I covered the difficult time of our Anniversary, Valentine’s Day and my birthday with a trip to Egypt including three nights in Cairo and a journey on the Nile from Luxor to Aswan. It was part of my rough life plan – I loath the term ‘bucket list’ – to do what I might not have done had Gail been here. I took a virtual version of her with me everywhere anyway, so I didn’t feel alone. Well, I did – but you know what I mean.

I’d booked this trip the previous summer and after my father died was concerned at how my mum would cope if I was away for ten days. That concern deepened later however as, with her ailing health during early January, I thought I’d have to cancel the whole trip. My mum was adamant that I must go though; telling a nurse ‘I need to get well. My son has a holiday booked and he needs to go to Egypt as always wanted to go with his wife’. Not strictly true – Gail hadn’t shown any desire to go to Egypt (I thought anyway) – but it was nice to hear my mum thinking about me at a time when she was critically ill, fighting for her own life and when should have had other things on her mind.

As it happened, it made no difference. My mum died in the second week of January and, although it made it a bit tight to organise a funeral – something I eventually decided to postpone until I’d returned – it meant  not only could I go on my trip as planned, I needed to go somewhere to help me over the past two months.

Then something interesting happened. About, about six weeks after my mum died and two weeks after I’d returned from Egypt, I was going through a box of letters and keepsakes that I’d kept of Gail’s and I found a ‘promise’ that we’d made to each other in 1988 that we’d never kept. I’d completely forgotten about it and it made me sit up.

Gail Promise

Only after I found this did I  remember the conversation and the agreement. We’d never kept it because, at the time we were due to meet, I was living with my then wife and Gail had married someone else a year earlier. I know I remembered the promise on that day in 1990 though; I wished I’d found this earlier so I could have discussed it with her, but I was also blissfully happy that I’d eventually got to see the Sphinx even if I was late by almost thirty years and wearing jeans and a Clash T-shirt instead.

It was a bit frustrating I’d not found it before I left, but it was a blessing in other ways. I know what I’m like. Had I found the note before I would surely have dressed as she wanted and fought Egyptian guards as I battled to stand at the base of a Sphinx you can now only see from a distance.

Still, on our Anniversary, I visited the Temple of Isis on Philae; Isis being the God of death, healing and rebirth, this seemed hugely appropriate.

With no time to have my mum’s funeral before I left for Egypt, the whole holiday hung against the backdrop of having one within a week of my return. I know my mum would have been happy I’d gone though, and I know she wouldn’t have wanted me to cancel so I could bring her funeral forward. In many ways the trip became a celebration of both the lives of Gail and my mum.

Elsewhere on social media I posted a photo that I’d found amongst my Mother’s things; a picture I hadn’t even seen before, of me and Gail at our wedding. There seemed a decent symmetry in this and I find these things seem to help me.

Fourteen years for you Pet, sixteen for me…and counting? We didn’t make a decision to finish it – as if! –  that disease decided it for us. As long as I’m around though I’ll continue to count until I hear again your first words to me. “Hello, it’s me again” .

Happy Anniversary Pet, from the banks of the Nile to wherever you are. X

I knew my mum was approaching the end of her life as the hospital were able to tell me that she had ’48 hours at best’. I spent the last night with her at her bedside, assuming I was to eventually be there for a loved ones final moments.

When morning came and she was still OK I decided I needed to go home, get refreshed, grab a few hours sleep and get back for later that day, assuming I would almost certainly need to spend another night with her. Of course, I could have slept a few hours in my parents home, just a fifteen minute drive away but I couldn’t stay in the house, let alone sleep in it. It had always made me feel uncomfortable – one for the Counselling sessions there! – and I needed to see my cats. Buzz, Ziggy and Gus in my own environment  and lose a little of that hospital feeling.

Considering I knew the odds of my mum passing while I was doing a 90 odd mile round trip were pretty good, you’d think I might have made a better attempt at saying goodbye to my mum. Of course, I didn’t because I was ‘only’ going home for a few hours; I’d have time for that when I got back. I was convinced that – as we’re often told – people slip away in the early hours.

I got the call at 4 pm. A couple of her friends from church had dropped in to see Doris and she’d slipped away while they were there, so quietly even the Nurse hadn’t realised at first.

My thoughts about that whole six week period from my dad passing to my mum following are muddled and confused. Once we had  gotten through my dad’s  funeral in late November we were both faced with that inexorable slide towards Christmas. I still have my own struggles with the festive period and warned my mum I could do little more than sympathise. She had already been hospitalised on one occasion before Christmas, and on New Year’s Day she became very breathless and I had to call out the ambulance although they let her out after an initial assessment. Then on the day we were scheduled to scatter my dad’s ashes, I had to call out the ambulance again and she was taken in and kept in. She never came out. Passing away just six weeks after my father.

During those weeks I knew my mum needed consoling and did the best that I could, but I’d needed something from my parents after Gail went and I hadn’t found what I needed from either of them.

Worse, on occasion, they – my mum in particular – had been particularly thoughtless and insensitive. “You need to pull yourself together” and “Why don’t you just bundle up all her clothes and take them to a charity shop?” were just two statements from my mum that will always remain with me.

Of course, I wasn’t going to use my father’s death to score some unsavoury points or make a cutting “Well, I told you what it was like” remark but I did find it hard to listen as my mum tried to make sense of that thing you can never make sense of. I also found it odd she found no solace in the faith she had practised so studiously for her whole life. If her belief was to be of any benefit to her, surely it had to be now? I found some of her words to me at this time so carefully chosen though, I did wonder occasionally if she’d come to realise what I’d gone – WAS going through still – and regretted how she’d behaved previously. I’ll never know.

All I can say is the difficulty I’ve experienced with my parents my whole life have pretty much covered every second of the conversations I’ve had  with my Counsellor, but everything still remain nebulous and strangely prosaic. Back in the summer before my dad had died, my mum had said to me one day “Your dad really misses Gail a lot. He sees something on TV and says ‘Oh Gail would’ve loved that, wouldn’t she?’ “.

I knew my dad loved Gail and I knew he missed her too, but what I couldn’t understand – and this will explain the complexity of dealing with my parents – was why I was being told how my dad felt by my mum in proxy. Why didn’t he tell me? Or both tell me? I’d have loved to have heard what they’d seen on TV that reminded them of her. I needed that. Not a pretence that nothing had happened and she’d just gone out of the room.

Some may find it strange that I’d already decided I needed to go forward with my plans to volunteer for Christmas, leaving my mum home alone on Christmas Day. I was aware I was becoming the Son to my Mother in avoiding those difficult conversations, but I couldn’t bring her to my home for Christmas as she couldn’t have got up the stairs, and I wasn’t going to stay with her for the reasons mentioned previously.

Fortunately, perhaps because I was volunteering to help those less well-off, perhaps because my mum wanted to be on her own anyway (I knew I had the previous Christmas), not seeing her on the day itself didn’t seem to be an issue to her. I’d seen her on the way up to the hotel on the 23rd and saw her on my return on the 26th so, in many ways, I’d seen her more over the Christmas period than I’d done for many a long year.

Beyond the festive period, there was some tentative talk with my mum about ‘difficulties’ I had with my father ‘when I was younger’ but she seemed reluctant to say too much about it beyond that. Mainly the six weeks between the two deaths was spent with all that practical stuff that I seem to excel at. It might be the old Project Managing skills I had years ago, but give me something to sort out and it gets sorted out with ribbons on.

Doris – or Doll as I cheekily called her –  watched as I emptied and dumped most of the shed, ignoring my dad’s last wishes which told me to ‘get some wood and nails and hammer the door shut’. This joke from beyond the grave certainly showcased Bert’s warped sense of humour, but was impractical in reality and more annoyingly it was a job that could just have easily been done five years before, had he not been too stubborn to let me do it.

Ultimately though, sad as it obviously was, my feeling was that in only spending six weeks without my father, my mum had avoided grief that, approaching her 90th year she just didn’t need. Months later, of course, COVID19 had rocked the world and everything was on lockdown and I felt even more certain that she’d chosen her time well.

The fact remains though, that I’d lost my wife, both my parents and my eldest cat in less than eighteen months. And if you’ve not got pets and uncomfortable with me mentioning my cat alongside the other deaths perhaps this is the time to admit something.

I cried after losing Morris in August and didn’t cry again until the following April – Easter Sunday to be exact – a full eight months later during which I’d attended the funerals of both my parents and shed not one tear.

A suitable case for treatment, I think.