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The Rules of Christmas Tree Engagement. Let’s start

1/ Squabble over whose car to use as it will have pine needles in it after.
2/ Squabble over where to go to buy tree (We prefer Fraser Fir as it has a more traditional Christmas Tree shape but not every Garden Centre etc. has them in). We could never remember one year where we eventually bought it the last. 
3/ Squabble over size and shape of tree to go in the pre-ordained space. This will take 30 minutes and I will always lose but have to go through the RoCTE anyway.
4/ Invite neighbours and friends round for that annual laughter fest that sees Blagg handle a saw and attempt to actually cut the recommended 2″ off the tree and trim the lower branches.
5/ Squabble over the fact I’ve cut too much off, why am I so useless with tools considering I have so many etc. and decide the time of tree entry and decoration schedule.
6/ Squabble over the fact I am not allowed to decorate the tree as I don’t have the requisite ‘skills’.

Well, as you may imagine 1,2,3,5 and 6 are not longer relevant. But – and bugger I here! – just while I’m coming to terms with that, I find that Homebase now actually offer to cut two inches off and trim lower branches in a fraction of the time it takes me! I now have a tree trimmed and ready to come straight in. This has completely blown my mind.

Having said all that. I’d happily go back to 4 to have 1,2,3,5 and 6 back again…. 

Then two days later

I’ve tried my best, Pet.

As an aside is there any heterosexual, single man in the country who has shoes and handbags on his Christmas tree? I suspect not…

Nobody saw my Christmas Tree beyond me and the cats but I was glad I did what I did.

And So This Is Christmas..

I’ve amused myself in grief today.

Gail was the interior designer – had she been well enough she could have done it professionally – and every Christmas the house was a coordinated colour of light, shimmer, white fur and glamour. I was responsible for the outside; something which every year Lady B disapproved of, insisting it looked as if a ‘ten year old had thrown them out’ and declared to be ‘gopping’ (Geordie for awful) – and that was on a good day!

Frankly, I didn’t much feel liking putting up lights this year but I was on the horns of a dilemma. If I didn’t do it then I could hear Gail say “Oh, so you wait till I’ve gone and then you decide not to be those bloody awful things up!”. So, this morning, watched only by four cats I put up the outside lights. Now, they’re done and I can stand back and hear her say “Fook me, they still look terrible!”

Next, to recreate her genius inside. Wish me luck on this one…

You can pretty much see my December journey by following the Billy Blagg Advent Calendar of Christmas Songs for 2018. I’m proud of that blog; I did what I usually do, so that those who enjoyed it in previous years got what they usually had, but it was done with a poignancy and love that kept me going right throughout the month.

Admittedly, this is isn’t something you may want to sample if you’re reading this in the summer, spring or it’s Easter or May Day but I hope you will return to it. The posting for Christmas Eve, Christmas Day and the additional posting for New Year’s Eve just nailed how I felt.

Every day was a different trial. Made unbearable because everything was as it was – in terms of my health, ability to get out, do things, enjoy places etc. – but nothing was as it was because Gail wasn’t there, and the hole she left threatened to suck me in every day.

I stuck at it though and eventually surprised myself and I guess it’s things like this, the subsequent trip to stay in the London hotel I’d booked the previous January and the later journey to Hong Kong that made people tell me that I did or was ‘doing well’. It certainly didn’t feel like that at the time though and, to be honest, it didn’t feel like it much later either.

 

On 20th November I posted a meltdown message. I won’t repeat it here; suffice to say it concerns a member of my family telling me I needed to ‘pull myself together’. I used social media to have a full-blown rant at the suggestion. Again, I got amazing support from people who often didn’t know me and I was thankful for that, as I may otherwise have thought I was insane.

A suggestion: think before you say anything at all to someone who is grieving. It may sound sensible to you but it is unlikely to be received in the same way. I found the best thing people could say to me was just “I’m so sorry for your loss” or “I have no words”. The latter is especially welcome and poignant. Indeed you do not have any words that are going to make this any better and I appreciate that you can see that.

Please, please, please, don’t ignore it though. I save special ire to those who didn’t have the good grace to say they were sorry; those who just ignored it because (hopefully at least) they ‘didn’t know what to say’. Find a way to say it – see above – acknowledge there is an elephant in the room with a big G on his back and that said elephant is big and black and standing on the toe of the person you are speaking too. There are people I will never speak to again because they didn’t acknowledge the fact I’d lost my Gail

Sometimes it goes deeper than that though. A well-meaning colleague told me he ‘understood how I felt as he’d lost his Aunt a couple of years back’. I was astounded. “You were in an intimate relationship with your Aunt?” I asked. “Well, no I didn’t mean…..” “Well, it’s not the same fucking thing is it?” Grief takes away the social etiquette blocks so be prepared.

To my mind losing the love of your life is only trumped by losing a child. The latter is an abomination; life is not supposed to work that way. Anything else is natural. Upsetting, of course, and it needs to be dealt with in its own way, but passing elderly family members – however much you loved them – does not compare to losing your life partner.

I will probably come back to this

A quick look at Facebook reveals that it was October 22nd when I first mentioned the impending C word and November 19th when I faced my own demons on it.

For anyone who has lost someone, Christmas is a huge hurdle to get over for the first year and, I’m pretty sure I’m about to discover, for every Yuletide season after that. The truth is though the whole of Christmas looms in the rear-view mirror like a pursuit car in a drama; every day following a death, it gets a little closer, giving you a frisson of horror and a small warning of what you’ll have to face even if, like Gail’s, the passing is in the summer.

For Gail and I the fact of the matter was simple, Christmas was our time of year. We first got together then, and every year was a celebration of that; not so much the gift-giving and fun of the day itself though, but rather that long build-up that seems to get longer each year. We tried to cram as many Christmas related things as we could into December with the culmination on Christmas Eve – OUR day – and one we celebrated as best we could every year.

It was October 22nd that I saw the first Christmas lights on in Westfield, Stratford but November 19th when I got a reminder of a purely Blagg-related Christmas phenomenon; the Christmas song. In this case it was one to have great resonance.

As you’ll see in a later post, for some years I had run a blog called the Advent Calendar of Christmas Songs. Every day a different Christmas song – some good, some bad, most obscure, – for the whole of December up until the 25th. Over the years, this had garnered some fans and I knew the question was coming up, could I possibly do it for another year? Or, indeed, ever again. In fact, did I want to? It was November 19th that I first heard the song that was to define my Christmas (along with one other).

On 22nd I posted:

Well, I’ve had a number of people ask me if I’m going to do it again this year and the straight answer is ‘I simply don’t know if I can or I want to’. With just five days to go, I’m leaning towards carrying on as I already have a list of songs I can use without even investigating further, but I really don’t know if, once started, I’ll be able to finish it.

Gail and I first (ahem!) ‘got together’ at Christmas – I first told her I loved her at High Wycombe station under the clock (eat your heart out Celia Johnson & Trevor Howard) on Christmas Eve 1987 – and we always loved the season and made sure we crammed as much as we could into the weeks leading up to the time itself. Not having her here this year is going to be pain I’m not sure I can handle.

I could string some line here – ‘Gail would have wanted me to carry on’ type of thing – but our relationship was far more complex than that, and Gail’s attitude to the lunacy that used to invade Blagg Acres from November onwards was always met with that ambivalence a lot of women have for their menfolk’s interests – from “Who knows what the hell he’s doing? It keeps him out of my way at least” at one end and a kind of begrudging pride / respect at the other ‘You know there’s a lot of people all over the world who actually read his stuff’.

I’d already set the Advent Calendar blog page up last year and, if nothing else, you can use the links on the side bar to investigate the existing twelve blogs. There will undoubtedly be a poignant post for Gail added surely, beyond that though, we’ll see how it goes….

Again I was heartened not only by comments on social media but also from followers on my football-related sites. The general feeling, if I could sum up was, ‘we’ll understand if you don’t do it but we’d love it if you did and, perhaps, you might get something from it too’. By December 1st my mind was made-up to at least start it and see where it took me.

Gail’s out of her green box at last and now resides in a nice silver wood motif, glass candle holder. After months of searching for something suitable to store her ashes in the retainer came, rather surprisingly, from the Range store. It’s not fully the answer perhaps – though it may be, we’ll see – but it’s a better option while I continue to search and it’s certainly much better than that box.

While transferring over, I was alarmed to find Gail’s half of her gold heart (She bought the split-heart for our first Christmas and I’ve worn the other half round my neck ever since) that I had dropped on the top of her ashes had gone ‘missing’. Every part of my brain screamed ‘it must be in there’ but logic goes out of the window at times like this, and I found myself this afternoon in plastic gloves, apologising profusely to her, as I gently moved her ashes round to find the chain. Of course, it was there – though it took over ten minutes to find it – so it’s now sellotaped to the bag itself to avoid further panic.

While searching I found part of a wood nail, I figured this was a symbol of the one that’s in my heart; I quite liked that so left it in there.

Only worry now, is I found Buzz had his nose in her ashes this afternoon. Buzz was ‘Mummy’s boy’. He seems to be able to smell her and sits on her clothes for hours. Gail would have probably found him in her ashes hilarious but I’d rather not find bits of my wife on my cat’s nose, so I’ve sealed the bag up properly.

Who’d have thought at the beginning of 2018 my life would have come to this?

I remember many years ago working with someone who told me that when his Mother had died he’d gone out a bought a decent suit – not one for a funeral – just a decent suit. He could never wear it. That had stuck in my head for some reason and I tried not to buy or replace anything I couldn’t bring myself to wear or use afterwards.

Then in November I was working near a large designer outlet and I just had a desire to spend some money on something.

They say grief takes many forms. I’ve just spent £125 in Ted Baker on a pair of trousers and a jumper, £25 in Armani on a pair of underpants and – get this! – £200 on new pots and pans for the kitchen. The words ‘character, out and of’ don’t even come close to describing this.

Fortunately, I use the cookware and wear the clothes.

The first of those ‘We normally go out’ evenings arrived on Halloween weekend. Every fibre of your being wants to do the thing you usually do to make it ‘normal’ but every part of your body screams ‘It can never be normal again!”

I decided to go out

October 27th 2018. Unbeknown to any of our friends, Gail and I always went out at Halloween and tried to do something a little…err.. ‘different’.

I’ve been wrestling with this all week, will staying in be worse than going out? I’ve decided. I’ve some of the Good Lady’s ashes in a new bracelet round my wrist and the pair of us are going up West this evening and we’re gonna have a good time somewhere…somehow…I don’t know where. If I don’t return, know I went out with a smile.

“No need to struggle with the boots this year Pet, I’m gonna carry ya”

I discovered that I was able to get a permanent reminder of the Webinar as the Crematorium were able to transfer the whole thing to DVD for me. This however meant a return to the Funeral Director.

I collected the recording of Gail’s funeral from the Funeral Directors today and that is now officially it for ****** & Son.

It’s been a strange ride.

Everyone has been so professional , friendly and nice, – I must have been in the offices over a dozen times since last July – that I’ve felt like someone with a bereaved version of Stockholm Syndrome. I’ve chatted, laughed, cried and had some of the worst days of my life there and I’m actually fighting feelings of further melancholy because I’m never seeing them again (Nor will they see me stretched out as I intend of being out of this town by next spring). My life would be so different had I never met these people and I wish with every fibre of my being I’d never clapped eyes on any of them. But I did, and now I’ll never forget them.

File this under ‘Life’s Oddities’.