Tag: grief

The Sphincter of Destiny.

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I think we can all agree that 2016 has been the most monumental wank sock of years in recent memory. As the final piece of festive loo roll is wiped across the sphincter of destiny, my heart is ready to break. Unlike the rest of the world, and despite everything that’s happened, I don’t want this year to end. I’m not ready to leave my husband behind. 

This year, I had him – at least, for one third of it. I tell people that he died in April. Soon, he’ll have died last year. Last April. A couple of years ago. A few years ago. With every day, month, or year that passes, he’s slipping further and further away from everybody else. He is, and always will be, a part of 2016. But that’s where his story ends. With every celebrity death this year, we move on to mourn the next, and with alarming frequency. I console myself with the rising death toll, and decide that my husband is in the most wonderful company. I imagine him – having died a few days before Victoria Wood – standing at the Pearly Gates with a wicked grin, a wink, and a rolled-up copy of Woman’s Weekly.

For the boys and me, he hasn’t left us yet. We can’t really accept that he’s gone. Christmas Day with friends was perfect, but for the hours we spent at home it was was fucking awful. I wasn’t expecting it to be, but as the day came around, none of us wanted to celebrate. I’d planned to go to the midnight service at church, but since I always struggle to go up for communion and pass the spot where my husband’s coffin had lain, I figured that doing it on Christmas Eve would be way too much for me to take. I assumed that God would understand, and hoped He’d forgive me for putting on my pyjamas and hitting the Baileys instead. After our younger twin had emptied his stocking and told me that the only thing he wanted for Christmas was his dad (although nonetheless still managing to accept the ruinously expensive guilt-laden presents I’d bought him,) I went into our office, sat on the floor with my husband’s ashes, and sobbed. I wished a merry Christmas to a brown box with his hated Sunday name on it, in a dark green gift bag. When I picked up his remains (a word I hate) back in April, I did wonder why the undertaker had put him in a gift bag, but at least on Christmas Day he looked quite, well, Christmassy. He’d certainly made more of an effort than the rest of us.

The feeling of loss and pain lingered all day, but I’m glad we hadn’t cancelled it. That would have been an admission of defeat, and would have pointlessly intensified our misery. My husband never gave up, and nor will we. We’ve done it now, and next year will be easier, if only because we’ll be able to celebrate my survival, even though celebrating that will always feel wrong. This year, for sure, we can’t yet celebrate anything much at all.

Despite the fact that I don’t want to move forward without him, I am optimistic for the future. I have to be. This time next year, I’ll still be alive, and that wasn’t something my husband could say with any certainty. Instead of tearing my hair out and thinking how the fuck I’m going to manage when I’m ill, I remember my husband’s words to me a few days before he died. He told me to see his death – though neither of us wanted it to happen – as an opportunity. A new beginning, rather than an end. He didn’t want to leave me, or picture me with anyone else, but made it clear that he loved me too much to want me to be on my own forever (but I’m not ready for that, and can’t yet imagine a time when I ever will be.) Those words only confirm to me how remarkable and brave he was, and give me hope that, through losing him, a new door may one day open in the most unexpected of circumstances. But not yet. Knowing that we should begin afresh, and wanting to do so, are two entirely different things. He’s still very much here. His coat still hangs in the hall. His shoes are in the basket by the front door. Our bedroom is still ours, not mine. I realise, too, that those joint parenting decisions now have to be mine alone, and the more time that goes by – the more the boys change and develop – the less I feel I know what he might have said or done. The more I feel that I need to handle them my way, even though I don’t want to have to. In fact, I’m not sure I know how to.

By definition, he has never known his beloved sons while they’ve been truly grieving. He’s never dealt with their anger and tears as I have, these last eight months, and he’s never known me with breast cancer. He wasn’t there to see them finish primary school, or to discover a new country on holiday, or to rant about the world post-Brexit and Trump. He didn’t see the boys begin high school, or watch them score goals on the football pitch this season, nor did he see them perform in the latest show with their drama group. He hasn’t met our new widow or school friends, and those new friends don’t know him. I wonder if these people will ever understand how great the boys’ dad was; how much it matters to us to remember him. I can’t help feeling that these new friends have missed out enormously by not being able to get to know my husband, because he was brilliant, and I hope the boys aren’t difficult to make friends with now, because they’re so mixed up and worried inside, through no fault of their own. Now is the time we all need friends the most, but I don’t want people to know just me on my own. I want them to remember us. To know us. I wonder if, as the years pass, we will change and develop into people that he wouldn’t recognise, or worse – that he wouldn’t love. All we can do is try to keep going; to remember him, to honour him, and to do our best to be as brilliant as him, but without him. And to hope that he approves.

Time telescopes when you’re dying. A day becomes a year, and an hour becomes a lifetime. The only things you really want to say can actually be said in seconds. At some point, though, you have to accept that time cannot stop, and unhook your fingers from the person you love as you let them go. I cannot stop 2017 from coming around. If I could, I’d still be holding my husband’s hand.

Much like the year before it, I can’t help but feel as if 2017 can fuck right off, before it’s even begun. As the rest of the world believes that things can only get better next year, I’m not so sure. We have a whole new mountain to climb, and although my husband’s memory has given me all the tools I need to weather any storm life throws at me, I desperately don’t want to leave him lingering behind me in the foothills as I fight my way to the top. I’ve let him go once before, and I’m not ready to do it again.

Love Fanny x

The final piece of festive loo roll, ready to begin its journey down the toilet of 2016.

Living in a Box.

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Who in their right mind looks forward to cancer treatment? Me. I need a break. I can’t physically find the time to fit everything in, and the idea of lying in a hospital bed waiting to get my cancerous bap sliced open and stuffed with silicone, saline or pig fat is suddenly not without appeal. I’ve come a long way in a few weeks – before, the idea threw me into a blind panic, but I’m so tired, and so ready to accept offers of babysits, dog walks, and help around the house, that I give up. I’ll trade anything – even my left breast – for a good night’s sleep and some time off work and away from the boys, who are in the throes of grief for the third year running. They’re sapping every last scrap of energy I have, and testing my patience to its limits. I adore them, and sympathise, but fuck – it’s hard.

It was all planned quite nicely. As nicely as planning cancer treatment can be, anyway. A few months ago, very soon after my husband had died but before my diagnosis, the boys and I had booked to go to Center Parcs on WAY – Widowed and Young’s annual holiday, as I thought it would be useful for us all to get to know some other bereaved young families. After discussions with the surgeon, we agreed that the boys’ need to meet other like-minded children was probably greater than the risk of postponing the surgery for a couple more weeks. We rescheduled the operation for mid-November – much later than we’d wanted, but the earliest they could find two slots, three weeks apart, for the type of surgery I’m having – and were instructed to go away, relax, and enjoy ourselves. But I hated almost every minute of it.

It wasn’t because of the charity itself, or the lovely, like-minded people I met there, who had similar tales of missing their spouses and a reassuringly heavy obsession with wine. It wasn’t the bicycles or water slides (which my husband would have loved) or the activities on offer – all organised well. It wasn’t the fact that I’d walked into the tail-end of the WAY Hallowe’en party with my wonderful villa mate (whose husband had dropped dead from a cardiac arrest the year before) as the DJ played “Jar of Hearts.” (We wondered if “Stayin’ Alive” or “Living in a Box” had made it onto the playlist earlier.) It wasn’t just that my children had, over the last few weeks, begun to become an angry pair of little shits, petrified of losing me as well as their beloved Daddy, and increasingly more furious with me every time I dared to cry, or to mention how much I missed him. I hated the WAY weekend, simply because it was just too soon for me to accept that I’m a widow.

As we became lost in the stupid bastard forest on our way to some ridiculously bereavement-inappropriate shooting game, I lost it. Completely. The smug twatting non-bereaved families of four, with their little trailers and flags and polka dotted Joules wellies who walked along holding hands as I raced past on my bicycle, screaming at my children that a fucking mastectomy would have been more fun after all, may well have been somewhat bemused, but I couldn’t have given less of a shit if I’d tried. They had what I’d had. They had a happy family, and I didn’t any more. They were probably the sort of people who’d try to helpfully say that I’d “get there eventually,” wherever the fuck “there” is. Where is it? I was there. I had it. All of it. And now I don’t. So, fuck you, and your stupidly jolly chunky knitwear. Just fuck the fuck off.

My husband should have been there. Here. With us. At Center Parcs, or wherever. We shouldn’t have been there just so we could meet other widows and widowers, and identify people who were “just like us” by their trademark blue WAY hoodies. As a family of four, we used to stay in five star hotels in exotic locations and meet people “just like us,” but suddenly a glorified swimming baths in a wood outside Nottingham was where we belonged instead. Had we been there as a family, we’d have loved it, I’m sure. And we should have been there as a family. A whole family. Unfortunately, I didn’t meet anyone as newly qualified into widowhood as me, and found it difficult to see old friends laughing together – people who’d lost their partners years ago, who had begun to rebuild. People who talked about being widowed the way my friends and I might talk about giving birth – never forgetting the life-altering magnitude of the situation, but perhaps more able to discuss it freely without being automatically wrenched straight back into the searing pain of it all. I didn’t resent them – I just couldn’t ever imagine being ready to move on, and these Merry Widows seemed as alien to me as the non-bereaved Chunky Knit Brigade on the outside, playing happy families in their identical little boxes in the woods, wondering what all the blue hoodies were in aid of. A new friend of mine had been asked by a Perfect Family what WAY stood for. She explained, and the inquirers shuffled and turned away.

The veteran WAYers were still widowed, and (mostly) still young, but in a different place from me. Not necessarily a good place – just different. No doubt, they’ll have felt like I did when they first came – in fact, a few people (who picked me up from the floor and wiped away my tears on many occasions over the course of the weekend) said the first time is always awful, and begged me to come back and try again next year. I suppose it’s that slow and horrible acceptance that you’re part of a club that nobody wants to join, and perhaps I’m just not ready to admit that I’m a member yet. For so many, the earth on their partner’s grave had settled, and had given them a more solid foundation upon which to start building new friendships and memories, but my husband’s memory is still so fresh that my heart sinks into the earth every time I think of what we’ve lost. For many old hands, that annual trip to Center Parcs has become an event to treasure, not to dread, and I hope that next year, we’ll have the same positive experience. Maybe Widowed and Young won’t be for me until I really start to accept that I’m widowed. For now, I’m still married. It’s just that my husband isn’t alive any more.

Love Fanny x

 

 

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Happy fucking nuclear families, totally unaware of how lucky they are. Copyright centerparcs.co.uk

 

 

 

 

 

Dean Friedman, Domino’s, and Death.

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People say “I just CAN’T imagine.” A lot. They say it a lot. I think I’m quite good at hiding what I’m thinking (which is WELL FUCKING TRY) with a shrug and a smile, and a “that’s OK. I hope you never have to,” because I really do. When they inevitably stroke my left arm in solidarity (it’s always the left one,) I let them, even though I don’t really know if I’m supposed to stroke theirs back, because I’m awkward and British, and I’m not entirely sure what stroking my arm will do to aid my husband’s return to life anyway. But it probably makes them feel better, and I’m OK with that. I’m sure I’d do the same if the tables were turned. What in the name of fuck DO you say?

People are really nice. I know they can’t imagine, because I can’t either, and none of this is quite how I thought it would be. It still isn’t.

Following any shitty medical diagnosis, people often describe a “new normal.” It’s not the life we’d planned, but eventually you get to grips with the chemo regimes or hospital appointments or where the best coffee is within a stone’s throw of the treatment centre (don’t go to the canteen – it’s shit,) and you build a new routine around it, or in our case, our entire working week. I remember, when my husband was first diagnosed (when it was curable – OH no it wasn’t!) imagining him about to spend months on end as an in-patient, shrivelled up and bald, when in reality – for the first three cycles at least – life was relatively normal except for the odd bit of retching into a bowl and a Number One on top. We went places, did stuff, and lived our lives. And he carried on working. Self-employed and uninsured, you see.

The difficulty ramped up, slowly but steadily. After the oesophagogastrectomy (or, “the op,” which is less of a mouthful,) he needed more careful handling, but life carried on and the boys got used to seeing him replace his jejunostomy feed at breakfast while they filled their cereal bowls. The feeding tube came out. He went back on chemo. The retching became worse, and he went bald again. He didn’t sleep at night and nor did I, but we carried on. Things got shittier, but we kept going. We kept working. We kept bringing up our kids, and loving each other, and pissing each other off. We kept going for two years, until he stopped.

When my husband was given two weeks to live, he was relieved. He’d thought he had hours. I’d been called in to the hospital urgently, late on a Friday afternoon to “discuss his scan,” and was told that the doctor would stay behind to see me. I asked if I should bring the children, and they said not yet. That was a fairly hefty clue that something was amiss, although it was April Fools’ Day, so there was a glimmer of hope. My husband held my hand. He wiped my tears, and asked me to promise just two things. He wanted to die at home, and he asked me not to let him die alone. I gave him my word.

He then went on to say that a Bag for Life would probably be an unwise investment at that point.

The few days after he came home from hospital, and before he’d lost his mind, we quickly shut down our business. He wouldn’t rest until I’d contacted all our clients with his “permanent non-availability”, as he called it, and sent the invoices out. The fucking invoices. Who gave a shit? He did. He needed to know we could afford to take some time off, so he could relax. And die. It felt as if we were about to go on holiday. In fact, by then, we were on holiday. We were at home, but not working. We ignored the phone. It was, somehow, lovely. We chatted. We held hands. Friends and relatives came over, but knew not to stay too long. He asked for a sign on the front door asking for visitors by appointment only, because the constant ringing of the doorbell was driving him mad, although some people ignored it anyway. I kept that fucker up for weeks after he’d passed. Some people still ignored it.

The day he died, I don’t think I knew he was going to. I don’t honestly think I ever thought he would. A friend had stayed in the spare room so I wouldn’t be alone and frightened on my makeshift bed beside my husband if he started to die in the night. He said good morning to her and asked after her husband, his friend. I don’t know what he said after that, but it was idle, mixed-up chitchat. There were no meaningful last words. He probably vaguely asked for a cuppa. He slept. The hospice came (for the first time, after a fortnight of chasing) to give him some nursing care, and a wash and a fresh t-shirt. They looked after him; he was clean and moisturised, and his teeth were brushed. I suppose, in hindsight, he was ready. I texted the vicar to say that I was worried he had barely moved and didn’t seem well, but didn’t hear back and thought nothing of it. I was too busy sitting by his side and listening to his iPod on shuffle (or “Dad FM” as he preferred to call it) and skipping past any songs he wasn’t keen on. No point in wasting whatever time he had left being forced to listen to shit music.

The boys came home from school; they popped in to say hello, saw Dad was asleep, and wandered back over the road to play with their friend. My husband’s best mate, our GP, called in after surgery to see how things were, as he always did, and said gently that he thought today may be my husband’s last. I put the kettle on and chose not to believe him. He offered to stay the night, but Marie Curie were supposed to be coming to night-sit for the first time, and I thought they could damn well do their bit at last. We returned to the sitting room where my husband was sleeping. His head had fallen to one side and his skin was grey. I thought he’d died, and was devastated that I’d broken the one last promise I’d been determined to keep – that he wouldn’t die alone.

Then, he breathed. I looked up to see our friend in tears, my husband still alive, and our boys out of the house. I didn’t know how long we could expect the breathing to keep going, but I managed to ring the boys and summon them back quickly. None of us really knew what to do, so it was a blessing to have our friend there (who had seen hundreds of deaths but never his best friend’s) as we all made our promises to my hubby and told him how loved he was. One of the boys became agitated about the music still playing on the iPod, and said it was disrespectful. I told him that Daddy loved music and would probably be enjoying listening to it. In fact, it was Dean Friedman’s Lucky Stars. I made a mental note to remember. I wondered if that was an appropriate song for his life to fade out on, but he did like Dean Friedman. He’d seen him play at the Edinburgh Festival a couple of years ago, and the audience had all sung the girl’s part. I remember him telling me. He’d had a great time. Yes. OK, Lucky Stars was a good song, and I supposed the title was apt. Despite everything, he had been very lucky in many ways, I thought, but then an internal monologue of panic began:

It isn’t really about being lucky at all, though, is it? Isn’t it about a breakup? Not sure. It’s a bit inappropriate if it is. Oh, bollocks. Perhaps I should listen more carefully to the words, just in case. Shame it’s not Ariel. He loves Ariel. Maybe I should see if I can quickly find it. Shit, it’s still on shuffle. 8,493 songs, and I haven’t a clue how to use Search on this bastard thing. Does this one end or fade? Thank fuck – yes, it ends. Don’t want to play “fade out roulette” at this fairly critical point in all our lives.

It ended. I quickly pressed Stop, in case Agadoo came on, or the theme tune from Blockbusters. My hands were shaking. Then, we sort of waited. For a very long time – half an hour or more. We weren’t counting. He kept breathing. We kept talking, and promising, and wishing. The breaths came far less frequently. Then, he stopped.

Our boys were brilliant. They kissed their Daddy, and stroked his face, even after he’d died. One went to our home office and came back with my husband’s business card which he placed in his grey, waxy hand. I don’t really know why. He just did what he had to do. My husband was useless at giving out business cards – perhaps that’s why there were so many left. His best friend organised the practical things such as telephoning the undertaker, and letting Marie Curie know not to bother coming after all. He asked a colleague to come and certify the death – something he’d done a hundred times before for other people, but he couldn’t bring himself to do so for his best friend of over 30 years. I don’t know what certifying a death involves, but I’m guessing lifting eyelids and some such, and I wouldn’t have wanted to do that either. My husband had the most beautiful piercing blue eyes that winked and danced, and we loved them, but they would be glassy and empty by now, and we all knew it.

As had been planned the day before, some dear friends came round to take the boys to drama at 6pm, and we realised that time had stood still. The boys were holding their Daddy’s hand at the time we should have been putting the dinner in the oven. Our littlest twin asked if they could have the night off drama and order a Domino’s, and it didn’t seem a lot to ask for a ten year old kid who’d just come back from school to see his beloved father pass away. There were pizza menus and doctors and telephone numbers for undertakers being banded about, and then the vicar turned up full of apologies but he’d been in Wigan all day and only just seen my text message. He was so sorry. He and my husband were friends. He blessed his body and we said a prayer together, even though by then I knew that my husband had long since left the room, and so did he.

The undertakers came, and quietly began to do what they needed to do. I left the room, and started to make phone calls to relatives. There was a list of people in a vague order of importance, and two hungry children, and I needed to keep the conversations short as there were another twenty people yet to ring, but everyone needed a good cry and I didn’t have the heart to rush them. Even after several calls, I’d failed to master the technique. Words like “peaceful” and “blessing” were used as the doorbell kept ringing and the hallway turned into Piccadilly Circus with doctors and undertakers and small boys and friends. I laid the kitchen table. Someone poured me a glass of wine, I think. As my husband was being loaded into the back of the private ambulance, the Domino’s guy crossed paths with him on the driveway. We’d swapped the love of our lives for a large Margarita and a Veggie Volcano.

As the jalapeños burned my cardboard tongue, I walked into the sitting room and stripped my husband’s empty bed. I found his discarded business card on the carpet. I thought, don’t you know who he is?  I loaded the washing machine, just as I always did, several times a day. Life carried on for the rest of us, as it always does, but in a completely new direction. Even now, we’re still picking our way through whatever our new “new normal” is. The only thing that isn’t “normal” is no longer having him here by our side.

Love Fanny x

 

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Ariel, which I found in his record collection, along with Lydia. But not Lucky Stars.

The Life and Soul of the Party.

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Hey, you!

Yes – you. With the husband.

I can see you sitting there, either with him, or maybe with other friends as he props up the bar with a merry band of dads. I can see your son come up to you and pester you for money for a fizzy drink, and watch as you direct him over to his dad because your handbag is empty, or because you’re deep in conversation with another of the wives, or because he’s just mildly pissing you off anyway because he’s a ghastly, sweaty, overexcited, pre-teen shitbag more interested in sliding along the grass outside than impressing the girls. Or because your daughter is taking her role on the dance floor far too seriously, and you’re quietly thinking to yourself (having spent the first part of this Godforsaken evening watching her apply glitter to her face and being forced to plait her hair,) to calm the fuck down and to stop obsessively doing every bloody dance move because you’re eleven for Christ’s sake and not about to try to get laid. It’s the Year 6 Leavers’ Party at the local golf club, not the bastard Hacienda. And anyway, all the boys are outside and only interested in getting mud on their knees.

You’re being really kind to me, as you always are. You were always happy to offer help while my husband was ill, and I guess I probably owe you. But these days I’m a bit aloof. No longer one of the MILFs. You say hello, and a few people shuffle their chairs along so I can sit down. You’re too polite to say that my make up is smudged, even though one of you saw me in the car having dropped off my own two excited, sweaty, pre-pubescent boys, and seeing that I didn’t follow them in straight away, peered through the window to see my head against the steering wheel, stifling a mental breakdown. Nobody tells anyone else that this happened, of course. Not in front of me, anyway. We all make the right noises about how time passes so quickly and how we never thought the day would come that they’d be leaving primary school. Is yours ready? we ask. Oh, yes! we agree. Little shits, aren’t they? Need a new challenge. Nice kids really, though. It’s been a lovely class.

And then your husband waves at you from the bar and asks you what you want to drink. Oh! And me, too. Yes, I’d love a drink, thanks. I’m getting properly shitfaced tonight, I think to myself.

It’s not your fault, you woman with the husband. He’s lovely, but he wouldn’t have been my type. My husband was fascinating. He never wore a suit. It made him look, and feel, like a twat. He would never have been comfortable in a safe, sensible job like your husband’s, but always respected your husband’s right to his, and liked him very much. Mine was, like your husband, a total pain in the arse at times. But, unlike yours, mine is dead.

He’s not here to see his beloved boys finish primary school. He was there at every open day, assembly, Christmas concert – in fact, if you could gain health and longevity from attending every bastard school event, he’d have outlived the lot of us. Your husband did his best but was often at work selling stuff, or accounting things, or quantity surveying, or whatever it is that he does, but mine was there every damn time. And now he’s not. And it isn’t bloody fair. Not that I wish it was your husband who’d died. Of course I don’t.

Like your marriage, ours had its ups and downs. Like yours, my husband also left his wet towels on the bed, never cleared away his coffee cups, and had an opinion on every fucking thing (whether it had been asked for or not.) He never shut up, or got off Facebook, and he died having apparently never discovered where we keep the Hoover. We didn’t argue often, but when we did it was monumental and one of us would slam the door with a dramatic flourish, although it never stayed shut for long. In fourteen years, we had three nights apart (once, I even booked a room at a Travelodge three miles down the road, because I was pregnant and hormonal, and he was a cunt. But then, by morning – and quite miraculously – he wasn’t.)

We even had a spell of marriage counselling when the boys were toddlers, because we were too pissed off and knackered to go near each other for months. The ethnic skirted counsellor lady was so worthy and unctuous that we almost died of boredom in the session, took the piss out of her in the car all the way home, got into bed, and bonked each other’s brains out. Our marriage was saved that day, but in the most unorthodox way, and we were proud of how hard we’d fought at times to get ourselves back on track. We always did. It was worth fighting for. We loved each other.

I suppose, like yours, ours was just a normal marriage, with its highs and lows, and, like yours, he was just a normal bloke, with all the revolting traits that blokes have – but balanced by fairness, kindness, and a wicked sense of humour to appease me when he needed to.

Before he died, my husband told me that he knew he was leaving his treasured boys in my very capable hands. I wonder if he is watching over us and shaking his celestial head as one kid screams in despair and the other kid holds us hostage in the porch, and if he realises he’s left too soon but it’s a bit fucking late now because he’s already been cremated. And anyway, all this shit has only started since he’s died. I wonder – no, assume – that you’re judging me too. That you think you know how hard it is to be a single mum, because you’ve got friends who are on their own, or because you’ve been there yourself, before your lovely new husband came along. Yes, I’m very bloody single. No, I don’t want a replacement model. My husband’s departure is a bit fucking permanent. He doesn’t pop back at weekends to feed them inappropriate numbers of sweets, or take them to the park while I go for lunch and bitch about what an arse he is. We didn’t choose this. As the boys are busy trying to twat each other over the head, I wonder why my husband doesn’t intervene right now, like he always eventually did. Why he can’t just show me what to do. Tip a whole sky full of white feathers over the boys, for fuck’s sake, if only so they can’t do each other any more harm. He always had all the answers, and just as we need them the most, he’s gone.

So, if you see me over the next few weeks as our kids join in with all the parties and meals and concerts which herald the end of their time at primary school, and you wonder if I’m being a bit monosyllabic (when for years I’d have been the life and soul of any PTA party,) just remember, it’s not me. It’s you. My feelings towards you transcend anger or jealousy, but I wouldn’t wish any of this on my worst enemy, and certainly not on you. Seven years ago, we all began a journey together. For reasons I simply can’t fathom, you and your kids have the privilege of moving on with the one travelling companion my boys and I so desperately wish we had, too.

Love Fanny x

 

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My Son, The Asshole.

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My son, who I love beyond all measure, is being a bit of an asshole. He’s so much like I was as a child – a loud, articulate, attention-seeker extraordinaire, unable to quite know when to stop. Unlike me as a child, he has the added bonus feature of having spent the last two years watching his Daddy die, slowly, right in front of his eyes.

Until D-Day, the dickhead qualities were always visible, but in a fairly endearing way. People would be bowled over by his confidence around adults, and his engaging personality. What he lacked in his twin brother’s fierce academic prowess, he made up for in articulate expression, and we’d always had him marked out as a leader in whichever field he chose to pursue. He was also, most importantly, fairly kind (except to his brother, obviously.) Over the last couple of years, we’d noticed the signs of anger bubbling up inside him, and had had the occasional call from other parents whose child had been on the receiving end of some outburst or other, but it was never that big a deal. People knew me well enough to tell me straight, and never expected anything other than my full attention and an apology, if necessary, from my son. They also knew that the poor kid had a lot to deal with right now, and that all this was a bit out of character. I do not breed Perfect Peters. We deliberately raised our kids to have spirit, to ask questions, and to stand up for themselves (verbally, not violently,) and on the whole I think we had been doing a fairly good job in the face of some monumental challenges, not to mention running a business and working around several 40-mile round trips to the cancer hospital every sodding week.

I’ve always believed that the one favour you can do for your children, and for their peer group, is to be realistic about them. Don’t expect behaviour miracles to come overnight, but also let’s quickly lose the rose-tinted view of how perfect they are, no matter how much effort it took to propel them from your vagina, because I haven’t met a single child in the boys’ class who doesn’t have a strong propensity to be a little shitbag from time to time. Most parent freely admit this with a cynical eye-roll, and usually we laugh and pour each other another gin. A sense of perspective with children is vitally important, and the violent, sanctimonious, immature little fuckers are still learning. They all make mistakes. So do I.

And I feel lost. Completely out of my depth. My wonderful, funny, lively, intelligent son, who is moving up to a lovely CofE high school in September but who still goes to sleep with his thumby in, and who loves nothing more than a cuddle and to rub the tips of his fingers along my fingernails for comfort, tried to throw himself out of his bedroom window yesterday. After he’d trashed the garden. And after he’d raced towards me with a metal spike. And called his brother a twat. (I obviously show huge signs of disapproval at the swearing part, as well as everything else, because parenting is 99% hypocrisy, and anyway, the boys don’t know I write this shit down.) He then made a dramatic exit out of the front door, and I found him 20 minutes later, cowering in a bus stop, sobbing. The amateur psychologist in me – no, wait, let’s not big up my part – the former childhood attention-seeker in me, recognises that none of these things were done seriously, and were all a bit half-hearted. I am pretty confident he was not about to board the next bus into the big city, nor was his bottom ever going to leave that window ledge. But it’s still awful to watch, and worse when you feel powerless to help and are the only adult in authority. But I don’t feel like I am an adult, or in any kind of authority.

Hubby and I were the ultimate team. We never quite intended for it to happen this way after we got married, but before we knew it we were living and working together, and bringing up our two sons completely in tandem. It was so easy to share the load. If he was working, I’d cook, or vice versa. If they were being little bastards, he’d give them a verbal bollocking. We’d both be there at school drop-off, pickup, bathtime, story time, bed time, and he and I just loved parenting them. They were his joy, but like me, he was fully aware of their faults, and would hold up a mirror to them whenever it was necessary.

The bollockings. I never really did them. I wasn’t all that good at discipline, and it didn’t matter because my hubby was there to jump in, snap his fingers, and get things done. I was too soft, and I know I was, but it feels as if now, I’m paying the price.

I went into school. I begged for help. I guess it wasn’t particularly convenient that my husband died a couple of weeks before SATs and now all the teacher wants to do is freewheel to the end of term. But, to give her credit, she’s sent through a referral to Behaviour Support (although she did manage to fill in the form with enough spelling mistakes to make this Grammar Nazi wince, and quietly wonder what the fuck she’s been teaching them all year.)

It’s not her job to be a grief counsellor as well as a teacher. I know that. I’m also told that their behaviour at school is completely normal for their age group and for the time of year. “End of Year Six-itis” was her diagnosis. She said they were all being cocky and difficult little fuckers, or something along those lines. But one child in particular is desperately sad, angry, and so consumed by grief that he’s taking it all out on the people closest to him, and his twin brother is trying so hard to forget his grief that he won’t discuss it at all. I don’t know which is worse – loud-mouthed drama queen, or insular nerd. They’re both as heartbreaking as each other, but the noisy one has my full attention just for now. I don’t know how to throw him a lifebelt when I can’t see one anywhere, but I know I need to get hold of one quickly before he grabs our hands and pulls us all down to the depths with him.

Love Fanny x



My son’s Fathers’ Day card. His twin brother has made one too, but he wants to hide it in his memory box so I haven’t seen it. Neither of them are assholes – just very, very mixed up little boys who want their Daddy back. And so do I. 

The Hierarchy of Hell.

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I think we’re all still reeling from the horrific murder of Jo Cox. I know I haven’t stopped thinking about her and her family all week. Regardless of the political or mental health reason, or both, that led to her death, that woman went to work the other day and didn’t come home. Her life was snatched from her in the most brutal of ways, leaving her young family broken.

When I’ve heard of other people who’ve recently died, I’ve tried to assess it in my own mind. I’ll weigh it up and wonder if their family will be grieving more than we are, and even silently ask myself if they have the right to. There’s a part of me that gets a bit pissed off with people banging on about their father-in-law who was a bit of a miserable old bastard anyway, and who sadly passed “unexpectedly.” Unexfuckingspectedly? Oh, do me a favour. He was 87 and smoked and drank all his life, I chunner to myself. Get a grip. My kids’ daddy is dead, I think. They’re ten, you’re 56. Get over it, I think.

But, I know these are the irrational thoughts of a grieving woman who’s trying to make sense of her newfound place in the world, even though she doesn’t yet know where that place is. Of course people are entitled to their grief, but actually, yes – there is a hierarchy. There has to be. Sometimes it can be quantified.

When my husband died, we knew it was coming. It was bloody awful, but he did at least know that he could choose where he died, and who he spent his last days with. He saw the people he wanted to see, and wrote some loving letters to the people he didn’t have the strength to face in person. He said what he needed to say, and heard what he needed to hear. Nothing was left unfinished, and we all knew how much we loved each other. He was grateful to have had a comfortable but too-short existence, and appreciated that his end would come in a warm bed, and not on a battlefield or in a refugee camp. He got seriously pissed off with the rolling news coverage when David Bowie died because – although he’d been a lifelong fan – he didn’t see the death of a sixty-something successful bloke as a “tragedy,” any more than he saw his own demise as one. There was far worse shit going on around the world, he said. It’s bad, we don’t want this to be happening, but it could always be worse.

So, when Jo Cox was gunned down and stabbed the other day, for reasons we don’t yet quite know, of course it was a tragedy. Here was a mother – a mother (and we always consoled ourselves with the idea that a child losing a mother is the ultimate tragedy, after a parent losing a child,) whose children would grow up without her. Suddenly. Unexpectedly. Tragically.

When I was 18, one of my best friends was stabbed to death by another friend – his brother-in-law. It happened after a night out, shortly after they’d dropped me home in a taxi and gone back to theirs. The shock of finding out it had happened, and then seeing my darling friend lying lifeless in intensive care – his nose the only identifiable part of his body beneath the tubes – has never left me. I remember screaming. Screaming all the time, for weeks. I would have given anything to have brought him back, to comfort his family, to make everything OK again. It was horrific. I didn’t sleep for months, and I doubt his family did either. I remember those long, desperate nights, unable to breathe because of the sheer shock, and how every year the anniversary of his death threw me into a deep emotional black hole which would take days to climb out of. I ran away to the sun, I came back home, I clung on desperately to an unhappy and controlling relationship, and life was grim for a very long time. Although I have since sought help (with some serious support over the years from my husband,) am generally contented, and now use his anniversary as a day to do something positive – a day I now almost look forward to – not a day goes by when I don’t think about my friend, and remember him. And wish.

Multiply ad infinitum those feelings of shock and desperation, and that’s maybe where Jo Cox’s family are, and the families of anyone whose life is snatched away from them because of someone else’s sheer evil, madness or recklessness. I simply can’t imagine how much more grief it’s possible to bear than that which I endured as a teenager, but my God, it must be so much more painful for them. I only had a friend. Jo Cox’s husband had a wife. Their children had a mother. How much worse can it be than that?

To feel desperately sad that my husband died from cancer is quite understandable. The grief is ever-present, but it’s nothing that can be compared in any way to the shock which follows a murder. Our boys are struggling emotionally, but they had two years to get used to the fact that their daddy might leave them, and to somehow prepare themselves, not that you ever really can. They held his hand as he left us, and promised him they’d be good boys. Jo’s sons probably went to school on Thursday, and before the bell had even sounded for morning break, their mother would have already given them her very last kiss, cuddle and ruffle of the hair.

Is there a hierarchy of hell? Yes. And the Cox family is pretty damned close to the bottom right now, in a place where nobody ever deserves to be. Whatever path our little family’s journey of grief takes us on, Jo Cox’s murder reminds me that we must always be grateful for the chance to have said goodbye, and that one of us simply slipped away quietly, surrounded by love, and at peace.

Love Fanny x

Letter

Part of my husband’s final letter to me – which he wrote about a week before he died. His mind was starting to tire, and he wasn’t sure what to say. I told him he didn’t need to write at all, because he’d said everything already. But, he’d already written to his children, and was determined to do the same for me. I’m so glad he did. Not everyone has this luxury.

I Wanna Hold Your Hand.

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We went to a party on Saturday night. It’s not the first time we’ve been out, the boys and I (or indeed I on my own,) since D-Day, and although I mainly want to stay at home curled up in a ball, I know it’s A Good Thing to go out and I need to make the effort. We need to socialise, and I’m determined that my hubby doesn’t just slip into obscurity, and become some legendary bloke who we all vaguely remember. No. He has a name, and we use it often. Still, I’m pretty selective about who I feel up to partying with, as the fixed social smile often gets wiped away by tears. For the most part, the small talk I used to be so good at makes me feel a bit nauseous, and I don’t want people to ask how I am because they won’t like the answer. For now, I’ve pushed away from the rest of the world and only brought my closest allies along with me for the ride. No. His closest allies. His dearest friends. They’re all I want.

Over a glass of wine and a few nibbles (we always wondered why crisps tipped into a bowl suddenly become nibbles, just because they’re in a fucking bowl,) somebody remarked to me that at least my hubby wasn’t in pain any more. What a cliché. I get it. I’ve known for the last eight weeks that clichés exist for good reason, because they’re often painfully true, but really? That comment tipped me right over the edge. Let me tell you something about my husband.

He was brilliant. For the last five months of his life, he was in constant pain. Truly awful. His liver tumours were growing and he struggled for breath as his lungs kept on filling with fluid. But, his attitude (and a hefty supply of morphine and dexamethasone) meant that that didn’t stop him. He carried on working until he could barely work any more, was riding rollercoasters with me, our boys, and a bunch of chums at Blackpool Pleasure Beach one month and a day before he died, and even squeezed in a week’s holiday in the sunshine. We returned home three weeks before he passed away. But dying was never on the agenda.

He didn’t want to die. He had no intention of leaving us. He fought tooth and nail to stay. Was he in pain? Yes. Did he mind? Yes. Could he have gone on for longer? You bet. He had not given up. Pain was just an inconvenience that he had to put up with in order to stay with his adored boys, but giving up or dying were not on the list.

I sat with him for almost every moment in those last days. Those long, surreal, dark days. He needed me to administer his meds and help him to the loo. We talked about inconsequential things, and important things, and his mind began to shut down. In the early hours of the morning, he wanted to know where Prestons of Potto were based, and then proceeded to piss on the hall floor. He then shuffled back to bed with his oxygen tube in one hand and my hand in the other, but decided to adopt a Scottish accent for the journey back. He began not to remember that he was dying. It was probably a blessing, because he had been too stubborn to let go, and would not have ever given up of his own accord. Ever.

That hand-holding, though. Those beautiful hands that had been so animated; they were the first thing I fell in love with nearly fifteen years ago. Those hands that became, like him, emaciated and uncomfortable to hold on to, and not the fleshy, slightly wrinkled (but his) hands I’d always held. But they were there, and there was a pulse. He was still inside those hands, somewhere. He could squeeze mine, or I could kiss his. Or kiss his face, or his stubbly chemo-ravaged head. When there was still a pulse, he wasn’t there – he was gone in all but heartbeat and breath – but I could hold his hand. He was still him, and he was ours to love.

When he was gone completely, a waxwork took his place. One moment, we could hold his hand and love him – HIM, the man, the person, the daddy – and the next, we were touching something with as much life and texture as a piece of plasticine, or a doll. But at the same time, that doll was so familiar, wearing my husband’s favourite t-shirt, wedding ring in place, and his wristwatch still ticking, even though everything in our collective world had stopped.

Those hands, like the rest of him, are dust. His wedding ring lives on my finger now, but there is no longer a hand to hold. Would he have carried on, despite the pain, until now? Of course, and beyond. And if he could have done, we’d still have that hand to hold, and to hold us in return.

Is it a comfort to me that he’s not in pain any more? No, because the pain, for him, and for the rest of us, was better than his not being here at all.

Love Fanny xHold Your Hand

The Luxury of Grief.

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It’s been a while since I wrote anything here. Not because I’ve had nothing to say, but because I’ve had no time to say it.

The few months after my last post were relatively normal, but under the shadow of a cancer that wouldn’t go away. Back in the summer, hubby had three weeks of chemo which nearly killed him. He couldn’t walk, speak or breathe, and decided that he wanted to enjoy whatever time he had left. When you feel that shit, you think death would be a blessed relief, but at the same time, you don’t really believe it’ll ever actually come. After that, we just lived. Normally (ish.) We went on holiday, and were talking about where we might go to next before we’d even come home. He did the school run, and mucked in with the cooking. He helped me to price difficult jobs in the business we run together, and ferried the boys to footy, drama, youth club and the rest. He carried on doing the job he loved, in the hope of putting away a bit of cash for the future of the boys he’d always wanted to see graduate, if not get married, and life went on… Although, feeling “fine” through all of these everyday events – particularly the open day of the wonderful secondary school we’ve spent every Sunday for over a decade racking up God Miles to get them in to – is darkened by the nagging wonder of whether or not he’ll live to see them start their very first year.

The shadow of terminal illness is ever-present. It follows you to the loo, and hits you in the face at the supermarket when you’re trying to work out which butter is the best value. It eats away at your sleep and your comfort, but it hasn’t let me cry.

Grief is a luxury afforded to those who are on the outside. The man we vaguely know from parties thrown by a mutual friend, who bumped into my husband at the changing room at the gym, and who came out of there in floods of tears and sobbed on my shoulder. The good friend who broke down on hearing the news and vowed to do everything she could to help us to fight it together. The fellow mums in the playground who come up and hug me and ask how things are going, while trying to hold back the tears as they admit it’s not they who should be crying-  it’s me. But it isn’t me. I can’t seem to feel that this is real at all. It seems that, by taking a step back and looking in, the perspective changes. They know it’s incurable. They can imagine life without him because they’ve seen it happen to other people they know, and anyway, they’re not the ones having their entire worlds turned upside down. It’s shit, they say, and I nod and say yes it is, but you never know – it’s not over until the fat lady sings (or in our case, until the man I love is lying cold in my arms. I don’t say that bit out loud.)

Everyone congratulates our family for our relentless positivity. No wonder he’s doing so well, they say. Positivity kills cancer, they say. You’re an inspiration to us all, they say.

But, it’s impossible to grieve for something which you don’t really believe is happening in the first place.

Love Fanny x

I began to write this post a few months ago, and never got around to finishing it at the time. My husband passed away on April 14th 2016.

 

Telling the Children.

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We told the boys. A week before their tenth birthday.

We’d decided we weren’t going to tell them anything until nearer the time. Not sure what the fuck “the time” is, but death, I suppose.

We’d certainly wanted to wait until we’d seen the oncologist, in case some whizz-bang trial had just appeared which would change everything. I can’t begin to tell you how uncomfortable it feels to ask someone to absolutely guarantee your husband will die, but it was important to us that we weren’t about to break the boys’ hearts, only to have to try to piece them together again a few months down the line.

That day, we met with him for the first time since the terminal diagnosis, and we knew it was serious when he did that sort of closed-mouth half-smile thing that people do when they need to rip someone’s heart to shreds, but in the most sympathetic way.

Still, the oncologist (let’s call him Dr Death) was pretty certain there would be no sudden miracle cure appearing on the horizon in time for us, despite the news in that day’s papers (and not just the Daily Mail) that immunotherapy was imminent and showing promising results. It isn’t that simple, apparently.

According to him (and I do trust that he knows these things,) children fare far better when they’re told the truth from the start. We’ve always told our children the truth about everything, provided it’s in age-appropriate terms for them to understand, and hiding the truth about their daddy’s health was beginning to eat away at us. We could barely look at them in case we gave something away. So, with the added assurance that no, there really was no way that my hubby would ever recover from this, and frankly, if by some miracle he does survive, the children are not going to be upset about that, we decided to sit them down and tell them the truth.

We’ll make ourselves a nice cup of tea, some Vimto for the boys with extra ice, put out a few biscuits on to a plate… yes, of course you can finish your game on the xBox, but then just pop in here onto the sofa and we’ll cuddle you and tell you your Daddy’s cancer can’t be cured. The doctors have worked so hard, but it’s gone too far and they can’t reach the bits they need to. Yes, my darling, he will die. We don’t know how long… a year, maybe? Maybe more, maybe less. We’re so, so sorry. I know. Come here.

They cried. My God, they cried. One went very quiet and just wanted to hold his Daddy. The other went outside the room, punched the wall and screamed. He wanted to know what he had done to deserve it. We held them both tight and made all the right noises. We loved them so much – more than we ever have before.

Then, our older twin wandered off and returned with his iPad. Hubby and I looked at each other and wondered which cure for cancer he’d looked up on the internet, and wondered how we might gently tell him that we trusted in the people in charge of his Daddy’s care, and ask him to believe we were all doing the best we could to keep him alive, and please not to tie himself in knots trying to find a cure that doesn’t exist.

“What’s this, my darling?” I enquired, gently.

Through his tears, “it’s Match.com” he replied. “We’re going to have to find you a new husband.”

At this moment. I couldn’t be any further from wanting to be someone else’s wife if I tried. Bring on the hair loss, the sickness, the lethargy and the misery. Throw all the chemo at him that he can handle. There’s nobody else I want to be their Daddy, but their Daddy.

Love Fanny x

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