BEL MOONEY: The virus took my love: how can I say goodbye?
Dear Bel,
I read Glynis’s hope-filled letter on April 4, little thinking that just 24 hours later I would be in the same situation.
My husband, who has struggled with ill health for many years, was taken into hospital early that Sunday morning and was ultimately diagnosed with Covid-19.
In our early years he was opinionated, intelligent, funny and plain bloody at times. We clashed a lot, especially about my faith and his lack of it.
Many a time he’d roll his eyes and mock me on many aspects of my Roman Catholic Church. He was quite jealous that I held it so central to life, but after 19 years grew to accept it was something I would not relinquish.
In the last years, illness made him sad, angry, resentful and diminished and I lost a lot of the man I first loved, becoming more and more of a carer — tired, put upon, under-appreciated. Sometimes I’d read your column and think ‘Ouch’ because I could have walked away so many times.
It was the ‘sickness and health’ bit that kept me there, some days hanging on by my fingernails. I wasn’t noble, I hated illness, and the constant need to be ‘everything’. But I stayed and we muddled along, with happiness here and there.
Now he’s gone. I promised he would not die alone, that I would be with him.
The three days by his bedside became a time of calm and grace. I told him over and over I loved him and that he was a good man. He told me he loved me, I held his hand, read to him, helped him to drink and stayed silent, too.
I asked him three times if he wanted me to get a chaplain and each time the answer was no. So I blessed him myself with a sign of the cross on his forehead, chest and hands. He let me. He died peacefully, I told him he could go, and that I’d asked his late parents to come to meet him and I believe they did.
And now I’m alone, isolating, thinking about a fitting humanist funeral. I want to respect his wishes for a non-religious ceremony. But how can I, as a Christian, not be true to my own belief that this isn’t the end? Good Friday makes no sense without Easter Sunday. Would it be wrong to talk about hope?
ANN
Dear Ann,
I am so sorry for your loss and your pain, expressed first in private messages and then in this email. So many readers will be reaching out towards you in imagination, just as they did to Glynis.
But, truly, as you face life alone and struggle through the coming weeks, I don’t think you should add to your grief by excessive agonising over ‘form’. There are many, many ways of loving and you have experienced the range, haven’t you? Similarly, there are many, many paths to God and some do not have any signposts.
As a Roman Catholic, you have been sustained by your faith — even though it irritated your husband. I feel I understand you both.
There is Catholicism in my blood (my great-grandfather Mooney was a Dubliner), but I was raised with little religion, went to congregational church from time to time in Liverpool with my grandmother, became an excited Methodist at 15, then a born-again atheist, mellowing to agnosticism, until the day (angry at the marginalisation of Christianity) I decided to stand tall and proclaim that the glorious message of Jesus just rocks. Yes, it does!
Thought of the day
He says, it will be all right …and somehow I am comforted.
He does not mean that it does not hurt.
He does not mean that we are not frightened.
Only that: we are here.
This is what it means to swim in the tide, to walk the earth and feel it touch your feet.
This is what it means to be alive.
From Circe by Madeline Miller (U.S. author, born 1978)
I have visited Hindu and Buddhist temples, wept at the awe-inspiring, sacred beauty of the Blue Mosque in Istanbul, and made many television and radio programmes about death — and faith.
My quest to understand the various names of God continues — and I happen to believe that humanist ceremonies conducted with real love can contain a more profound meaning than a church service that rattles through.
So I’m glad you intend to respect your husband’s wishes for a non-religious ceremony and believe that your cherished Lord will be present at the same time, simply because you are.
I understand that the ‘hope’ of which you speak is that of a life to come: the risen Lord on Easter Sunday promising that death is not the end.
You hope and trust that your husband’s parents will have greeted him in an afterlife of which we understand little or nothing.
Your husband rejected all that, and yet after that last precious healing time he allowed you to make the sign of the Cross on his forehead. You may disagree, but I believe that was a sacrament equal to (if not surpassing) that of any chaplain.
You see, in the end your sign of the Cross was an act of faith, while his receiving it was a recognition of pure love. Is the distance between the two so great? I don’t think so. To me they are two sides of the same coin: indivisible.
Many people wonder about what comes after death — they consult mediums, read books, talk each day to their beloved dead. This is part of the eternal quest to find meaning in life and death. You are lucky to have a solid faith to stand with you in these dark days.
But for those of all faiths and none, the word ‘hope’ is surely central to the beating heart of humanity. Hope is the prayer we all utter.
Dear Bel,
I wrote to you in September 2017 about my estrangement from my son and three grandsons, which you printed.
Galvanised by your support, I founded the Oxfordshire Grandparents’ Support Group then wrote a book, Beyond All Belief: A Living Bereavement — Understanding Estrangement And How To Survive It (by Diana Dunk).
Now, all our lives have changed and we have descended into fear and uncertainty as coronavirus spreads. Families are forced apart. Grandparents who normally see their grandchildren are unable to. They miss the hugs, but can at least have online virtual meetings or telephone.
What about estranged grandparents who find this crisis even more distressing? We have no way of knowing how our families are.
In times of adversity it’s always family we turn to — the people closest who love us. The ones we can depend on most for support.
But this is not true for about two million grandchildren in the UK estranged from their grandparents.
We remain alone and forgotten with no word from our adult children. Many of us have sent messages only to be ignored, leaving us not knowing whether our precious family remain safe or whether they have caught the deadly virus.
To be denied any contact at such a time is hideously cruel and can surely never be justified — no matter what previous disagreements there were before the pandemic.
Surely this is the time to end the silent treatment. There has never been a better time for a short text to ask how we’re doing. Isn’t it just simple human kindness?
DIANA
Your letter — so very sad and true — makes me wonder if ‘human kindness’ is always ‘simple’.
Yes, we can give to charities and (if we go to the supermarket) pop a couple of tins into the food bank basket. But does giving to strangers — when little is required of us but entering bank details or (in those days when there was street life) passing a coin or two to a beggar — make us feel good about ourselves?
Yes — and why not? May we all show genuine charity, remembering that the other meaning is ‘love’.
But how much more complicated is the ‘kindness’ that wrenches deep, painfully complicated feelings from our innermost selves. This is the kindness which says we have hurt each other so much and now the silence between us stretches as if from one side of the globe to each other.
So now, in this dark time, let us hold out a hand to each other. Let us forgive. Let us realise that when death takes one of us, the other may weep bitter tears at what has been lost.
Such compassion is very hard indeed when a family is estranged. But surely one of the whole points of walking this earth as a human being is to display qualities which make us rise above our worst selves? I have no doubt of it. You, Diana, write: ‘There has never been a better time for a short text to ask how we’re doing.’
And another grandmother who has contacted this page before, Lorraine Bushell, founder of the Hendon Grandparents Support Group, writes: ‘Only one of my families so far has been able to speak to her grandchild. But none of the others have heard from their children or grandchildren.
‘It’s such an ongoing tragedy. I am so disheartened as I thought perhaps in this terrible time of self-isolation more of my grandparents would have heard from their children.’
Well, so would I, Lorraine and Diana. What can I say? Honestly, I’d actually test my dodgy right hip and go down on my knees and beg the younger generation who cherish their grievances to be better. Yes, older people can be difficult. Tempers might have flared. In-law issues often grate. Harsh words might have been said. Jealousy might have caused nastiness.
Don’t think you can tell me anything about any of that! I know it — and yet I still beg: show pity in the time of coronavirus. If there is somebody you’re estranged from, please melt the chip of ice in your heart. Even a short text will be an act of love. Please.
And finally… In darkness, we all need a chink of light
Last week’s letter from Valerie inspired a wonderful response. She was the nurse who longed to buy some red suede shoes seen online, but felt guilty at thinking of such a thing at a time like this. I said go for it — and she did!
So many of you loved her letter and agreed with me, writing jolly emails of support.
Contact Bel
Bel answers readers’ questions on emotional and relationship problems each week.
Write to Bel Mooney, Daily Mail, 2 Derry Street, London W8 5TT, or email [email protected].
A pseudonym will be used if you wish.
Bel reads all letters but regrets she cannot enter into personal correspondence.
In fact, three lovely readers begged me to contact her to say they wanted to buy her the shoes. So kind. I assured them the happy deed was already done. Perhaps they could give a donation to a charity instead, as Valerie would want.
There were two dissenting voices. One was a postal worker who complained that all this unnecessary online shopping is making more work for posties. But it’s one way we can keep our economy ticking over. I’m not a great online shopper normally but if it cheers and keeps business afloat…
Then, Amy (from Scotland) was very disapproving. Let me stress that she loves the column and wrote with a sincere motive. But she says ‘for the first time I was disappointed this letter was even printed, let alone replied to’.
Amy believes that we should be rethinking our habits of consumerism: ‘I actually think it morally indefensible to just buy ‘stuff’ because we want it, rather than actually need it. Most of it goes to landfill.’
I reckon she’s quite right to stress that we should be thinking about where and how things are made. ‘Our on-going destruction of eco-systems is damaging us as well as the millions of species we are destroying in the process. We must understand this and not continue to be disconnected from nature.’
As somebody who’s been acutely aware of environmental issues for the past 35 years, I can’t disagree. But when Amy rebukes me for encouraging some ‘frivolous spending spree’ she so misses the point I want to weep! In the darkness you desperately need moments of light and joy. End of.
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