Month: August 2019

It was Dimitra’s birthday on a Sunday in March and because that was worth celebrating, I joined a few friends and relatives to pay a visit to her grave. Following Greek custom, one of the priests working at the cemetery was called and said a short prayer and then somehow felt inspired to mention how he had come to realise that life, especially for men, really starts at 40.

It was a slightly surreal experience, because I was standing next to him and, unbeknownst to him, I was 40.

I had been more concerned about turning 40 than I had wanted to admit. Not only did 40 feel incredibly old (I left home not long after my own parents were 40; I would turn 40 without having had children), it also felt like the point of no return. And in true midlife crisis spirit, I doubted just about every decision I had ever made in my life.

Then one week before my 40th birthday I suddenly became a widower. And everything changed.

Though it took me a full year to fully realise this, all my past decisions suddenly became alright while at the same time I was able to change anything I wanted.

Dimitra had the power to change people’s lives. This is how many friends past and present remembered her after she died. This is also what she did to me when we met a decade and a half ago.

And this is what she did again when she took that taxi into eternity last summer.

The year I was 40 has been the most amazing year of my life. Because not despite the many moments, especially towards the end of it, that I actually did feel rather miserable. I learned as much from those moments as I did from the many new friendships I made.

It dawned on me the other day that the last time I felt truly miserable was the morning of my 41st birthday. Then I got so tired of myself I gave myself a virtual kick up the backside. Everything has been going better since.

I am often surprised at how amazing my life is going and how great the future looks, even if in practical terms it also looks very uncertain. I am eternally grateful to Dimitra for giving me this opportunity and owe it to her to make the best of it, every single moment of the day.

It turned out to be an unexpectedly weird midlife crisis and yes, I do miss her dearly every single day, but heck, I really like this life as a 40-something. And I am so looking forward to the rest of it.

A few years ago, I was interviewed for a podcast by a presenter who clearly wasn’t much of a listener himself. “How can you listen to so many podcasts?” he asked at the beginning of the interview and I explained I listened to them while doing work around the house, while walking around town and really, at just about every moment I didn’t need my brain for something else.

Podcasts are great. I have always liked radio and podcasts are essentially radio on demand. There are so many good quality ones on so many interesting topics and when I have run out of podcasts to listen to, there are always audiobooks to complement them.

Dimitra’s death last year significantly reduced the amount of social interaction in my life so I ended up listening to even more podcasts. I had a bluetooth earpiece in my ear for most of the day so that I could press play whenever I went to the bathroom, checked the laundry or got myself some fresh coffee from the kitchen.

Listening to podcasts had the added benefit that most mundane tasks became fun and interesting. It was great.

Except that with all this listening, I didn’t give my brain much time to actually think. About work. About life. About trivial things. About big things.

It would be too far-fetched to say that podcasts were an escape mechanism ─ after all, I had been listening to them a lot before Dimitra’s death ─ but all this listening didn’t give me the time and space to digest the increasingly complex feelings I had. And I had been evading those feelings.

Last month, as I was travelling, I took a break from listening to podcasts. I walked through foreign places absorbing the sounds of the city and found myself catching bits of other people’s conversations on public transport. It was great.

I also found myself listening to my own thoughts. I had forgotten that much as I like to digest information, I also like to think. I found myself thinking a lot more. And I had missed that.

I now listen to podcasts occasionally, when there is something I really want to listen to. They’re still great and my preferred podcast app ─ ironically named Podcast Addict ─ is still there within hand reach. But being on my own, with just me and my brain, is great too. And even more important.

In 2010, Dimitra and I both read a book that inspired her ─ and thus inspired us ─ to write ‘manifestos’: lists of rules to keep in mind and to live our lives by.

Dimitra would often enthusiastically refer to her manifesto in the years that followed (“the Prague Diner Manifesto”, as she called it, for it was written while we were on holiday) and even got some of her friends friends to write their own.

I quickly forgot what I wrote in mine.

In part this was because I wasn’t ready for this. At 32, I felt a lot less my real age than I do now. I still struggled with life more than I admitted.

I also found it hard to make it genuine. I am a natural pleaser and thus it became about what I thought Dimitra wanted from me, rather than what I wanted for myself. Trying to please others isn’t necessarily a good character trait, and certainly not what others are looking for.

Nine years later, fate has made it so that I am on my own again.

As I tried and sometimes struggled to adapt to this new reality, I started to write things down on this blog. And then I found myself using these blog posts as reminders of what I really want, of what I believe I am meant to do.

And so I found myself thinking of those 2010 manifestos and ended up writing a new one: ten things I tend to forget, especially when I am not well, to regularly consult and to check big and small decisions against.

And here’s the thing: it helps. It might be psychology 101, but having a written list of things to check is a surprising simple way to not fall into bad habits.

Asking how someone is doing only because I am lonely? No, because I have promised myself not to do things disingenuously. Saying something just for the sake of doing so? No, because I agreed with myself to know when to shut up.

Dimitra and I occasionally discussed renewing our wedding vows. We never did ─ and then things happened. This is like renewing the vows I made to myself. I need this to move forward. It is great.

Elizabeth Alexander is an American poet. She read a poem during the 2009 inauguration of Barack Obama. She is a mother of two and was married to a man who died unexpectedly in 2012. She wrote a memoir about this called The Light of the World.

Dimitra, for that was my wife’s name, and I both read the book a few years ago, having discovered it independently of each other. Not until a few months after her death did I remember it and not until this spring, during a visit to the United States, did I finally get my hands on a paper copy.

Though everyone’s story of grief and loss is different, the book really resonated with me when I re-read it. And then I came to the passage where Elizabeth and her children, a year after the husband’s death, decide they need to move out of their house.

Yes! I realised immediately. Yes! So do I.

I always knew I would eventually be leaving Greece, but I also thought this would be ‘when the right opportunity would present itself’. Suddenly I realised that I needed to take matters into my own hands and that it was actually very important to do so, perhaps more important than the actual moving away.

After Dimitra died, it helped me a lot to continue living our life, in our house and doing the job that, in many ways, we had built together. It gave me the time and space to digest what had happened and the safety of, in many ways, living life like I had done it for the past decade.

Now it is just as important for me to move on. Not to forget what happened or what our life was life, but to properly close that chapter in my life. To help us become me again.

And thus I will be leaving our house and Greece, and also my job, for new adventures. I don’t know yet where I will be moving to or what work I will be doing, or when this will place, but the necessary things have been set in motion. Alea iacta est.

It is exciting. It is exactly the opportunity provided by Dimitra’s death that I have talked about so often that I am now going to chase. I feel immensely privileged that I am able to do this.

It is also scary. Moving isn’t easy and moving internationally (which I have done twice) is even more difficult. There are many things I will need to discard of. And I have not made big decisions like this on my own for a very long time.

And this is exactly why it is such an important thing to do. I want to be doing great things, I keep saying. It is very important that I take this first step on my own.