As Much As It’s Worth: Ten Years On

Author’s Note: The piece below first appeared as a guest post on The Book Tide, a community of writers and book lovers hosted by US authors Ariel Lawhon and Marybeth Whalen. Moved by a blog post I’d written nearly ten years ago about the sudden death of my husband, Marybeth and Ariel invited me to respond with an update on where my life and my grief are now. If you’d like to find out more about The Book Tide and join their wonderful book-loving community, you can find them here.

When I wrote about my husband’s sudden death in a surfing accident nearly ten years ago, I felt certain that the best days of my life were behind me. I was beside myself with grief, frightened about the future, and daunted by the responsibility of raising two young children alone. There had been no goodbye. No preparation for the new terrain we were to navigate. Just that awful knock at the front door, two police officers telling me the worst possible news, and life as we knew it, shattered.

When I read that piece now, I feel huge tenderness towards the woman I was back then. My grief journey has been a long road. There have been big moves and difficult firsts. There have been stumbles and falls. Anniversaries to contend with, friendships lost and found, feelings to feel and hurts to heal. There were days and days of staring at a blank page fearing that my writing days were over. And other days when I truly didn’t think I could go on at all.

And yet, I did.

Help sometimes comes from surprising places, but I guess it’s no surprise that other writers I admire would find the words to help me through the darkest times. It was Anne Lamott who wrote:

You will lose someone you can’t live without, and your heart will be badly broken, and the bad news is that you never completely get over the loss of your beloved. But this is also the good news. They live forever in your broken heart that doesn’t seal back up. And you come through. It’s like having a broken leg that never heals perfectly – that still hurts when the weather gets cold, but you learn to dance with the limp.

 So too, Julian Barnes, who wrote in Levels of Life after his beloved wife’s death:

Nature is so exact, it hurts exactly as much as it is worth.

It hurts exactly as much as it is worth. What a consolation, in our darkest moments of pain.

And how about the comfort to be found in the words of the late, great Mary Oliver whose final lines of In Blackwater Woods speak to the universal experience of loss with devastating wisdom:

To live in this world

you must be able

to do three things:

to love what is mortal;

to hold it

against your bones knowing

your own life depends on it;

and, when the time comes to let it

go,

to let it go.

 These past ten years, I have learned to let go of so much, and yet even now Matt’s life continues to shape me in beautiful ways. There are his kids of course, whose spirit and resilience are a credit to them both, and who continue to mirror and project their Dad in so many astonishing ways. There is the literary prize in Australia that carries Matt’s name and supports emerging writers, launching the publishing careers of twelve debut writers to date, with even more set to be discovered in this tenth anniversary year. There is a new home, where Matt’s photo stands on a desk … new books written and ideas itching to be put down on the page … and a dog – the one Matt and I always said we’d get – sleeping at my feet, keeping my toes warm on chilly winter nights.

Most importantly of all, there is love. So much love. Sometimes it feels as if my heart will burst with it. In 2019 I met a man – another Matt, strangely – in one of those eyes-across-the-room moments when everything seems to stop and the light hits just right and you smile and know that here is someone who is meant to be in your life. Our connection was instant. Love blossomed fast and we are now married, with five children between us. Our home is full of noise and laughter and shoes that seem to forever multiply by the back door. Deep joy has been hard won, but I appreciate it all the more for the road travelled. I feel it all: exactly as much as it is worth.

If you are suffering today, perhaps walking your own grief journey wondering how you can bear the pain, wondering how long you will feel like this, I hope these words offer a little comfort. I’d urge you to hold on. To seize the hands that reach for yours, to accept the help that is offered, the comfort where you find it. Hold on to your love and your memories, because as hard as it can be to believe, there just might come a time when you feel a certain kind of peace descend, when you find yourself casting your eyes skyward and smiling for the sheer fact that your loved one lived, and that they shared their precious life with you – all the joy and the pain, exactly as much as it was worth.