The Cleaver

Kate Cleaver

A bit of writing about being neurodivergent, disabled, ethnic and a widow in Wales.

It is an odd thing I guess but, in my head, I see life as an elaborate boardgame. The board is a massive three-dimensional landscape with all sorts of biospheres and climates, and there is no one path.

Instead, there are many, they branch off and run parallel or disappear into a place I can’t see.

There are a hundred different routes and as step forward they are forever changing.

Why the elaborate set up? I guess it stems from me trying to make sense of life. My autism means I really need to know what is going to happen, but the reality of life means I can never know.

Seeing life as an elaborate game helped. With Roland in my life that game had faded. I wasn’t walking alone, instead there were two of us and we made decisions together. If I got worried, I would simply ask.

“It will be, okay?”

And he would always answer, “I’m here.”

Except now that he has passed, I am once again standing alone on that boardgame. The elaborate map I had created in my mind has snapped back into focus and I am standing on a somewhat rocky path.

I can see different paths in the distance.

Is this important? Well, as a widow I can say it really is.

When you lose a spouse, you lose not only them but also the future you would have had with them. That future where you held hands for the end of your days, it disappears in a blink of an eye.

Shock

You go into shock, and that can last for months if not years. You can’t see anyway forward, and you really can’t visualise a future.

So, my boardgame becoming real again is a good thing. I am planning for the future.

My Christmas was busy but enjoyable. I didn’t get any huge grief bombs until the new year, and to be expected, it was to do with the future.

I know my husband isn’t coming back, but I have begun to grieve the future I won’t have. Don’t get me wrong, I miss Roland every day, especially the hugs he would give me throughout the day. The talks we had and the I love yous. I miss all of that, but it has gone from a deep awful uncontrollable pain, to one that I can manage and is like a constant ache.

It doesn’t stop but is something you live with instead of in. Slowly I have been thinking of the future.

I guess I was before but then it was a series of black and white choices. Each choice trying to make my life a little better but at every turn I didn’t see myself in that future. Even when I chose the house I am buying. It felt like a good house and ticked all the boxes, but I never ‘saw’ myself living there.

I couldn’t see my dog in the back garden and really couldn’t see how I was going to live there. That all changed though just after new year. I had a dream and in it I was living the life I had already made the choices for. As far as dreams go it was ordinary.

I woke up and was surprised I was back in the past/present. Since then, I can imagine a future with me in it.

Of course, I was then stuck with the reality that my house chain collapsed at the beginning of the year.

My buyer lost their buyer. So, although I can visualise the future it has moved a little further away.

Drawing

I guess this ought to stressful but somehow it isn’t. I’ve given my buyer a little time to see if they can find another, but in the meantime, I am slowly getting the house ready to start showing again. Just in case.

I’ve also started to draw. What started as a little itch in the back of my head, one which meant that I had to put pencil to paper has grown into a compulsion. I think if I asked my parents, they would say that my drawing in the past has been a way for me to heal.

I do know that apart from life drawing I have not put pencil to paper.

In the last few days, I have started a study of a bear. Just sketchbook stuff. Kind of feeling my way into a new way of working. My art seems bolder and darker. The strokes stronger and the colours are far more intense.

That boardgame that I see my life as, has started to come to life. The colours and vibrancy have come back to it. I can’t remember when everything became grey, but it did. My life felt like I was simply reacting to things that were occurring. In literature I would have described myself as a passive character. Except who wants to be that in their own story?

Plucky

I don’t know about you, but I always think of myself as the plucky hero or the princess or the magic wielding craft wizard. I don’t think of myself as the scared mouse waiting to see who will catch me first. That is what happened after losing Roland. I became passive, simply waiting for the next bad thing to happen.

Of course, things occur and some of them are bad, some of them are good. But I have decided to take control. On that boardgame I see in my hand I have picked up the dice and am ready to roll them myself. This year is about me making decisions that will impact my life, hopefully for the better, but they are decisions I am making a conscious effort to make. Somehow it doesn’t matter what I roll if I take charge and do.

After all, in the future I can see myself living in my cottage with a large outside sofa reading a book or maybe writing or maybe drawing. Although maybe I will be that craft wizard creating a quilt from scrap of fabric, each stitch making my life a little more vital and vibrant.