For Flynn

I’m worried that as time goes by your dad, and what he really was like will become distorted and he will become a new imaginary person of my making so I must get this all down before time can change it. You have been robbed of everything else, you must at least get the correct version of this most beautiful man.

Firstly and foremost he was handsome; beautiful in fact. Sometimes I would say “I’m embarrassed to be seen with you, you’re ridiculous”. He turned heads in bars and restaurants and it made me smile as he was oblivious to it all. He wouldn’t have cared anyway, he had everything that mattered in us. He loved us in the most boundless way and we were all he had every hoped for. He spent every free second with us and all of his money buying us presents and taking us on “treats”. I dare say he would have been a rich man had he not met me.

No one was more deserving of this life than him. He just ate it all up. He was hungry for life and all it had to give. He liked things, lots of things, more than most and he sure did like a chat. I would be constantly chastising him for not leaving anywhere quickly enough because he had to say goodbye to everyone he’d spoken to. In restaurants he’d always like to say goodbye to anyone who’d waited on him, sometimes even the chef.

He smiled a lot, more than most people I’d say, more than me. Celeste has inherited this and I’m so glad. I never noticed it that much until he died and then suddenly I noticed that people don’t really smile as much as your daddy did. He loved films and cooking and rivers and people. He drank cream from the carton and liked ska music. He was easily pleased and never put demands on anyone. He loved watching cricket and Rugby, golf, even darts.

His most favourite thing was to come back from work and when he got upstairs to your bedrooms he’d go on all fours and start to growl while waving his head. You and Lesty would scream from the top of your lungs and hide in the nearest spot. Then he would say-“I’m so hungry, I want a Flynn stew and a Lesty pancake”. More screams. Sometimes this would go further, particularly if Ronan was with us and Ronan would say ”Let’s tie your dad up.” You would sprint downstairs and get bathrobe belts and ties and tie him to a chair and he would pretend to be a caged animal.

Most mornings I would come down to find him sandwiched between you and Celeste under a blanked on the sofa because you had woken up early and he wanted to let me sleep. He would put on a film for you but you would be asleep within minutes and he would have changed the channel to something totally violent and inappropriate. I would walk in and he’d give me a smile and say “Tea?’

He loved having friends over or ‘Ceiling” as he liked to call it. He grew tomatoes and strawberries in our tiny garden and cooked a meal for me every day for ten years. He loved India and his favourite book was- The Business. He loved taking us on holiday and eating nice food. He loved his friends and his parents and his childhood. He loved sailing and fishing but was useless on a horse. Loved Irish Trad music and the GAA games Fergal took him to. He lapped it all up and wanted more. A few weeks before he died, we went to Eunan’s wedding where there was some traditional Irish dancing and he said to me- “we need to go somewhere right now where they play this music and listen to it all night long”. I made a plan in my head that I would find somewhere in London and surprise him with this but I never did.

He loved hearing and telling stories and took his time with both. He was easy to make laugh. He had the most beautiful brown skin and had a year round tan. You have inherited this. I on the other hand need help. The other day I had a spray tan and I had to keep the colour on overnight. You woke up in my bed the next morning and squealed with delight- “Look Mum, we’re the same colour!” It made me smile.

Your dad was brilliant at drawing,but utterly useless at keeping time. He could never find anything and he hated heights. He was a good swimmer and loved seeing me in hats. He never knew the words to songs but would sing anyway and make up the lyrics.

He once took three hours out of his day to walk down the Columbia road to get me a stocking filler that he had seen in a magazine that he thought I would like. It was  100 meters of sticky tape with the London skyline on it.

He used to wait up for me when I was out and often tore articles out of magazines that he knew would upset me and give me nightmares. He loved karaoke and knots and hated cinnamon.

He was the kindest man I have ever met and he loved you more than life. Sometimes he would have to bite his own hand when he looked at you otherwise he might take a bite out of you instead. He cooked for you, put sun lotion on you, built endless forts and sandcastles with you and swam with you. He took you to the doctor, read you stories, did homework, and drew pictures for you. He taught you how to ice skate and play ‘Go Fish’.

Your dad loved snow and hammocks and sat watching T.V. eating frozen peas (you do this now and it makes me happy). He wore lovely clothes and liked ‘a good desk’.

If he was bored there is nothing he loved more than hearing me recite/rap the entire fourteen minutes of Kanye West’s ‘Last Call’, complete with actions. I had to pause in the middle for him to add the only line he knew: “Mayonnaise colored Benz, I push Miracle Whip”. I feel this rare and unique talent is gone. I don’t know who would like to see it now, maybe Amanda Morgan.

He had hammer toes and feet as thick as they were long. He loved lemon curd and tradition, he listened to the T.V. way too loudly and had a terrible memory. Fergal used to tease him that his family was on peerage.com and he had beautiful forearms. He was a terrible dancer and when he danced it looked as though he was in a great deal of pain. He loved bikes and cycled one around Chiswick called -The Governer- with you on the back. He was a great mouse killer and was once dumped by a glamorous girlfriend for killing one stone dead by throwing a hammer at it. This made him my hero. His favourite colour was orange and he loved fires. He smelt of tree bark and honey.

In the days when we dated and had dinner parties at our flat, I had a terrible habit of falling asleep at the dinner table if I had too much wine. Often I would get up and go sit on Daddy’s lap and sleep there in front of everyone. Daddy called this- Assuming the position- and it was frowned upon.

One Monday morning I arrived at work to find that Laura Graham had glued a picture of a man who had fallen asleep in his dinner to my locker. They all laughed at this.

All our friends continuously told me off and at the beginning of the night Lexa, or Tara or Weezey but usually Gautom would say- “you are not to sit on Gumby’s lap,” but I did it anyway until your dad said no. Years later after marriage and children daddy said “ Why don’t you sit on my lap anymore when you’re drunk?” It made me laugh.

He liked salty things, like you do and drank fizzy water. He would try anything but was scared of snakes. He made me do impressions for him, sometimes on a nightly basis. Tara makes me do this now, to the same level of glee.

He was not one for routine or chores, instead he preferred to grab the moment, to live and experience. He loved giving more than receiving and his most favourite night was Christmas Eve. It got better every year.

He was always late, not just five minutes, usually a few hours.

Once when he was out of work he started his own company making soups and selling them at the Farmer’s market at Dukes meadows (your current favourite place). He called it Anderson and Son- `Good Honest Soups’. They were the most wonderful tastes I have ever had. Chestnut, Madera and Celeriac was my absolute favourite and a real sellout at Christmas. I was so proud of him. His next plan was to open a pop-up restaurant at our house once he felt well after his treatment. You were to be our waiter. There are some wonderful photos of you and him, both dressed in flat caps, selling your wares” so happy together.

When he died I had to go to his office to collect his things; pinned to his wall was a picture you drew of him and you in a race car, it was next to your Head-teacher’s award. It took everything in my power not to fall apart there and then with all of his colleagues within ear and eyeshot.

After his funeral service one of his old work colleagues turned to the other and said- “Just makes you want to be a better man” and I was so proud.

He wanted everything for you and would have jumped up and pulled the moon down for you had you so desired it.

For Angela who has given me everything I have.

 

Today is Father’s Day and it’s 8.15am. I realise this is the one day you would be guaranteed a lie in (which of course you could never take because you would always say “I don’t want to miss out- I, on the other hand had no problem missing out when an offer like this was handed to me). I realise that I’m in the middle on our empty bed and the children must be downstairs. Flynn will have put Netflix on for the pair of them and he will have given his sister a snack. I mustn’t imagine in my head what would have been, as I know its purpose is torment only and there is nothing to be gained from it; but I do it all the same- the conjuring.

If you were here I would not be lying in the middle of an empty bed. I would be downstairs frantically wrapping your present because I’d left it to the last minute as usual. The children would know what day it is because we would have spoken of little else the day before and they would be so excited to be a part of organising presents and surprises for you. As it is, they have no idea, they’re different to other children now and I hate this; I know you would hate this even more. And you would say- I’m so so sorry, just as you did every time the years of your prognosis shortened. But it is not your fault and it’s not mine. None of us have ever had any choice in this obscenity and yet here we are in it, and with guilt as our trusty companion.

I would bring you a cup of tea in your favourite mug, you would wait till it was almost cold to drink it and Celeste would insist on opening your present for you and telling you what it was, much to the annoyance of Flynn who would invariably tell her off for it and so a fight would ensue and that would be the end of that. I would take you somewhere you loved for lunch and life would (as it always was) be glorious.

Instead Cinders is coming round and we will make pancakes for the kids (you would be so proud of the way she has been looking after us). Feargal and Marianna are taking your mum and I out to the Glasshouse for lunch and so we will try hour-by-hour to make this day disappear as quickly as possible.

For Tim

My husband did everything for us. He cooked, he packed the car for all our breaks, booked our holidays, filled our car with diesel even though he had a driving ban due to his epilepsy. He paid every bill, fixed the broken things and never failed to make me a cup of tea every single morning of our marriage.

After acclimatizing to this many years later I said to him “ You have rendered me an incapable human being, I’m pretty useless; it’s Stockholm syndrome”. “ No, it’s ‘Boxing Helena’ (dodgy 90s soft porn disguised as an actual film about an obsessive surgeon who slowly removes his girlfriend limbs one by one) he would say. “It’s so you can never leave me”.

All the same, ten years later I am unable to tie my own shoelaces.

I once gave a thirty minute lecture/rant (depending on which of my students you are talking to) on the epic simile In ‘Paradise Lost’, but I couldn’t tell you how to blanche a tomato. Although I suspect the fact that I can do the former might suggest I can do the latter.

These first few weeks were fraught with practical problems for me. I couldn’t get the internet to work, the washing machine packed up, car insurance ran out as did money and I had absolutely no idea what to do. The thing is you can get someone in to replace/ fix all these things but you have to pay them and they won’t make you a cup of tea afterwards, kiss you and massage your feet. I know this for a fact, I’ve asked.

I watched the horrified faces of our friends when the answer to: Where do you keep your MOT certificate? Or- When is bin day? -Was always the same: James used to do that. I realised then that it was all down to me and I shuddered at the thought of it. I never wanted any of this. I don’t really want to know where my MOT certificate is and what a luxury not ever having to worry about bins and so many other things. It really is what sharing your life with another person is, although perhaps a little unbalanced in this particular marriage.

I now find I can’t reach stuff, literally. I do then realise , much as I’m loathed to I must get on with it. I must accept my crocked new life.

And so with this in mind I one day decide to do a Sainsbury’s shop.

The glory of the internet age is that all our tastes are saved, mapped and analyzed; I have been to Majestic and Nespresso who both tell me what wine and coffee I like to drink, alarming and amazing all at the same time but pretty useful if someone dies and you are left with the jigsaw puzzle of ‘Saved Favourites’ on your Sainsbury’s account.

The first time I logged on I wept, there they were as a single list. All that I needed to recreate the tastes of our life.

Except I don’t know which ingredients go with which or how much or when or what ras el hanoutl is! So there it is like some sort of malicious jigsaw puzzle with pieces missing; it slowly occurs to me that the missing piece is James.

For Harry

Most people struggle with what to do and say and the worst thing to do/say to a person grieving in my opinion, is to say nothing.

I have been told that the reason people say nothing is because they worry about drawing attention to the elephant in the room or upsetting me. As if I might have forgotten James is dead and by them mentioning, I might suddenly remember. Believe me when I tell you that I have not forgotten.

So what to do?

Approach me, if you have been thinking of me/us, then tell me. I am not a mind reader I will not know this or anything else unless you tell me. Don’t make the mistake of thinking you are leaving me in peace because, chances are, I will think (probably wrongly) that you are not really giving us a second thought. If you feel uncomfortable, then try to get over it, it can be no worse than what I am feeling.

And if you can’t give emotional support then do something practical. Cook a meal, make sure there is rinse aid in my dishwasher (thank you Ross). Hang a hammock with a bowline knot, then have my children for entire weekends despite the fact that you live 90 miles away. (Thank you Alex K), drop over a chocolate and Guinness cake and leave it on my doorstep every week, not even knowing if I will be in to receive it, do this without wanting any praise for it (thank you Weezey). Teach my son to make a fire as if he were your son, even though you have two sons of your own. (Thank you Tim). Send me calming aromatherapy oils through my letterbox (thank you Dee). Spend weeks staying up ‘til 2am cutting and pasting 36 years of video footage to a beautiful soundtrack so that Flynn and Celeste will know who their father was and how much he loved them (thank you Adam, thank you Mungo). Take my kids on the school run everyday for months because I can’t face it, despite the fact that one of you has four children of your own and is going through the most challenging things in your own life and the other one of you is expecting your second baby and has your own school run (thank you Gautam, Mel and Tara).

Make it your life’s ambition to never let my husband’s memory die by dedicating every second you have setting up a charity in his name and vowing to make some\any sense of his death, despite the fact that you have your own job/life/family (thank you Harry)

Get on a plane every six weeks regardless of cost or inconvenience just to make pancakes for my children (thank you Grainne). Stand and wait on my doorstep every single time I go away for the weekend so that I don’t have to come back to an empty house (thank you Alex F). Come and see me and bring me cake days after James died, despite the fact that you have just lost your own wife (thank you Paul). Write me an email telling me how in love James and I were to you as an observer (Thank you Georgie).

Panic if you have missed a single call from me and call me back within minutes in case you can stop any pain that may be coming (thank you Cinders).Take a call from me at midnight on Friday where I am in a panic that J’s phone has been disconnected and I can no longer hear his voice on his voicemail greeting and somehow have this reinstated less than 24 hours later (thank you Josie). Create a one off piece of art in memory of James, spend days on this despite the fact that you have just finished all the artwork on Coldplay’s new album and are crazy busy and have two kids of your own(thank you Mila).

Create an angling fly and in James honour call it- The Gumby Crab. (thank you Pete Mcleod). Take Flynn out to the park to play football despite the fact that you are still drunk (you know who you are). Publish a book with a photographic record of James and my romance over the course of ten years, which tells the story of us, for Flynn and Celeste (Thank you Vivi).

Call yourself my cultural ambassador and write me a monthly email listing the best film/book/play out because you know this is what James used to do and I am bereft without it (thank you Brett). Put my bins out (thank you… no idea who did this).

Talk to me about James. Talking about James will not make me feel sad it will make me feel a wee bit better. He wasn’t just mine; if I can take any of him from you then please let me have it. I will take any tiny piece: the extras. My memories are my most treasured possessions and all I can now offer Flynn and Celeste. If you can add to this then please do. Let me know what you thought of him, remember of him. It just adds to the tapestry of his life. I can be my own face licker.

For Cinders who has taught me what true friendship really means.

And so it begins: THE MISSING

I would often meet James in town or we would go see film at Westfield after work. Date night. He’d be coming from work and I would drive and meet him there. And so when the film/meal was finished he’d get back on his bike and I would drive and he’d usually get home way before me. It usually took me 15/20 minutes to get home and I would often find myself speeding to get home at the same time as him; I realised that despite the fact that it was only 5 minutes since I’d seen him and ten more till I saw him again, I missed him. So much so that I was doing everything in my power to lessen the gap. It was the same feeling as when he’d pop into his 25 minute long showers; I couldn’t bear the missing. Most of our fights, I’d say a good 90% were caused when James was back late, usually from work. Because if he told me he would be back from work at 7, I couldn’t stand it being later, for this very reason.

So what do you do when faced with missing on this scale? That I cannot put into words because the pain it causes is obscene. There’s a scale to the missing, sometimes it’s a 3 other times a 10 but rarely does it fall below a 5. It’s a lingering ache.

One of the things I have struggled with most is the loss of tastes and smells. I will never ever be able to taste the food he cooked or smell the smells James created; this seems like an unnecessary cruel blow on top of everything else we are faced with. I miss the enormity of his presence, the way the sofa would dip when he left it and it would take a while to readjust; the weight of a body on floors, on stairs. They way you know someone is upstairs because of presence alone, like a stubbed cigarette with the last bit of smoke still lingering in a room. There is a great comfort to this and you can only know of it once it is gone.

And sounds and noise; you lose these too, not just a person’s voice but the noises they create in a room. For me this was doors opening and bike locks and running showers and someone else’s phone ringing and background cricket with that Yorkshire man with the best voice, and someone in the fridge and tops off beer bottles falling, shouting at TV screens, someone else on the phone, someone else brushing their teeth or changing the radio station. Noises you hear everyday but that someone else is making. I am devoid of all these now. A great sadness, and one I thought of when James was in hospital, was that I would never hear a key in the door, that no one would ever be coming home to me anymore; this silence particularly is the worst.

For Alex F, the kindest person I know.

Abandon hope all ye who enter here.

 One of the worst things about grief is how entirely isolating it is. I tell my friends- if only I could take you by the hand and make you step inside it with me, even for just a few seconds, then you’d know and if and when I had an episode you would know why and exactly what that felt like- I say this to them and always see tears form in their eyes because I know they would jump in, in a second, just so I didn’t have to go through it alone. But they can’t. I have to walk this plank alone.

Mostly people say: ‘I just can’t imagine’- and they can’t, but I cannot tell you how irritating it is when heard for the hundredth time, however well meaning. What I’d like to say is….try….and if you are still struggling, then here’s what it’s like:

It’s like having your worst nightmare come true. We over-use the term nightmare, but imagine your absolute worst nightmare and then it’s real; it does in-fact actually come true. We have all had those dreams where your mum or husband dies and you wake up in a panic, only to be calmed immediately by the person next to you.

There is no rest bite, no break; you are day-to-day, moment-to-moment living an actual nightmare. It’s like being in one of Dante’s rings of hell, reserved for those too unlucky to occupy the other nine. This is a sub -level below murderers and rapists and our punishment is worst of all: deprivation of what we love most.

It’s like walking in treacle with the incessant dull buzz of white noise as your soundtrack. I could never have imagined pain on this level. I remember the day after James died, waking up and experiencing that Nano second where everything is okay and then it comes crashing like a wave, you see it coming before it hits you. This happens every morning but the time it takes for the wave to hit gets shorter. The panic of that moment was so overwhelming that I had to get out of bed and hop from one foot to the other in an effort to somehow get rid of it physically. I called someone, I can’t remember who but found I couldn’t speak. I must have also called my friend Josie because I found her on my doorstep ten minutes later.

The pain is like having contractions. Sometimes it’s short, other times it’s long but the worst thing about contractions is you are always waiting for the next one. And the panic and fear you feel that they will return is almost worse than the actual pain they cause. Grief is untidy.

Nobody ever tells you that when your heart is broken that you feel it in your mouth. You want to vomit, not cry and there is no sadness. Sadness is far too gentle an emotion; maybe this is what the disbelief and blind panic turn to in time. It’s total devastation. Total annihilation.

If you were to study grief, actually examine its D.N.A. under the microscope, it would be impossible to inspect. It moves and morphs and worst of all it adapts. Once you have figured out a way to treat it, it develops further; like drug resistance.

It never seems to sleep, nor does it need feeding. It seems to have taken a real shine to me for it won’t leave my side for a single second. It accompanies me everywhere. It never lets up. It has a seat beside me in whatever bar of cafe I happen to be in. It sleeps in my bed, swims beside me in the bath. It is a fellow passenger on aeroplanes, taxis and cars. It is loyal, I’ll give it that, and so, so very unrelenting. It is jealous when I spend time with others and forget for a second to include it, territorial and never lets me escape its meaty grip.

Grief is one thing, loss is quite another. When you suffer loss it’s not just the person you lose, you lose sleep, your senses: you feel neither hot nor cold. You don’t feel hungry or thirsty. All fear vanishes, genuinely, as well as caution because the very worst thing has happened to you, therefore there is nothing left to fear.

You change physically: Get thin, older quicker; nails get brittle and teenage acne returns, like a physical manifestation of pain.

You lose your life; that comes to an end too. For us that was: pancakes on the weekends while dancing round the kitchen to our favourite tracks (usually Digital Love) as our children were squashed with laughter. Endless cups of tea as we discussed parties the night before. Hours upon hours in Chiswick House throwing frisbees, riding bikes and laughing, so much laughing; probably more than a normal amount. Holidays and parties and films in bed on the laptop with the kids on Sunday mornings, and more tea. I can still taste a better life.

And food; always food. Food out, food in, food in our tiny garden by a fire pit, even if it was pouring (this often happened; James would never give in to the elements so I was allowed an umbrella but I had to stay, despite the fact that my burger was liquid). This was our life. But you loose this.

All of this has vanished. There is no more dancing to ‘Digital Love’ No more liquid, rainy burgers. No more laughing ’til you thought you might stop breathing, all is lost. All is harmed. It really is as W. H. Auden says; “nothing now can ever come to any good”. It’s so difficult to say goodbye to this life. It really is as simple as Old/good. New/bad. So very bad. This is my least favourite life.

I read a blog once where the writer said: Grief is Gollum. This is exactly what it feels like, a creature, all gnarly and knobbly about to jump on your back.

For Tara, who has saved me.

Days and weeks passed after James died and my house was like a polling station. There was a lot of drinking, replaying and laughing. It was mostly James’ mates that ended up in my living room like it was some sort of shebeen. They came and went but always came back with the sole purpose of licking James off my face.

This turn of phrase sounds disrespectful. I promise it is not meant to be. They loved him so much that they wanted even the crumbs from my table; they would have taken him in any form. And it made me sad, to see their loss. I would have fixed it in a second, if I could, given them a hearty meal rather than the slim pickings they were getting. It was the worst of times but also the best of times. I heard Alex, Tim, Josh and Harry’s stories and cried with laughter with Mungo and Alg. Then Gautom would appear at the front door, usually hammered. Sometimes Tara would show up too because it was 11pm and she hadn’t heard from me since 7. I loved those days. I loved having my face licked.

For Alex K.