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Saving the World from the Sofa.

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When my husband was dying, one of the things that bothered him the most was that people stopped bothering him. We were always the last to find out about our friends’ separations, pain in the arse teenagers, or warring families. And when we did find out, we’d always get the same response:

“But our problems are nothing compared to yours.”

To which my husband would reply:

“And my problems don’t suddenly make yours go away.”

He was right. Yes, perspective is a wonderful thing, but it usually grows from trauma. I’m a better person now than I’ve ever been before, simply because I value all the things I used to take for granted. Like being alive. Or having a cuddle with the man I love. Or owning a full set of tits. So, it felt completely wrong to find myself struggling with the impending fourth anniversary of my husband’s death in the midst of a pandemic, because there are so many things I’m suddenly grateful for – not least the absolute privilege of holding his hands as he passed away, and for giving him the largest and most loving send-off our elderly vicar had seen in forty years of service. People who lose loved ones over the next few months are unlikely to even be able to say a proper goodbye. How lucky we were, after all.

I’m not an essential worker. I twat about at home being vaguely creative and people pay me enough money to buy wine and other necessities. Isolation hasn’t changed my lifestyle much at all over the last few weeks, except that there are more people around demanding snacks. My other half – the not-so-New Chap – has a poncey city job that nobody understands, and when he tells me that he’s “spent the morning fighting fires” I can assure you, he did not emerge from his office covered in soot. He was merely spouting corporate bollocks to his team on Zoom. It also turns out that he uses the term “circle back” with alarming frequency, without a hint of irony. I’m so disappointed. Still, he has many plus points, and I’m pleased to say that he moved in about six months ago, with three amazing kids in tow for much of the week. I’m just bloody grateful that our building work was finished before coronavirus kicked off. It’s a bit of a madhouse at the best of times, and because he tends to work in London through the week, being locked down with a whole new selection of people has taken a bit of getting used to, but there’s nobody I’d rather be quarantined with.

Even so, we just can’t wait for all this to be over so we can go somewhere for a nice romantic weekend apart.

We’re not important. And although we’re incredibly grateful for that, we are natural born “helpers”, so staying at home and doing nothing feels weird, lazy, and downright wrong. But many of our friends ARE key workers, and we know full well that we’re doing the right thing by staying in. So, to make myself useful – and to get my head a little straighter before That Date tomorrow – I thought I’d bring Fanny out of hibernation. (While still remaining in quarantine.) I remember only too well those long weekends of nothing but loneliness (be careful what you wish for – I’ve now got five kids and spend half the week reliving the joy of being followed to the loo), and on this sunny bank holiday I remembered my husband’s words of wisdom and thought they could be useful to anyone struggling with a change in circumstances. Inevitably, whether or not we lose loved ones during this crisis, our lives will change completely, and perhaps I can help you to embrace that. If there’s one thing I’ve become adept at, it’s learning to stand firm through the winds of change which have blown my way with increasing regularity.

In the midst of coronavirus, it seems wrong for me to feel any grief at all, but I bloody well do. I hate that there are certain triggers at this time of year – in my case, it’s blossom on two particular trees in the garden, because I used to look at them and wonder if my husband would live to see the leaves appear (spoiler: he didn’t). I’ve incorporated many of my Boris-approved daily walks with a visit to his grave, which I never used to do very often (because I don’t believe he’s really there) so that I can shout at him and tell him he was a selfish twat for not looking after himself enough and getting us all into this mess. But these days I’m mostly grieving for his little boys who loved him so very much, and who watched him die just as they were beginning to need him the most.

Whether or not you are directly affected by coronavirus itself, just staying inside for the next few months is going to affect you. People aren’t going to stop having heart attacks, or starving, or getting cancer, or falling out, or struggling with life, just because there’s other stuff going on. And if you are going through that kind of shit, then it really is OK to be more concerned about that than anything else. I can’t imagine how I would be feeling right now if this pandemic had hit three or four years ago, when my own little world was in turmoil, so if that’s you – I just wanted to reach out and touch your hand. (Not literally, obviously. We’re all staying the fuck indoors.)

On Timehop, the last photos of me and my husband have been coming up lately, and I’m still baffled that I had no idea back then that he was so ill. He clearly looks like a skeleton in a ridiculously loud shirt, with a wife in denial. The only reason we have the pictures, though, is because we spent time together before the end. We went on holiday with the boys, and although my husband wasn’t very mobile, we just sat together in the bar at night and chatted while the boys buggered off with newfound friends. We learned even more about each other, because after fourteen years of marriage there was still stuff to know. Two weeks after we returned home, he died, having spent a couple of weeks in the makeshift hospice of our sitting room. We held hands, and we talked. We all knew how much he loved us and he knew how loved he was too.

It occurs to me that those last weeks were very similar to the situation we’re in now. Across the world, circumstances beyond our control have forced our collective worlds to close in, and the only thing we can be responsible for is the safety of our own family. Under doctors’ orders, we’re all staying in. Of course, when my husband was dying, I was on my knees with grief and exhaustion, but I look back now and realise how lucky we were as a family to have been given that time to keep getting to know each other. Most of us rush about from one year to the next, trying to keep afloat, trying to keep our kids happy, and trying to make ends meet – and it’s only when we’re faced with losing it all that we see the true value of the people we love.

In honour of the people who can’t; in honour of those who are stuck in a single room with multiple family members and barely any food or air; in honour of everyone whose home isn’t a sanctuary… if you’re able to go online and read this, and sleep in a warm bed tonight with a reasonably full stomach, then try to enjoy staying at home with your family. This time is a gift that you may never be given again. Even if they’re annoying – which they undoubtedly are – your tolerance of your family’s funny little ways is your contribution to saving the world. Coronavirus definitely won’t take away your problems, but please try to allow this isolation time to infect you with perspective. You’ll emerge stronger, happier, and – if you’re lucky – still holding hands, alive.

Love Fanny x

Dedicated to all the essential workers, who can’t stay safe at home. Thank you.

 

Stay Home Save Lives

The true heroes of Covid-19. Thank you.

Warts and All.

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I haven’t buried my husband’s ashes yet. I still can’t bring myself to do it, although there have been some conversations with the vicar, so we’re moving forward, slowly. The other day, our son – who had hitherto been quite reluctant to part with them – asked when his Dad would be buried. I said I wasn’t sure.

“Oh,” he said, with obvious disappointment. “I wanted to go and lay some flowers on his grave for Fathers’ Day.”

Those boys are hurting, badly. And it’s only now that I realise just how much, and how much twelve-year-old boys without a father, or even a father figure, struggle – because I can try to be Mum and Dad, but it’s always going to be a compromise. I’m stretched so thinly that I can’t give them everything they need, and I’m taking a lot of my own stress and anger out on them.

Our boys were lucky. For ten years, they had the very best dad in the world, and I don’t use that term lightly. They really did. Nobody adored their children the way he did. He wasn’t always soft with them, but they were exceptionally close and the boys knew just how much they were loved. I was looking through some family photos last night, and what struck me the most was that the same little boy who asked to lay some flowers on his Daddy’s grave was always – always – pictured nuzzling into his father. Not just standing there. Nuzzling him. They adored each other. Even as his mother, I can’t begin to comprehend that child’s loss.

One thing I’m beginning to notice, now I’m a double – not single – parent, is how jealous and angry the boys are with other children whose father is still alive. They are furious. It isn’t fair. These dads – great as they are – are not my children’s dads. They’re pretty good prototype dads, but our boys’ dad was the real deal. The best in the world. They don’t want their friends’ dads. They want their own. When kids complain about their dads being grumpy old arseholes, my boys are cross about it. But at least you’ve got one, they think. You don’t know how lucky you are, they think. They’ve chosen to forget what a grumpy old arsehole their own dad could be.

It’s easy to look back with rose tinted spectacles, and my two do. Of course they do. They are children, and they think like children, but it surprises me that many adults think that way, too. On the online forums, widows and widowers write with great bitterness about friends who turn to them to complain about their (still very much alive) spouse, expecting their widowed friend to listen with sympathy. They don’t. They listen with rage and regret, because they’d give anything to have their own spouse back. They are angry. Angry with anyone who still has their family.

I don’t feel quite like that. Much as I wish my own family was still complete, I actually love to hear my friends complain about their partners. It’s what we do, we women, and being confided in makes me feel as if I’m still valid as a wife, mother and confidante. That I’m still normal. One of the gang. Men are terminally idiotic, and rolling our eyes at how stupid they are is every woman’s favourite pastime. My husband was no exception. He was grumpy, untidy, and out of shape. He never got around to finishing odd jobs, or picking up his wet towels. Don’t get me started on how keen he was to share his opinions, or what a terrible back seat driver he was. I’ve stopped and thrown the car keys at him in the middle of a busy road and told him to drive the fucking car instead then on more than one occasion. He could be a complete twat at times. But, as a husband, and a father, he was the whole package – from wanker to wonderful – and the only person we wanted to fill those very special roles. He was OUR massive fucking annoying twatbastard, and we wouldn’t have changed him. Well, not completely.

As a grieving widow, I’m so desperate to have him back – warts and all – that it’s actually important to remember that there were warts. Plenty of them. My husband’s greatest fear, before he died, was that he’d be canonised in our minds and remembered as some remarkable and faultless being. I assured him that this would never happen. While I can accept that he had faults, and love him because of them – not in spite of them – our children don’t yet have the emotional intelligence or maturity to take anything other than offence at other children’s comments – both positive and negative – about their own fathers. They miss their own too much.

Since he died – actually, no. Since before he died, when we knew he’d never get better, the boys have begged me to provide them with a new stepdad. This seemed odd to me at first, and actually a little offensive, because I couldn’t understand why they would suddenly want someone to take their beloved father’s place. But, they tell me that they just want to be a foursome again. They hate having to divide me in two, and think that if someone made me happy then I would stop crying all the time. (I also think there’s another rather significant element, in that they could really do with someone else around to offer lifts.) In their imagination, their stepdad is a man just like their Daddy. In reality, if they ever do have a stepdad, he’ll have baggage – probably a few kids that they may or may not get along with – different opinions, and a whole new selection of funny little ways. He won’t love them the way their Daddy loved them, because – by definition – he will not be their Daddy. He will be, just like my husband, unique. Irreplaceable. Different. I’m not sure I’m ready for different. I’m not even ready to accept that there’s a vacancy.

When other women whinge to me about their stupid fucking husbands, it doesn’t bother me at all, partly because I like to remember how often I felt like punching my own, and partly because it reminds me that I really am in no hurry to meet another man. I pity my friends, because they never had the privilege of being married to my husband. (Well, a couple of people did, but we’re not really in touch with them any more.) And I pity anyone who one day thinks they could fill my husband’s shoes. The only thing that hurts me deeply is seeing other couples loved up, and their children behaving, as ours used to do. A few weeks ago, I stood with extended family on a beach – the rest of them cuddling their spouses and adoring their wonderful children – as I screamed at my two to stop twatting each other and drawing massive cocks in the sand. My little family was unravelling in front of my eyes and I’d never felt so alone or missed my husband more.

I don’t want a new one, though. Maybe because I’m approaching the end of my treatment, and beginning to see a new start in life ahead of me which I know my husband would want me to grab with both hands, I do occasionally wonder if it’s time to start thinking about dating – not because I need male attention, or rampant sex, but because I’m beyond knackered and could really do with someone to let the dog out early in the morning every now and again.

I can only imagine the internet profile: Bald, one-titted widow. Mediocre cook. Needs a bit of a hand with the kids. Struggling to put up some shelves.

No thank you. Yes, I’m exhausted. Yes, I’m beginning to realise just how desperately my children need a father figure. Yes, I’m finding being Mum and Dad very, very tough. But I’ve just spent Fathers’ Day with our boys, ignoring the significance of the day, mending some garden equipment and building a new drum kit. I even changed a lightbulb. There was no trip to a grave, because there still isn’t one, but I know that their real dad will have been with me all the way, watching me use the wrong bloody spanner, and desperate to jump in and criticise. But he can’t. And what I wouldn’t give to roll my eyes, throw the spanner at him, and tell him to fucking well get on with it himself then, one more time.

We miss you, Superdad. Warts and all.

Love Fanny x

 

 

Bastard Funeral

Not my husband’s funeral flowers. He’d have approved, though. Image from Pinterest.