Welcome to the Sunday Scene

19 August 2008

Greetings,

If you’ve been widowed for a while now, I wonder if you’ve been having similar experiences to me.  For the first year it was all uphill struggle until I threw myself into setting up and running the Sundays Scene Breakfast Clubs. The clubs occupied just about every waking and some ‘what should have been sleeping’ hours, any other activities being fitted in as and when.  In the last six months, as my involvement with the clubs has lessened I’ve been forced to consider how to spend my time in the future. Having always been an outgoing, active person involved with lots of things, it came as something of a surprise that none of those things any longer appealed – drama, cycling, gardening, public service, IT, shopping, writing or even just being sociable.  Something of a quandary here! I’d almost dropped out of the public arena and was happy to be ‘invisible’ to all but the few.  At the same time I began to comprehend that the reason for this was because without realising it, I’ve changed and am no longer the person I was before my husband died. The last few years have re-shaped my personality and different things are now needed to fill my life.

There has been a bit of a hiatus whilst I rattled around not quite knowing what to do and feeling pretty dispirited but slowly things are beginning to take shape.  One really helpful discovery is Saga Zone UK www.saga.co.uk an on-line social community for the over 50’s. Having registered, I was welcomed by many members, found a few living in my county and have now arranged to meet up with some on October. Saga Zone has many very interesting members and even if you can’t get to meet in person, it’s great to find people with similar interests to chat to on-line whenever you feel like it.

Other than that, I’ve booked some piano lessons with a seventy two year old friend who has just completed her BA in Music and is now going on to do her Masters Degree; have joined a local book reading club; volunteered to become involved in helping with two annual music and arts festivals, have become a Friend of a local open air museum and have become a ‘member’ of one of the clubs I originally set up. Oh yes – I’ve upgraded my car too. Having never been particularly drawn to the colour red, I now have a house with a red front door and a red car so I take these as signs that I need to inject a bit of ooomph into life.

My family and friends have been wonderful during this major life transition but I fully appreciate that I neither can nor should rely on them to fill my waking hours and look forward to making new friends as I become more involved in these new interests. Change is inevitable and so much easier to navigate if we can stay open minded and willing to take on new challenges. Whilst never forgetting our loved one, things really do get better!

Jacquie