I try to create my book babies in in the evenings is challenging. As time moved on from 2020’s Lockdown but I was still working from home full-time due largely to my husband’s illness, it became harder and harder to separate the two. Now that I’ve had a few weeks away from the day job, I’ve reclaimed the creative “space”. The creative fires are still small embers, but they are gradually burning brighter. I’m on the eve of returning to the day job as I write this, but I am also on the verge of relocating my “day job” space to the upstairs study. That “space” has been dominated by my late husband for the past few years. It was his “bat cave”. I still struggle to spend time in the room, but I know in my heart that I have to move beyond that. I’m slowly, piece by piece, endeavouring to make that “space” my own. The new curtains were a huge step forward. It’ll take time, lots of time, and there’s no rush but I will migrate upstairs for work and reserve my downstairs desk for creative purposes.
It’s a Leap Year. For a while I’ve said:
2023 was the year to be free.
2024 is the year to restore.
2025 will be the year to thrive.
So, the plan, the cunning plan, is to build these new “spaces” both internal and external over the coming year. It will be far from easy, but I will get there one small space at a time. I really don’t have any choice.
Breathe…it’ll be ok
Each new day another step forwards
Go cautiously. Go boldly. Just GO!
Insecurities running riot within
Nothing to be gained by looking backwards
New life adventures lie ahead
Initial fears scream in my head
Noise I don’t need to listen to
Girl, you’ve got this
Stride out towards the sun
image sourced via Google – credits to the owner
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Tagged #acrosticpoem, #beginngings, #CoralMcCallum, #grief, #IndieAuthor, #lettinggo, #movingon, #newyear2024, #poetryblog, #wellbeing
Who knew you could get so emotionally attached to a Christmas tree….
I bought our/my first Christmas tree in 1993 when the Big Green Gummi Bear and I moved into our first flat. I spent a small fortune at the time on it, but it proved to be money well spent as the tree has come out of the box looking as fresh as ever every year until last year. (I can’t say the box aged as well.)
I swear that tree knew that last Christmas would be our last as a family of four. In my heart I knew it was our last Christmas as a family of four. When I brought the tree out of the box my emotions were already running high. Following my traditional routine, I fought the base into submission, started to assemble the tree which was in three sections then disaster struck. The plastic peg around the top section that should insert into the middle section crumbled into pieces leaving me with a metal spike instead that was too small for the hole.
I lost it. Floods of tears and a fair amount of sobbing that the tree couldn’t dare break now just when I needed it for our last Christmas together. (Ok I may have been a tad irrational, but life has been stressful around here for a long time and that was actually our third time of preparing for “last” Christmas.)
The duct tape duly came to the rescue and the top section was rammed into the hole. It held.
The vintage tree survived another Christmas, but I knew that it had been its last Christmas too. Unwilling to part with it, I put it back in the box and returned it to the loft.
Move on to this Christmas and we’re preparing for our first Christmas as a family of three. I’ll park the emotions associated with that for another tale. A few weeks ago, Boy Child and I were in the local garden centre, and they had their display of trees out. Taking a deep breath, I checked them out and listening to Boy Child’s pleas of “you need a tree that’s bigger than me” (He’s 6’1”) I chose a beautiful 7’ tree. Before common sense took over, I bought it. It was still only mid-November so way too early to put the tree up.
Last week the day came when I knew I had to put the decorations up or they may never go up. All the boxes and bags were duly hauled down from the loft including both the old and the new trees. Could I really part with my old faithful Christmas tree that held so many memories in its branches?
I knew I had to, but I realised I couldn’t part with all of it.
I opened the box and pulled it all out for one last time, running my hands over its branches then I painstakingly removed each of the small pinecones that were wired onto the branches and wound them round the branches of my new tree. Each pinecone that I secured onto its new home reminded me that I was intertwining Christmas past with Christmas present and that sat easier with my heart.
Christmas will feel different this year. How it works out remains to be seen but hopefully my new tree will enjoy its first of many Christmases to come as it stands twinkling in the corner of the room.
The photo above is Book Baby 8..well as far as I have got with it for now. My original aspiration was to have it written and ready for release on 29 February 2024 but then “real life” got in the way and that’s not now going to happen.
As well as the two notebooks that make up about 40% of the first draft (best guesstimate), I have typed up most of that content. I’ll be open and honest- I haven’t written a word of it since 14 July 2023 and I haven’t typed a word since 20th October 2023.
I mentioned that “real life” got in the way….that may be a slight understatement. I don’t share too many details of my personal life in the posts on this blog but this post is one of the exceptions to that rule.
Cast your minds back to late August 2020 when the world was still pretty much in lockdown due to Covid. On 26th of August 2020, the Big Green Gummi Bear broke some news to me that imploded our family’s world. He had been diagnosed with a primary brain tumour and three weeks later, post-surgery, this was confirmed to be a stage 4 Glioblastoma. I’ll spare you the finer details. You can Google those at your leisure. Glioblastomas are evil tumours. It was a death sentence from the start. Only 25 % of people diagnosed with Glioblastoma see the first anniversary of their diagnosis.
And so began an emotional rollercoaster ride that lasted until 27th October 2023 when the Big Green Gummi Bear passed away peacefully in the care of our local hospice. Back in September 2020, he had been given 12-15 months to live but that wasn’t enough for him and he squeezed an extra 100 weeks into life.
Surrounded by family and friends, we celebrated his life on 10th November where there was laughter amid the tears. I hope it was a celebration that he would have approved of.
For most of that three-year emotional rollercoaster ride, I kept writing, using it as my escape from reality. I finished and published Book Baby 6. I wrote and published Book Baby 7. I started work on Book Baby 8…. but by mid-July I began to stress that I was making a mess of my first draft. Part of me thought about binning it but the more rational part said, “Pause” so that’s what I did. Conscious that I needed to feel as though I was still making progress, I decided to start to type up what I had written, setting myself small achievable word target goals.
Now, the goal is to pick up my pen again and finish that first draft. I’d like to think I can perhaps have it written by 29th February next year but now is not the time to self-impose deadlines on myself. Now is the time to heal and move forward as I take the first tentative steps away from that emotional rollercoaster and that is going to take time….
Please be patient with me and I’ll try to be patient with myself (something I am very bad it).
love n hugs to each and every one of you.
Coral xx
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Tagged #beareavement, #bookbaby8, #braintumour, #CoralMcCallum, #glioblastoma, #grief, #IndieAuthor, #pause, #timetoheal, #widow
You looked up into my eyes and I knew it was time.
I cradled you as my heart started to crumble.
Selfishly I wanted…needed…more time,
But my head spoke louder than my heart in the end.
As the drugs coursed through your tiny veins,
I stroked your dark head, still so soft.
I told you I loved you.
My heart broke as you slipped peacefully away.
My tears fell as you left your final tiny pawprints tattooed on my heart.
(Sioux 4 Nov 2004 – 6 Sep 2023)
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Tagged #cat, #CoralMcCallum, #death, #grief, #IndieAuthor, #inmemoryofSioux, #pawprints, #poem, #poetryblog, #poetrycommunity
Coral McCallum 