As I mentioned last year in Five Years (Preface) , I intended to end this blog at the five year anniversary of Gail’s passing. That’s still the case and this will definitely be the last post, but the problem has been that I’ve been struggling for some months now to find a way of ending this neatly. I didn’t want to just finish it abruptly without some sort of final summation or farewell, but equally I’ve not been sure how to approach it all either.
Though I began Sign-Your-Name as a way of capturing how I was feeling and what I was going through on a daily basis, a way of encapsulating what I was posting on social media, the format of this blog didn’t really lend itself to what I was trying to do, and I’m fully aware it’s hard to imagine anyone stumbling upon this for the first time, scrolling down to the July 2018 and working their way up. A small irony is the Facebook Memories section has kept alive posts I never expected to see again anyway. Perhaps had I known the impact they would have on me or the ease in which I could relive that for myself or others, I may never have started this project in the first place.
Although I was adamant I didn’t want to end the blog after a year as so many did – as if circumnavigating the first twelve months was all you needed to know about surviving grief – the fact is that I’ve leaned there is no time frame to this whatsoever. I’m pretty sure there will be things happening to me next year (which would be our 20th Wedding Anniversary) that I could post here just as I’ve done with other random events that have affected me since 2018. In fact, one of the many people I’m in contact with as a result of this blog, has a web site still running even though, for him, it’s been over ten years since he lost his wife. His loss has actually provided him with another career.
All this meant I felt like I’m twisting in the wind here, with no definitive thoughts or conclusions just more of the same, and this didn’t seem any way to end a small project that I’ve supported since 2018. Oddly, it’s been another project of mine – my annual Advent Calendar of Christmas Songs – that has pushed me into finishing this. The Calendar goes live on December 1st and there are links on there to here, and I don’t want anyone to arrive during Advent and find this unfinished.
So where are we? Well, I’ve moved so I’m now living in a house that Gail will never see. She’s here with me insomuch as there are things she/we bought that are in the house; art work and furniture we chose are here as well as dinnerware, cutlery etc In fact I’m pretty certain she’d be shocked by how much we bought together is still here. Some things have even surprised me! I actually got the box out for the glittery silver stag’s head – the one I insisted would never enter the house, the one that I eventually bought for her as a surprise before putting it up on the lounge wall next to the TV so I saw it every day (yea, that one!) – intent on putting it on eBay. But there was a space in the hall and I thought ‘I know what will look good there’. It does too, so there it is again. I don’t want the place to look like a widower lives here anyway, so I’m happy for any inspiration, even if it does echo down the years.
People visiting the house have said they can sense Gail is here, and even if I can’t really comprehend that or feel it myself, I get enormous pleasure from being told it.
Beyond that I’ve just adjusted to what you can do when you live alone. I’ve seen places, met people, chatted online to others, and done things I would probably not have done had Gail still been here. I’m grateful I’ve had the opportunity to meet, see, chat and do them – well, most of them anyway! – even if I’m not happy about the events that led me to it, and I can still feel guilty about it too, even though I could never control the situation that brought it about.
Of course, there’s a whole heap of other things that I’m still struggling with but, as I’ve discovered, these aren’t things you can really tell anyone about either in person or on a blog – another reason for finishing this here – and it’s hard to imagine a set of circumstances that might come about to change that. I hate glib phrases such as ‘It is what it is’ but sometimes that’s all you have left.
Perhaps the best pointer as to how I’ve come, if not full circle, then to a sense of an ending, is something that occurred just this last week.
A post came up on Facebook that I’d posted five years ago; an emotional rant that had come about when my mum told me to ‘Pull myself together’. The post was a difficult read, it was something I found hard to reconcile with my Mother, particularly as she passed in early 2020, possibly of covid, and I was never able to appease myself with her or her pronouncement.
It wasn’t the post itself that grabbed my attention though. Rather, underneath was a comment from a friend of a friend who had lost her husband just a few weeks before Gail. Her comment was an introduction to her and her situation, and it was the first of many that we have exchanged over the years. Sometimes when one or other of us is finding things difficult we just reach out (arghh! hate that phrase) to see if the other has had similar thoughts or reached a similar stage. We’ve never met, and not likely too as we live half a world away, really nor do we need too, it’s just been a rewarding association via circumstances with someone I’d never otherwise have ‘met’.
This friend, like me, has had difficulty in sorting the good times through the prism of the bad, but recently has tried to, in her words, ‘put things in a box and keep a lid on it’ in the hopes of living a fulfilling life by honouring the good memories. Now, that part isn’t my story and I feel it wrong to comment either way on if it has been a success, but I can understand the idea of feeling tired and frustrated with being upset, angry or listless – almost like feeling ennui over ennui.
At the end of our last conversation I wondered if ‘Perhaps becoming just OK with things is all that’s left?’. It doesn’t seem like any deep insight and I don’t think I’d write a book off the back of it, but it seems a good enough exit to this blog. after five years.
So, thanks to those who have stuck with me through this. Thank you to everyone who has written to me and if you want to do so in the future then feel free. Be well – and don’t worry I’m OK.
I spent the few days over the 5th funeral anniversary in Copenhagen.
On the anniversary itself I took myself down to Nayhavn for dinner. It was a little further from the hotel than I like to go on these nights. I’m not much of a drinker but I know I’m going to be over the edge towards the end of these evenings, and I prefer to be within stumbling distance of where I’m staying, but I’d made a decision and decided to stick to it.
I had Tom Waits ‘Tom Traubert’s Blues (Four Sheets to the Wind in Copenhagen) – a song I’d played before I left and one that always gets me swallowing hard – playing around my head, probably not a good idea as Nayhavn is impossibly romantic and it’s not a place for dancing to a beautiful, sad song with an invisible presence. The lines ‘It’s a battered old suitcase / In a hotel someplace / And a wound that will never heal’ were in my head, and the Donna Ashworth ‘Loss’ text that seemed so appropriate with what I was doing with my life now.
It was OK, dinner was nice, the really friendly waiter was intrigued as to why I was there on my own, so I decided to tell him, at which point he became incredibly concerned and looked after me all evening. Like so many others he said what I was doing was ‘brave’ but I just don’t see it. I was in a fantastic capital city, the European Capital of Culture for 2023 and having a good meal and copious amounts of Malbec. Someone was missing and always will be, but what else can I do?
It’s been a pretty momentous year for me for reasons many will understand and for other reasons many may not, and it seems a good time to end this. Next February will be our 20th Wedding Anniversary and I plan to be somewhere special then but, even so, unless I turn this into a travel blog then I’ve said almost everything I need to say, or at least, everything I can conceivably convey in words.
I’d like to try and close this for anyone who stumbles on this and just finds me at the end of a five-year learning curve but, for the moment, it’s just a case of raising a glass of red to the night sky and ensuring the stars they will never be forgotten.
If someone you love did not make that trip you can make it for them With them If someone you love did not witness that milestone you can show them anytime you like If someone you love did not do their own living you can finish those dreams on their behalf The beautiful thing about love is that death need not stop life If you carry someone in your heart you can take them with you Anytime you like
I discovered Yahrzeit earlier this year. Yahrzeit is a Yiddish word used to denote the anniversary of the passing of a wife or husband or close relative. I like this. There needs to be words for these things.
I spent the fifth yahrzeit in Budapest. I know that, as long as I’m mobile and able to do this – or get someone to push me perhaps! – I will be away for every anniversary. There’s always a cathedral, major church or shrine to visit – in this case St Stephen’s basilica – and beyond that I mark each day respectfully, doing something I know she’d like but also something that celebrates life in general. I’ve found that usually entails visiting a well-known landmark, a river cruise and a long walk. I end the day in a nice restaurant and I get drunk. I don’t get drunk any other time of the year – I’m a morose drunk and it’s not really a pleasure for me – but it’s my one concession of the day. I make sure the restaurant is of sufficient quality foodwise, the wine list is good and I can stagger back to whatever hotel I’m staying in.
During the days leading up to the anniversary and on the day itself, I post on social media. There are a lot of Gail’s friends who follow what I do and I think it’s nice to remember that they lost someone dear to them too. It has struck me that some may think I should ‘move on’ – there is always someone trying to get you too move on, even trusted friends – but I was never bothered by that and, after five years, I’m getting to the stage that I’m not even bothered at being bothered any longer.
Next moth is the anniversary of the funeral and I plan to be in Copenhagen. After that, I will try and think of something pithy to end this.
What I didn’t tell anyone is that I did something very odd after the game. Gail’s mobile phone was a 2nd line on my business so, though once her personal number, it’s also a business line that still exists, but I never use. I kept Gail’s phone in case I ever needed that 2nd line and now, of course, it’s something woven into my life that I can’t get rid of. The only time I have ever rung out on it is when I’m chasing a possible contract lead but don’t want anyone to know my personal number or, more likely, I’ve lost my mobile somewhere in the house or car and I want to hear it ring. Of course, if I do that my mobile shows a missed call from Gail, which is always a heart lurch moment.
After the Cup Final though, I simply text her phone and said ‘We won, Pet!’
“I swore to you in August 2018 that, in whatever time was allotted to me, I’d try to get to all those places we never got to, and anything I saw I’d see for you as well.”
“I also swore I’d never go back to anywhere we’d been together because… well, it wouldn’t seem right, and I wasn’t sure I could handle it anyway.”
“But…”
“Well, look, West Ham are in a European final – I know, right? We’re all pretty stunned here too! – and the match is in Prague and you know I have to go…I really do. But I’ll not go anywhere near the Imperial. Even for a cake – and you know how much I love a cake and how delicious those cakes were.”
“It was ten years ago this very week we were there and I’ve even got some koruna left from that trip. We had such a laugh that holiday even though the weather was atrocious; that Art Deco bedroom in the hotel made up for it. I can still taste that warming soup they had. But I hear it’s not raining this time, the Vltava hasn’t burst its banks, the city isn’t underwater, the Charles Bridge isn’t in danger of being swept away and won’t be closed. Apparently, it’s hot and sunny so I’ll walk across the Charles this time, I promise. I’ll be thinking though.”
“Oh, and I know you hated me wearing West Ham-related clothing while we were on holiday – though I still maintain that distant cry of ‘COME ON YOU IRONS’ drifting on the wind at sunset across the Dunes of Maspalomas was really, really funny (“Right that’s it! I’m going through your suitcase next time!” ) – but I’ll be wearing the 1965 European Cup Winners Cup shirt that you gave to me at my book launch (yea, the one that made me cry). I think that’s allowed this time.”
“I won’t lie; I am trepidatious about this but then if we win, it will be glorious, won’t it?”
“And warm”
It was warm. I did walk across the Charles Bridge and I thought a lot as I did it. Out for a walk alone on the last night, I was overcome by a desire just to see where that Art Deco hotel – the Imperial – from 2013 was. I found it on Google maps and was surprised to find that, walking back to my own hotel along the Na Porici, the Imperial seemed to be in the direction I was walking… somehow unsurprisingly, I found it was about 100 yards from where I was staying! Far from not going near it, I’d actually passed it on a tram every day during the five days I was in the Czech capital. I’d had a drink, it was about 1.30am and I stood looking at the hotel from across the Na Porici. As I suspected, it didn’t feel right but it was also OK, I was sad but I didn’t feel the need to look longingly at the rails in front of the passing tram either.
I’ve tried not to get too wrapped up in the emotion of this house move. Admittedly, I’m not one for the ‘looking forward not back’ stuff as I’m not really that type of bloke. I tend to wear my heart on my sleeve, even if the sleeve usually belongs to a jacket that I can’t find because I’ve left it on a chair and the cat is sitting on it.
And let’s be honest, if the situation had been reversed in July 2018 then I suspect Gail would be whopping it up in a place well away from the UK, not getting melancholy in a lovely new house 20 miles away. So, I’ve been positive and pushed on.
Then I found the glittery mirror.
This was the glittery mirror I spoke about in Gail’s eulogy. The one she insisted she wanted to have put up even though she was busy fighting elsewhere. She’d even fixed for our local handyman to come and do it while decorating the downstairs toilet. He turned up the day after Gail died because I’d forgotten to cancel him and I’m genuinely not sure which of us felt worse. I figured he was there and he may as well do the work, but I knew he didn’t think of it in the same way and, in truth, although he put the mirror up OK the rest of the work was pretty shoddy (although I never got round to fixing it).
Anyway, I’d decided the mirror would stay, and I thought it had until I opened up a box expecting to find a canvas but instead found the glittery mirror. The removal men must have taken it down and I’d not noticed in the rush. I felt I was being told something.
Now, despite the fact Gail always insisted on ‘getting someone in’ to do any work following the time I assembled some flat-pack furniture and stepped back to admire my handiwork only to discover I’d screwed my sock to the carpet, I’ve not had a handyman in here (except to do the curtain poles.) I’ve astonished myself by putting up everything even going so far as to buy one of those arm-length spirit levels just to show what a real man I am now. I’ve even put up two Art Deco mirrors. Phil Oakey would recognise me immediately!
Today the glittery mirror has gone back up and, on reflection (I’m in good form today, eh?) I decided to put Andy Warhol’s Gail pic so she can see the glittery mirror. She’s also opposite the painting of the Boleyn Gates and the West Ham shirts but they’ve not come crashing down so I think she’s OK with it.
Rumours I have been approached for my own ITV DIY show are a little premature, however.
A serious advocate of the 12 days of Christmas I refuse to take my decorations down before Twelfth Night. So today it’s time to pack away the Christmas decorations and ruminate on the fact that I’m possibly the only heterosexual man in the UK who has a tree full of white and silver shoes and handbags, fluffy white balls and feathers.
Once again, I’ve promised myself I’ll change them but I doubt I ever will; not because of the fear of change but because if/when I do change them I will have a fair number of decorations that I will then be faced with getting rid of. I know myself well enough to realise I couldn’t put them in a black bin bag so it would probably be a donation to a charity shop somewhere and I’m not sure that is a journey I can make.
It made me consider how strange the grieving mind works.
Had Gail been here it’s unlikely I’d be wrapping these shoes and handbags in tissue paper for another year. Gail was a force of nature who brushed all aside when she felt something needed to change. The existing decorations relate to the ‘white and silver phase’ but I’m sure we’ve probably had a ‘red & green’ or ‘purple & gold’ state since then but I’ve just missed it. Gail never missed these things. She had an uncanny knack for knowing when the next thing was coming along to the extent that I’d see her looking for, say a mustard dress or a pair of teal-coloured boots and I’d say ‘Is Mustard/Teal this year’s black?’ ‘You’re larning’ she’d reply. It got to be one of those standing jokes that couples have and it used to make her laugh when I spotted a colour trend on the High Street and managed to get in a ‘Is that this year’s black?’ before something had even entered the house.
I recall traipsing all over Marmaris one year, going into shop after shop until I eventually asked her what the hell we were looking for. ‘Pandora jewellery’ she told me. “Who’s Pandora?” I stupidly asked. “It’s the next big thing” she answered. I knew better to ask how she knew because she always did. There were never any fashion magazines or web sites scrutinised; it was as if she just had some sixth sense or some fashion clip beamed directly into her brain. Sure enough the following Christmas was a rush on Pandora jewellery and Gail had a drawer full to wear or sell. “Wow Pandora” they’d say “Where’d you get that?” while I’d recall a baking hot summer day haggling in a Bazaar with an entranced Turkish trader.
So, deity of choice willing, next December I will again open up the Christmas tree box – almost certainly in a new house – look at the shoes and handbags and wonder if it’s time to seek out the latest thing.
The 5th anniversary of Christmas and New Year without Gail and I thought I managed it reasonably well. I did the usual Christmas Eve thing; bought some after-shave in Selfridges, glass of champagne at the Oyster bar and even got a late booking for a production of ‘A Christmas Carol’. I locked the door a bit after I got in, but I saw some friends later in the week and even went to a Pantomime with another friend. Caught up with someone I’d not seen in a good while on NYE afternoon then sat down later with a decent port and some fine cheese to watch Jools Holland’s Hootenanny. Ten minutes in and The Real Thing are on doing ‘You To Me Are Everything’ – Gail’s funeral entrance song if you’ve arrived here late. I mean, ten minutes into 2023? I really don’t believe in anything but sometimes I do feel greater forces are at work. “That’ll larn ya” I hear her say.
I’ve always got on well with my brother-in-law from my first marriage. Although we are very different people, there is a meeting of minds of sorts and he ‘gets me’ really well. He emailed me the other day; ‘I won’t ask what type of Christmas you’ll be having. I know you’re a traditionalist. You’ll have been playing Christmas music since November; you’ll have seen at least one production of ‘A Christmas Carol’, you’ll be wearing a Christmas jumper and on the day you’ll have a Champagne breakfast, the speech from the Crown, full Turkey dinner at the table with a decent red. You’ll even share the table with the Ghost of Christmas Past”
Tomorrow will be my fifth Christmas Eve without Gail. This barely seems possible.
Christmas Eve 1987, under the clock on High Wycombe Station (Eat yer heart out, Trevor Howard), was the first time I told Gail I loved her and it subsequently became ‘our day’. Though we tried to make sure we spent every subsequent 24th December together, situations at the time dictated we were sometimes apart; though we never really were (if you know what I mean).
When we moved in together in 1994 we made sure we made every Christmas Eve after count but now, strangely, it’s those missed ones before ’94 – the ones where all I had were feelings and memories but couldn’t see her – that get me through every year. I get strength from those. The others rip me to shreds.
I was looking for some festive photos for the Calendar and unexpectedly found this from 2014 and I wanted to post it here. We were doing our usual Christmas Eve West End thing; Harrods, lunch where we first met, Selfridges, Billecart-salmon champagne in the Hix Cocktail Bar overlooking the designer bags area – watching everyone buying last-minute presents that cost us more than we made in a week – then a top meal after Hix (occasionally) threw us out.
As we’d entered the store she’d found this purse. It was pure Gail; Ted Baker ‘Itty bitty’, pink and stupidly expensive. I feigned a lack of interest (not the hardest acting job I’ve had, to be fair), but when we stopped at the Bar I made an excuse and went to buy it for her. I loved buying stuff like this for her, loved seeing her face as she opened it. She could make you feel like a King at times like that. It got good use too, it was the purse she always kept the coins in when we went abroad.
It’s a lovely memory.
I hope you all make your own memories this year and cherish them forever.
Just days after deciding on this ‘Five Years’ post, I learned from my daughter that she’s expecting a baby next May. It came as a great surprise. As this is a grief blog, I don’t want to dwell too long on this, except to say it’s astonishing how quickly your head goes to the circle of life and those who can’t greet the news.
Within minutes of finding out, I found myself having imaginary conversations with my parents and, particularly, Gail who had long ribbed me about my becoming a Grandfather. I found myself at home later feeling strangely at odds with my emotions. I was extremely happy for my daughter and son-in-law of course, ecstatic myself too, but I just couldn’t shift the touch of melancholia on the side.
I’m guessing this another one of those things that people think but never talk about.
Today was a big day. Or rather the night was. For today, on a warm evening in Prague, I got to see a West Ham captain lift some silverware for the first time in 43 years.
It was glorious.
I’ve been fortunate enough to have lived long enough to see the last time that happened but that was 43 years and it’s a long time to wait for it to reoccur. I’d often wondered if I ever would see it again. In my heart I hoped, but in reality I thought it unlikely.
Of course, you’re probably thinking ‘Well, nice for you but why mention it on a grief blog?’
Well, one of the things that had been rattling around my head for some time was something to do with such an event as this. Thinking on it, I’m not actually sure if it had been a discussion I’d had with someone, or something I’d just thought to myself in one of those internal monologues you have when you spend too long on your own.
Regardless, the thought began because I used to hear people say of someone who had died that ‘I think about them every day’. I always wondered about that ‘once a day’ thing. Did they mean they thought of them continually during the day, that they thought about them once, however briefly, and that was it? Or was it simply a shorthand way of saying that the person concerned would never be forgotten? ‘Once a day’ would have seemed too often to me once, too little over the last five years.
The conversation I’d had about this was by way of the ‘old’ me talking to the new one. Back then I’d have said “Every day? Really? What about that day you went swimming with dolphins in the Seychelles? And (crucially here) what about that day your team won the cup and you were deliriously happy and dancing on the table – did you think of them that day?” (It says something about me that holidays and football were my go-to subjects to argue a point)
Now, while I’ve never swum with dolphins or been to the Seychelles, I’ve learned enough over the past five years to realise that events like that are the very times that you do think of the person that’s not there. I’ve noticed that when I’ve been places or seen things that I think are significant, I immediately talk to Gail in my head in much the same way I’d have done had she been with me. I know on occasion if no-one is within earshot I even do this out loud. “That was an amazing dinner” or “This is really beautiful, isn’t it, Pet?” I find I get an overwhelming sense of well-being when I do it too.
So it was gratifying when that 90th minute winner was scored, the stadium went crazy and I was hugging total strangers with tears in their eyes, there was a distinct period when – despite the mayhem – I thought “We’ve done it, Pet!” and I heard her say “My God, you’re going to be unbearable for months, aren’t you?”
On April 19th 2023, I moved from the home that I had shared with Gail.
It was a move I’d wanted to make much earlier but, by the time it occurred, it was something I desperately needed to do, as well. I felt confined in our old home: trapped by what it was and beaten down by what I couldn’t do to change it. It wasn’t as if I’d left the house exactly as it had been when Gail lived in it, but the changes I had made seemed inconsequential and trifling, while the alterations I wanted to make seemed big and frightening. The result was the place appeared tired and exhausted, depressed and lifeless. So did I.
The move caused a few well-meaning friends to ask if I was sure I was doing the right thing, but I knew. As so often happens, the reality was very different to what people saw.
As a couple, Gail and I never understood the concept of a ‘forever home’. We believed you shouldn’t stay anywhere longer than 8-10 years and we’d already long overstayed our welcome in Colchester even before the events of 2018.
The Easter before Gail died we’d been to look at a new house 40 miles away from where we lived in Colchester. We loved this place and – though I can’t say with certainty we could have afforded it with the financial situation we had then – I long-imagined after July 2018 that we would have lived there and things would have been better. Gail had been so poorly on the day we visited the house she could barely get up the stairs to see the bedrooms above, but even that decided her that we needed to cut down the extra flight of stairs imposed by living in the town house we already occupied.
I was told by one of Gail’s friends later that Gail had expressed some concern at moving at that time and, with her illness, that was understandable, but nobody was more aware of that than me, and her comments to her friend must have been clouded by her thoughts after, rather than our optimistic conversations we’d had on that lovely Spring day we’d made that journey. The move was never spoken about after Easter anyway as we both knew a fight was on, but I felt that concern was expressed as a criticism of me, that I was insensitive and I’d not taken her health into consideration. However, the fact is it was Gail who’d desperately wanted the move and been behind the decision to go and look that Bank Holiday. She was the instigator and, in fact, had she had her way, we probably would have moved eight years earlier.
Grieving gives you plenty of scope for beating yourself up and failure to move in 2010 looms large in that. Gail had wanted to go back to the seaside town where we’d had our first flat; the place where we’d initially moved in together in 1994. We stayed there for 18 months then but during that time we’d discovered that, not only did the local hospital have an excellent Lupus unit, but the sea air was also really good for my asthma. We liked the town too. I often wonder if things would have panned out as they did had we returned to there. I’m convinced she would have had better care.
As it was, I can’t even remember why the move fell through now; I know I felt pressure to increase a mortgage I was having no trouble in paying, it seemed pointless and a sideways step, and it was true that I’d got comfortable in the town house in Colchester even if I hadn’t initially wanted to move there in 2003. Workwise it was convenient and, being self-employed, it meant it opened up opportunities in nearby counties, places that it would have been difficult to get to had we moved back to where we started. Even so, we should have done it and I deeply regret not being more enthusiastic now.
I said the reality was different to what people saw and this was because what Gail projected and what she thought and said were often entirely different. She never wanted to offend or upset anyone – something she just saw as ‘rude’ rather than ‘honest’ – but, in private, her vehemence often surprised me. She actively said she hated where we were living and was desperate to move. Had 2018 not panned out as I did, I doubt we’d have been there in 2019.
Whatever happened in the past didn’t help or hinder me now though, it was just that trying to find a new place on my own put pressures on me I’d never experienced previously. I’d always moved with someone before, had the opportunity to discuss and dismiss things before eventually arriving at a decision. On my own, I just couldn’t make my mind up on what I wanted; there was no-one to bounce ideas off of. After aborting one purchase due to a chance remark that someone made that convinced me I’d made a mistake, I just found I was in a turmoil, finding fault in everything I looked at, to the extent I didn’t think what I wanted even existed. Everything seemed small compared to the town house and, though I knew I needed to lose some space, I wanted room for myself and everything I already had, and all the houses I looked at just felt ‘wrong’ somehow.
Of course, when I found something that suited me I realised instantly because my first thought was ‘If Gail was here then she’d have loved this’. The house, the layout, the size, area, the easy access to London – everything just seemed right and it made the decision easier. There were a lot of headaches – with a move when isn’t there? – but I was happy I’d done the right thing.
It’s still some way from being exactly as I want it but I’m gradually getting everything in place and I can picture what it will eventually become.
This is my new house. If Gail were to haunt me here then she’d see much she recognised, but it represents my own blank canvas (It’s new build I’ve never bought a place that someone has lived in before and don’t ever intend to) and I feel excited by the prospect. Our artwork, a lot of furniture, the things I use everyday in the kitchen have all travelled with me; Gail is undoubtably in the house but it is demonstrably also new and different. The house also represents something else though; it has effectively been purchased with money left by the passing of my parents and without that I wouldn’t be here, so I feel as if they have helped me for, perhaps, the last time and they would be pleased with that.
Just to confirm though, I’ve not run away from anything. I’ve taken the past and it now sits with a comfortable but uneasy present and an uncertain future.
Back in the summer on the 4th anniversary of Gail’s death, I posted on Facebook from Porto where I’d gone for my getaway
‘Four years ago tonight was the last time I spoke to Gail. This seems utterly bizarre. Like picking up a telescope in the dark, never sure what way round it is, I’m uncertain if she will be so far away that the whole relationship seems like a febrile fantasy or so close that I can just shout out and she’ll answer.’
I wrote it late in the evening just about the time I had last spoken to her. I was in a great City that she would have loved, seeing places she’d have liked, eating food she’d have approved of and I’d had a few reds too – which she would definitely have enjoyed! When I read it back later it seemed unbearably poignant but also something I was pleased with as it captured my immediate feeling so accurately. What was nice was that many people contacted me to say that they ‘got it’ and felt the same.
That phrase became the subject of another thought later though as I realised that short reflections like that were exactly the type of thing that prompted me to start this blog in the first place, but somehow, over the years, that had fallen away and I had only posted here if I had something specific that would make up a few hundred word post. I realised that social media is still the best place to get a short consideration like that out. This isn’t the place for a fifty word idea.
This brought me back to something that had concerned me soon after I started this blog; which is how long exactly should I continue to do it? I think I mentioned elsewhere that a lot of places I visited on the web seemed to stop after the first year. I felt that was wrong as it gives the impression that after a full cycle has been completed, grief gets easier and it buys into the whole myth of ‘time being a great healer’. Conversely, I did see the issue with continuing after the year; essentially most people just assume you’ve come to terms with it and are back on the road and sympathy for your feelings are – if not exactly non-existent – certainly strained. The only people who understand are those it has happened to.
I’m now approaching my fifth Christmas without Gail and, honestly, none of them have been any easier than the first one. In fact, apart from odd incidents that have stuck I’m not even sure I have had five. Whole Christmas Days seem to have blocked from my mind; Boxing days are virtually non-existent. I’ve even found myself counting up on occasion to make sure I have the dates right. Was the third one the lockdown? No, that was the second, wasn’t it?
So here’s what I’ve decided. I’m going to open up a page called ‘Five Years’ and post various thoughts that strike me during the year and then – at the end of the five year anniversary in August next year I’m going to stop and just leave the blog here for posterity (in reality when I die and no-one is going to pay the annual fee!).
I think I’ve done what I needed to do. I think Gail would have appreciated what I’ve done but mostly I’ve done it because it’s helped me.
So that’s it. Five years, stuck on my eyes perhaps.
The death of Queen Elizabeth II on 8th September 2022 opened up some interesting discussions on grief, mortality, the need to mourn and eventually – yes, I’m afraid so! – embrace the succession and move on.
It didn’t seem to matter if you believed yourself to be a Monarchist or Royalist or if you thought the whole scenario was an unedifying spectacle that you wanted nothing to do with; a large majority of the population seemed to get drawn into the fact the Queen was not only a well-respected Head of State but was also a Grandmother and Mother and many found themselves profoundly affected by the events of the Monarch’s passing. As the days unrolled in September there seemed to be something in the air,
Like the vast majority of the UK population, I’d never known anyone else on the Throne in my lifetime and, despite the Queen’s age and frailty, there was a genuine shock when the news came through. As everything turned to black and the media became a 24 hour mourn hub however, those on the edges of Republicanism – and I count myself among them – found themselves avoiding TV and radio and news outlets as the whole thing seemed to drag interminably with little to say that hadn’t already been said succinctly in the first 24 hours.
But then an odd thing seemed to happen. As the music stations tried to find a suitable tone and the sounds became more melancholic and restrained, I found myself becoming maudlin and introspective – even more than usual that is! – something I found difficult to disperse even if I played my own music and didn’t listen to the radio or turn on the TV.
I felt the need to go up to London on the day the Queen returned to London but my ideas of getting around the City soon fell apart as I realised that the short cuts and clever rat-runs I’d congratulated myself on knowing were now just largely boarded areas. I made do with going to see some of the flowers in Green Park.
Then later that night, my daughter sent me some photos of her in the queue for the Lying in State. She had joined it on a whim immediately after the opening of Westminster Hall and was among the first mourners to pass through. I hadn’t thought it would be something that would particularly bother her but she seemed to want to commemorate the event and the sense of sharing a loss became even more pertinent when, a few days later, she told me she’d taken my mum’s scarf as ‘Nan would have wanted to be here’. I found that really moving and got quite emotional thinking about it; it just crystallised some thoughts of my own.
Without really showing any particular interest prior to her death in 1997, Gail had become very upset when Princess Diana had died and had insisted we go up on several occasions to see the flowers. Having often been quite disparaging about the Royal family from time to time, Gail surprised me by taking some things along herself to lay in the vast display that sat in front of the gates of Kensington Palace. I couldn’t help but think what she would have thought about this momentous event. Regardless of anything else, there was no denying the historical aspect and Gail had always loved history and the succession of Kings and Queens and I knew she’d have wanted to show her respects or be involved in some small way.
I instinctively felt that I should follow my daughter’s lead and go to the Queen’s Lying in State as it is something Gail would have wanted to do and would have wanted me to do for her, so after several abortive attempts when the queue seemed too long for me to reasonably stand, I joined the queue early on Sunday morning; the day before the funeral.
I’d changed my mind so many times before I actually left the house, I couldn’t rightly say why I did what I did but I was undoubtably influenced firstly by my daughter but then by the interviews with those who’d paid their respects on TV. So many said they were there representing lost members of their own family; Mother’s and Grandmothers who’d loved the Queen and had passed, Father’s and Grandfathers who had served in the forces and for whom she represented their commanding officer. I felt the shared sadness of losing someone vital and the Queen seemed to have become, in a slightly ironic way. a figure head for something else; a focal point for grief.
Queuing that day It was one of the best decisions I’ve made and the eleven hours snaking along the Thames are something that will stay with me for the rest of my life. I don’t really want to say much about what I found when I got to the end of the journey – there’s little I can add that hasn’t been said elsewhere – but I will just mention the stillness; not the quiet (although that was certainly apparent) but rather the sense that entering the hall you were looking at a tableau and the mourners were moving through a picture postcard. It was a unique experience.
I returned to London and Hyde Park the following day to see the funeral on the big screens and, as often seems the way after a funeral, (however massive) the air seemed to lift in the following days. If I could be said to have been at the funeral by dint by being in the same City, then this was actually one of four funerals I attended in a little over six weeks.
We’re now into Autumn and things are slowly changing. For the first time since 2018, I’ve actually managed to do this year what I said I’d always do and that is be away somewhere for each of the Anniversaries; three of the breaks were solo and one with my kids and my daughter-in-law and son-in-law. I’ve also bought a new house and should be moving early next year.
A succession of sorts? The Queen is dead; Long Live the King.
If you’d told me five years ago I’d be on holiday in Dubrovnik on Gail’s birthday with my son and daughter-in-law, daughter and son-in-law, I’d have suggested you get a lint-free cloth and polish up your crystal ball a little better.
To say Gail and I were a self-contained unit would be putting it mildly. We never needed other people and were perfectly happy just being in each other’s company. In my case, people would nod and say ‘Of course he’d be happy just being with her’ but with Gail the supposition seemed to be that she wanted more dynamism is her life and somehow I was holding her back. Nothing could be further from the truth. I never wanted to hold Gail back from anything she wanted to do, and I actively encouraged her to try things she might otherwise not have experienced even if they didn’t involve me. But she often complained to me about the expectations that people had of her, wondering why people only saw a side of her that – while it existed – wasn’t her full personality.
While I knew full well what it was that people got from her company, it was very difficult to describe what happened when someone came into her orbit. Somehow, once they’d met her, they wanted more from her than she was often able to give. It’s difficult standing outside and seeing a personality bubble and shine, yourself a victim of it of sorts, but also with a different perspective on it that nobody else seemed to grasp (This isn’t me giving myself some side here either; Gail told me as much herself).
We’d met people on holiday before and, while happy to make their acquaintance, we didn’t want to spend more than a meal time or an evening drink with them. Gail had said to me ‘Let’s go out for the day so we can get away from [whoever]. The thing is that would suggest we didn’t like these people or didn’t get along with them but that isn’t the case. Inevitably though, the blame for her not being around for these people was down to me as it was assumed Gail would never have turned on her back on their company. I have to be careful here but one of the couples – much older than us – we grew very fond of and I am still in touch with; the other – well, let’s just say the male half was a TV personality – and he and his wife gave the impression that they thought I was locking her in the room so they couldn’t see her. “He doesn’t like you” was all Gail said, barely supressing a giggle.
As far as family were concerned we were both of the opinion that you nurtured children through the early part of their life and they then went their own way. We used to holiday together when they were younger but the teenage years put an end to that – they were Gail’s step-children so it was unfair to foist that trial on her – and while Gail did occasionally go on short breaks with her own daughter – usually to Marmaris to do shopping – the idea of us all going on holiday together just wouldn’t have arisen. Since Gail’s passing, I had been on holiday with both my children and their spouses as couples – itself a major development – but there was no denying this extended Fam thing was a new venture.
Of course, some see this as chance to put that tick next to the box that says ‘Moving On’ or ‘Making New Memories’ and, much as I despise it, it’s pretty difficult to argue against that. I am moving forward at least; I’m still here and determined to do , experience and see things and the fact I was away on Gail’s birthday was certainly no coincidence. I’m need to be somewhere on those days and this holiday, originally planned in 2019, was another opportunity to cover one of them. Of course, it was great spending time with my kids; seeing your offspring becoming fully-rounded adults dealing with life on their own terms is extremely rewarding.
I woke early on the morning of the 3rd and decided to go for a walk. I called up Gail’s music on my phone and went to the nearby Copacabana Beach. The gang and I had spent the morning there a few days before and it was a lovely spot; not crowded even then. Today, it was beautiful morning, warm sunshine and a gorgeous early light reflecting off the Adriatic but with absolutely no-one in sight. I just sat down and played the songs that meant a lot to us. It was very emotional and I felt very close to her. It got the day off to a reverential start for me and it felt good. I distanced myself a bit during the day but the birthday was never mentioned and in the evening we all went into the walled town and had out a big meal. It made a huge hole in the budget but it wouldn’t have been right to do anything else.
We all agreed that Dubrovnik really is a fantastic destination and my kids – better travelled than me even – reckoned it was one of the most beautiful places they’d ever seen. There wasn’t an hour that passed that week though, when I didn’t think ‘Gail would have loved this’. I still feel she’s holidaying with me and I know I don’t ever want that to change.
For those who don’t know what I’m talking about, After Life is a TV show on Netflix, what critics might call a ‘bittersweet’ dark comedy, written and starring Ricky Gervais who plays Tony, a man who has lost his wife Lisa and is struggling to cope. Set in the small fictional town of Tambury, Tony is an everyman whose life has been torn apart in losing the one thing that made him whole.
It’s a work of genius.
The first episode of the first series was released on March 8th 2019 and I devoured the six episodes with relish. Gervais has always had the capacity to pluck at the heartstrings – the Christmas party scenes in ‘The Office’ specials really resonated with me – and I was ready made for a story about a man trying to cope after losing his wife, seeing myself in so many of the scenes.
Fortunately, I wasn’t the only one who loved it and After Life 2 was announced soon after, premiering in April 2020. The day it was released I did something I’ve never done before. With it starting in the early hours of the morning, I simply cancelled the day and watched it all back to back throughout the night. I wasn’t disappointed.
I was so moved by the writing in the twelve episodes available from the first two series that I contacted Ricky Gervais to compliment him. How he could have written that without having had experience of losing his wife is testament to how skilful a writer he is. To his credit, he wrote back and thanked me too.
With After Life 3 I was a little more circumspect on my viewing, with the show being released at 8am I staggered my 30 minute sessions through the day making sure I had a lunch in-between. The final scene left me both elated and deflated in equal measure. Elated because the promising relationship between Tony and Ashley Jensen’s character ‘Emma’ did fizzle out denying us the happy ending the show really didn’t need but looked as if it might be heading toward, and deflated just because the show had finished and had given me so many poignant moments.
There will be no After Life 4 and I think that’s a good thing. The ending for 3 described by Gervais as ‘Well .. life goes on’ – not how I saw it but how can you argue with the man who wrote it? – rounds things up admirably I suppose but, and I have to admit here, there were elements of the characterisation and story around Tony that didn’t really work for me this time out and the last episode in particular seemed clumsy and ill-advised, trying to tie off things that could have been left. However, It was Tony I was interested in and his story arc is the only one that matters and, even if I didn’t interpret the end as it was intended, then that’s OK.
The key scene in the third series for me – one that made me stop, get a drink, swallow hard and think on before continuing – was the scene with the lemon. It really was superb. Throughout the series we’ve seen Lisa – excellently and poignantly played by Kerry Godliman – appear only in flashback on Tony’s homemade videos. In this particular scene, on Tony’s video you see him drawing a face on a lemon and placing it back in a bowl ready for Lisa to pick it up as she cooks. Seeing the face Lisa complains to Tony, as he laughs, saying that she can’t use it now because of the face, exactly the reaction that Tony intended. It’s a beautiful moment; a superb observation of the type of small detail you find in a good relationship, one which the people concerned know only too well but would probably never mention to anyone else.
The key part of this scene though is that, after we witness the flashback video, we see Tony has drawn a face on a lemon for his new prospective girlfriend Emma to find. “You’ve drawn a face on this” she says, saying nothing more before cutting it up. You know a decisive moment in the relationship has passed.
I realised after seeing this that I’ve had my own lemon face moments. More importantly perhaps, is the fact that those moments don’t have to be engineered. That horrible moment where you’re trying to get along but find yourself cut adrift by someone missing a point or not being what you want them to be is a horrible feeling because, of course, it’s not the other person’s fault they don’t know what to do with the lemon any more than you can help how you feel about it. The result is a hideous sort of desolation; the sure knowledge that everything you ever had is gone and can’t be replaced however much you might think you want it.
It’s not true that if life gives you lemons you can always make lemonade.
My fourth Christmas without Gail. It seems barely credible. I never knew how I got through the first one, yet I seem to have survived four. But then, of course, that’s what happens. You just keep going and going and suddenly you’re years away from the event, looking back wondering how you got where you are.
After last December’s pandemic lockdown difficulties, I decided to throw myself into the season. The annual hotel stay in London that used to do every year with Gail was back on, and I booked as many festive shows, films and events as I could reasonably squeeze in.
It was OK.
People still realise that Christmas is a difficult time for me and that’s nice. I’m always asked where I’ll be on Christmas Day, who I’ll be spending the day with and the answer is always the same, but that’s OK too. It would be wrong to say I actually enjoy it but then it’s not as bad as some seem to think either. There will be at least one time during the day when it all gets too much and I will breakdown for five minutes, but I understand that is to be expected and I just deal with it and the rising panic that comes for knowing that this is how it will always be.
The fact is I’ve always loved Christmas for the time it is. There’s that warmth and happiness that the season seems to engender, but there’s also a sense of melancholy and nostalgia that inevitably accompanies it. Over the years I’ve noticed differing personalities find more of one than the other but even now I find myself getting irritated by people who say ‘Thank God that’s over’ just as the clock ticks over from Boxing Day. Reasonably you might think I’d be like that myself, but I’m really not.
I think back to that first Christmas Eve that I spent with Gail and, in many ways, it just seems to encapsulate everything I’ve felt every Christmas before and since. There was happiness, excitement, anticipation and love, and there was sadness and loss, despair and anguish too. I can see and feel and smell that Christmas Eve as if it happened yesterday and the fact it took us six years before we spent one together, meant some of the feelings I’ve had every Christmas since 2018 have been feelings I’ve experienced before. The only difference is the hope then that one day they may be different; now, of course, I know they never will be.
Really though Christmas can be seen as the fulcrum of the year; a time when we look back and forward. I’ve done another one then, I guess and that’s probably the best thing I can say about it.
I’ve always been fascinated with language. The ability to capture an emotion, mood, nuance or feeling in a song, story or poem seems to me to be the greatest thing. I’m also always astonished when I find a word in another language that doesn’t have an English equivalent. How does that happen?
This is the 3rd Anniversary of Gail’s passing and I’ve done what I’ve done for every other significant day and that is to get away and try to do something different. This year sees me in Portmeirion, a place I’ve wanted to visit since I watched the TV series ‘The Prisoner’ as a boy, more years ago than I’d like to recount.
I know some people see what I do as ‘making new memories’ but it doesn’t seem like that to me. I have to do something with the day; I can’t ignore it or work through it some way, and it just seems better to be able to associate it with something I’ve always wanted to do. Three years away and even during COVID I can look back and recount where I’ve been on each successive anniversary – be it wedding, birthday, ‘D’ (No word for the day of death?) or Funeral day – and that seems a worthwhile thing. Like Hong Kong in 2019 and Egypt in 2020 I feel as if she’d have approved at me trying to do things, and in a way I feel closer to her if I can do and see things for her. Wrapped up in that though is a curious consequence.
Although I don’t remember it ever being discussed, let alone dismissed as a bad idea, the fact is coming to Portmeirion with Gail would have been extremely difficult. Due to her Lupus her mobility was always impaired and although she successfully got around Ephesus as relatively recently as 2010, Portmeirion would have been far too much. Coming to these places then means I’m doing things I wouldn’t have done had she been here and it’s too easy to see that as, if not a exactly a positive, then certainly a light in the darkness, a sense I’m – please no! – ‘moving on’. I try not to look at it like that.
For me there’s not one single aspect of my life that is better without Gail in it. However, the fact is I’ve done things, seen things, met people that I wouldn’t have done had she still been alive. All those things I’ve done and everyone I’ve met have been positive experiences – even when they might not have seemed it later on – and I’m happy and grateful that I’ve had the opportunity to do them while wishing with all my heart that it had never been necessary.
Because I posted some photos of Portmeirion on social media, I got a lot of support and positivity from people – many of whom I have never met. In amongst the wishes was the inevitable ‘It gets easier’ or ‘Time is a great healer’. I used to wonder about that three years ago. What exactly was going to happen when that time came and how would I recognise it? Would I have days where I simply wouldn’t think about Gail and what would fill that void instead?
What I’ve discovered after three years is that no-one has the language to adequately describe what actually happens. People generally are trying to help but, like those who tell me I will ‘see her again’ – something that rankles with me as it surmises a belief that shouldn’t be assumed – telling me it gets easier is just a collection of words designed to console.
To confuse matters, some who tell me it gets easier have occasionally experienced the same loss but are just a year or two or three further down the line; suggesting their is some end point I’ve not yet reached. However, that thought was expunged when, on one occasion, I discovered one consoler actually lost their partner more recently than me, but just assumed my loss must be more recent because of the pain I was describing. Did that person then actually feel better than me? Had they discovered some biblical-style grace that meant they felt the loss less keenly?
So let’s put this thing into some type of context. It doesn’t get easier, time isn’t a great healer, but what happens is it gets different. It isn’t more fun, you don’t relish the freedom, it’s not better to have an Anniversary meal on your own, you don’t think how lucky you are that you’ve now got the opportunity to visit this place you’d not have seen, you don’t count all the new relationships you’ve made.
What you do is the only thing left to you – you just get on with it and hope you find some nice times and thoughts to go with the ones you already had and lost.
) – but I’ll be wearing the 1965 European Cup Winners Cup shirt that you gave to me at my book launch (yea, the one that made me cry). I think that’s allowed this time.”
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