Happily Imperfect‽ Posts

The end of lockdown looms, and life as we knew it will start to re-emerge, like a wonky butterfly from a cocoon.

I know that things won’t be exactly the same again, a new normal will be established and that will take a little time to settle in and I’m ok with that, I welcome it and retain some hope that others will allow people to find their own way into the post-COVID days.

I know masks will remain, public gatherings will be limited, and that there will no doubt be some weird panic buying of some random household item at some point too if news of more spikes in infection rates should arrive (seriously, what was with the loo roll thing?). I am still wary of the masses but I am trusting the scientists.

Regardless of all this, I’m choosing to remain upbeat and looking ahead at what life might be like in the coming months and what I can best do to hold onto the things I’ve grown to love throughout this global pandemic, the things that got me through the harrowing realities and shrinking habits that lockdown inflicted on us.

There is much to forget too; Long queues in the rain for basic provisions, stepping off the pavement AGAIN because THOSE people MUST walk side by side, that guilty feeling that descends when I nip across an arbitrary border to visit my Mum (even though we are bubbled), that moment when you arrive at a shop and realise you’ve forgotten your damn mask, and don’t even get me started on the constant feed of misinformation to the addicted doom scrollers, the idiot anti-vaxers, and even more selfishly stupid non-mask wearers that claim civil liberty infringements, ohh and anything to do with the Tories.

All of those are things I’ll be leaving behind as best I can but on the whole, I’ve been very very lucky through lockdown, it’s not always been easy but there have been more good days than bad and, like most of you, most days have turned into what-day-is-it-anyway days with weekends blurring into weekdays which is both a good and a bad thing all at once. Do I prefer the arbitrary nature, that strange holiday feeling, of not really being sure what I should be doing because I can’t recall if it’s Sunday or Monday, or do I need the structure of a working week to give my weekends some meaning? I am undecided but more and more leaning to the former.

One thing I am determined to try and hold on to is working from home. Maybe not full-time but ideally only a couple of days in the office a week would be the max. I’ve been lucky enough to work throughout most of the lockdown periods and it’s not made a huge difference as most of the people I had worked with were in different buildings or different parts of the country anyway so most of my time was spent on calls and IM chats even when I was office-based 5 days a week.

Another thing I want to take forward is being outdoors. Such a simple pleasure, but one I used to cast aside for no good reason. Having two dogs, one of which needs a ‘good walk’ every day meant that for a lot of lock down it was my only form of exercise outdoors, and ohhh how wonderful it is to be able to walk around in the fresh air, regardless of rain or sleet or snow (there is no thing as bad weather, just the wrong clothes after all). The feeling of fresh air on your face, watching clouds scroll overhead, and even occasionally basking in the glorious warmth of the sun. What a tiny little dot of a planet we are, what fleeting moments we exist for, I need to focus on being happy.

There will be changes of course, I will adapt but part of the reason for noting these things here is to remind myself of what I truly value. My family, my closest friends, a good coffee, a walk in the sun, a meandering cycle through the countryside.

I know I will read fewer books as some evenings will be spent visiting and eating out, I know I will experience moments of anxiety too, the return of live music gives me a pause which saddens me as so many wonderful nights have been spent enthralled and jostled as we all dance and move as one, yet the idea of being surrounded by so many people again is one my brain is struggling with.

We will find our way. Of that, I have no doubt. Things will be different, of course, yet I am aiming to retain these simple core values, aiming to retain the new habits and little pleasures I’ve found during this past strange year. There will come a time when we look back on this (hopefully) once-in-a-generation experience and maybe now is when I’m realising that it can mean something more than just death. We will mourn, but we should always look forward.

Life can be simple and if I only take one lesson from all of this, let it be this; find what is truly important to you and focus on it, everything else is just noise.

It’s been six months since my Dad suddenly passed away. Since then I’ve been working through my grief and, somehow, stumbled across an Instagram account by Dr Laura Williams who shares writing prompts as one way to help people process their grief. It immediately struck a chord with me as my go-to method for dealing with things is to start writing. What follows is a suggestion from one of her prompts (sort of mish-mashed into a couple of others).

I’m sharing this with you all because grief is odd and weird, but maybe you’ve had similar thoughts to me about your grief and that’s ok. It’s also ok if you haven’t or are still figuring it out, no matter how long it’s been.

Dear Dad,

I’m writing you this letter in the hope that my grief will give you some solace. I’m writing you this letter although I know you will never read it. I’m writing you this letter to help myself because you aren’t able to anymore.

I still can’t quite believe it’s only six months since you left us. Six months since those final days in the hospital, six months since the last goodbye, six months since the phone call from the hospital telling us you were gone.

We’d only left you an hour or so before, looking calm and peaceful and already at rest as we told you how much we loved you, and stifled the worst of our tears. We left the hospital and drove back to your home, then the three of us sat together in the living room, waiting for the call. I answered my phone and repeated the awful words to Mum and Jennie.

We all paused as it sank in.

Then we all gathered around Mum and cried together, the depth of our love growing with each sob as reality tried to push in; but we weren’t ready for it yet, so we held each other close and pushed it away, a closed circle of quiet strength, it was just too awful to consider our lives without you in it.

This was the form my grief took for the first few days, a constant battle of pushing away the horrible truth, keeping it as far away as possible so as somehow to keep it from being true. It just wasn’t possible, you couldn’t be gone, not yet, not with so much more life to witness, so much more love and joy to give. It wasn’t fair.

It still isn’t.

Since then my grief has morphed and moulded into something else, a constant companion waiting in the wings to interrupt at random moments; it’s odd the things that trigger memories of you, of us, but I take comfort that they are all happy memories even though they are now tinged with the sadness of losing you.

I cry sometimes without warning and give myself willingly to those moments, whether they are just a few silent whimpers or deep anguished sobs. Sometimes a single tear is all there is to mark another day without you in my life.

My grief is not constant.

Sometimes I catch myself realising that I didn’t think about you at all the day before. Is it a good thing that the time passed without you in it? Does it signal a lessening of my grief? Or is it a bad thing, marking the beginning of your slow removal from my conscious thoughts? I ask you these questions even though I know you can’t answer, even though they aren’t the kind of thing we’d even have discussed before. Before.

It’s funny now to think of the clichés that I’ve read and seen repeated too many times to count, all rendered true by your passing. I didn’t spend enough time with you, that’s for sure, but such things are clichés for a reason, no-one ever spends enough time with their loved ones. I don’t regret that, I have nothing but fond memories, joyful moments shared, to look back on and they always bring me the solace I expect.

I always thought my grief would be a huge mess of emotions, days of surviving, of clinging on to any scrap of love or happiness to get me through this unthinkable event. Then at some point I’d move into the humdrum days of the life of the fatherless, crying would become less and less frequent, thoughts of you would start to dim, a slow fade to black, sands dropping through the timer until empty.

But it isn’t like that at all. I knew this, of course, I’ve read enough accounts of grief to know that there aren’t defined stages, that they don’t follow or loop or arrive in any order, nor do they stay distinct, and nor are they the same for everyone. It is one thing to read about grief, quite another to experience it so profoundly but please know that I’m finding living with it is both harder and happier than I imagined, more bearable than I thought possible.

It’s odd to be learning about something new when all I want to do is walk in to the living room and see you sitting in your chair.

I learned a lot from you, inherited other things. My curiosity, my love of books, my propensity for tears, my silly sense of humour, my kindness, my geekiness.

I find myself diving deeper into my grief at times, not to wallow in it but to better understand it. I get an odd comfort from dredging up long forgotten memories, and I can feel the relief of still having those available to me, the emotions washing over me despite the cold melancholy that accompanies them. These moments are not a wailing, sobbing, grief but a nurturing one, a balm on my rawest emotions, a salve of all the love you gave me whilst you were with us. It’s nice to still be able to feel that, to sense you and know and trust the love you had for me, to keep you with me that way.

It’s been six months but we are coping, we are learning how to live without you by, I think, keeping us with you. We talk about you still, laughing at some things, bemoaning others and it makes me understand, now more than ever before, just how much I am my your son. The realisation makes me smile and cry all at the same time.

This is my grief, these constant combinations of emotions, never distinct, always tumbling over each other for attention, a morass of frustrated glee and quiet discomforts. A few times I’ve embraced the sadness completely.

One day I was overcome by the fact that you weren’t here anymore. I can’t recall what triggered it but it overwhelmed me so deeply. I sat on the edge of my bed and waited for the tears to arrive, but grief cannot be forced, my eyes remained dry and the lump in my throat, the rock lodged there, refused to yield. Later that day, walking Dave in the evening gloom, a line from a song suddenly brings tears to my eyes. I walk on and let them fall willingly to the ground.

I miss you.

I’m still trying to understand how to deal with this grief and all the maelstrom of emotions it brings from day to day but that’s ok, I have so many wonderful memories of you to lean on that as terrible as it is that you are gone, I console myself knowing that my life would’ve been far worse without you as my Father. It’s a constant whirl, a raging hatred of the world that took you away from us, and a blessed calm that we knew you at all. How rich our lives are now, how poor we would have been.

In the midst of all this there are realities we face as well, we know your IBM was worsening and soon you’d lose the ability to walk, to care for yourself and, undoubtedly more importantly in your eyes, to care for Mum. We know you’d have hated relying on others, to have carers fuss over you, and ultimately we know your end would have been a miserable one as you slowly lost all muscle control. It is not a life I would wish for anyone let alone my own Father, and I think we all take some tiny comfort that whilst your death was too soon and too sudden, at least it spared you that ignominy.

I spoke at your funeral. The words came easily at the time and still hold true, but I wanted to say so much more than I did but that day wasn’t all about me, after all I was speaking to, and for, others. I hope you would’ve been proud of me, I think you would. It took a lot for me to stand there, a fatherless child, but I knew it was something I had to do for you, for me.

I will say these things again, I will say how proud I am to be your son and I know you were proud of me, proud of the man I have become. These recent years, with my own happiness something you commented on, a rare occurrence in itself which made the impact all the deeper, the richest of them all. I learned so much from you, have inherited your penchant for bad puns, questionable colour choices, and a trend towards silliness to make people smile. I have your warmth and care stored deep in my heart, I echo your curiosity for new things, and hope I have your light caring touch when needed.

The more of you I recognise in me the happier it makes me, yet I still remain sad that we can’t sit down and discuss these things, not that we ever would.

Returning to cliché then and I’ll say that I hope I can become half the man you were, and if I can manage that I’ll have done well. And no, no jokes about your height, not this time.

I still can’t look at a photo of you without bursting into tears, I don’t think that will ever change.

I hate that you won’t ever read these words.

I miss you so terribly.

Your boy, always.