The Daily Telegraph - Saturday - The Telegraph Magazine
‘My daily doodles helped me cope with my wife’s sudden death’
Gary Andrews talks to Sally Howard
‘I DREW JOY IN FAMILY SCENES, STILL WITH US AND WATCHING OVER US’
When I first saw Joy I thought I didn’t stand a chance. It was 1992 and I was on the back row of a small amateur theatre in north London. On stage in front of me was this striking, dark-haired young woman brilliantly performing a comedy sketch about someone waking up and getting ready for work. She was gorgeous, but 15 years younger than me and, at 6ft, several inches taller, too. I remember thinking, some guy’s going to be bloody lucky, and resigning myself to being her friend.
Six years later I was directing the theatre’s production of A Midsummer Night’s Dream and cast Joy, who’d just returned from university, as quick-witted Helena. With our shared sense of humour and love of Shakespeare we were soon inseparable. One evening we were sitting on the sofa in Joy’s flat watching a Kenneth Branagh movie, our eyes met and we both experienced the same all-body falling sensation. We kissed and I knew in that moment we’d spend the rest of our lives together. On New Year’s Eve 2002, I asked Joy if she’d be my wife, and in 2004 we got married at a castle in Kent, with Joy wearing this fabulous Lord of the Rings-style dress. When our daughter Lily, now 13, was born three years later, followed by our son Ben, now 10, in 2010, I was the happiest man in the world.
Looking back, our last weekend together in the autumn of 2017 couldn’t have been more idyllic. Joy and I had made a short film about folklore and attended a fairy festival in Glastonbury, where I manned a stall selling our DVD as Joy, who loved all things pagan, took the kids to Chalice Well, Glastonbury’s mystical spring. Later we bundled into a pub to listen to folk music and eat curry, and I remember we were all in high, silly spirits, joking around as a family. The next morning I was flying to Canada for work, so Joy drove me to the airport, we shared a sandwich, waved goodbye and that was that. The last time I saw my wife, the love of my life, alive.
By the time I checked into my hotel in Vancouver I knew Joy and the kids would be asleep, so I Facetimed home the following morning. Joy answered looking pale and tired. ‘You always get the flu when I go away,’ I remember saying lightly, before telling her to get lots of rest. When I called again the next day Joy was no better: the kids had gone to her mother’s and she was sitting with the dog on her lap watching TV. The following day when I texted to see if it was a good time to talk, the reply came: ‘Not really.’ Puzzled, I called my daughter Lily, who told me that Mummy was still ill and that Joy’s sister Marie had called the doctor. Marie called me an hour later to say the doctor thought Joy might have a kidney infection and she was being taken to hospital. At this point, I began to worry and soon afterwards Marie called again. ‘They think it’s quite serious,’ she said. ‘Can you get an early flight home?’
I quickly set about changing my flights, thinking I’d have to look after the kids for a few days while Joy recuperated in hospital.
But a final call from Marie set the alarm bells ringing: she wanted to know when I was due to land. Her voice sounded high and tight, like she was trying to contain her tears. On the flight home I couldn’t sleep or eat: I just wanted to land and race to Joy. The minutes ticked away intolerably.
When I saw Joy’s mum and her oldest brother had come to meet me at the gate, I immediately knew. They told me in the car and it’s a moment that’s seared into my memory, Joy’s mum Chris sitting next to me, her
It was like somebody had grabbed my stomach and ripped it out of my body
hand on my shoulder, softly relaying the news. Joy had died at 3.15am that morning of multiple organ failure caused by sepsis. My brilliant, beautiful wife: dead. It was like somebody had grabbed my stomach and ripped it out of my body; a moment that’s everyone’s worst nightmare. Indeed at this point and for months afterwards, part of my brain just couldn’t compute it: Joy was 41 and full of life. I was older and a man: it should have been me first; it should have been me.
Joy’s family had left it so I could break the news to Lily and Ben, and it was the hardest thing I’ve had to do in my life. I took my children into the garden of our family home, held them close and told them simply and directly that their mum was dead. I’ll never forget their animal howls of grief and pain. We cried together for 20 minutes, then they wiped away their tears and asked what we were having for tea. So life goes on, I remember thinking, and the thought confused me. How could family life go on without Joy, without Mum?
I’m an animator by profession and every night since my 55th birthday the year before I’d been keeping a doodle diary, sketching a moment from my day. Joy had loved these doodles and I knew she’d want me to continue drawing them but, that night in the empty-feeling house, I felt numb. ‘It’s what Joy would have wanted,’ I told myself. I picked up my pen and drew a broken heart.
The first few days without Joy were a strange dream. Friends rallied round, setting up a Whatsapp group, the Andrews Support System, to arrange babysitting and shopping. We held a party at the theatre and gave Joy one last round of applause, which was incredibly moving. The humdrum rhythms of family life reasserted themselves but then, in a beat, I’d remember that Joy was dead and I’d be in torrents of tears.
I told the kids early on that I was going to cry in front of them. ‘It takes a stronger man to cry,’ I told Ben and he nodded quietly. Lily dealt with it those first few days in her usual intellectual way. ‘What happens when you die, Daddy?’ she asked me at 11.30pm one night. Three days after Joy’s death Ben’s grief suddenly exploded and he beat the crap out of the living-room sofa. It was clear that the kids needed closeness and reassurance, and we were a tight little pack in these first days. But when the kids were asleep the loneliness would hit me hard.
As the months passed, I found that I had to be both Mum and Dad. Joy had been the organiser of fun outings and the brilliant cook. I had to learn how to get the kids dressed and to school and rustle up an evening meal while somehow fitting in a day’s paid work. Lily was growing older. I had to get my head around periods and make sure she had spare knickers and sanitary pads in her bag. It was a steep learning curve. We planted a tree for Joy in a lovely spot in the local park. I’d often go there to have a quiet moment to think about how much I loved her. Sometimes the kids would sense I was upset and they’d silently gather round and hug me. In those moments it felt like it was they who were looking after me.
It was hard when I bumped into acquaintances who didn’t know that Joy had died. They’d ask, ‘How’s Joy?’ and I’d have to apologise and say she was dead. By this point I was used to telling my sad tale, but they’d look as if they wanted the ground to swallow them up. No one, I discovered, wants to come face-to-face with a new widower.
The landmarks of the annual calendar were passing: the Christmas Joy would have loved; the cold and lonely winter months. We held the summer garden party for Joy’s birthday as usual as it felt important to continue with the family traditions. I returned to our theatre and played a cameo role as Shakespeare with some of Joy’s ashes in a little vial on the belt of my period costume.
Being a widower, I realised, had become part of my identity. I’d put off going to bed
until 1am because it was the emptiest place in the world. Still drawing my nightly doodles, I anthropomorphised my feelings as the ‘grief demon’. The grief demon would disappear for days at a time, but then he’d pop up without warning. I’d be at the supermarket and realise that I was shopping for three people instead of four and the sadness would overwhelm me. I made friends with fellow widowers online and we’d discuss how alien the stages of grief sounded to us – that classic model that describes grief as a journey from denial to anger, depression and acceptance. I felt resentful that my young wife had been taken away one moment, and the next grateful that I’d known and loved her at all. Sadness, resentment, anger and gratitude – some days I felt all of these emotions at once, and some days I felt nothing at all.
Since she’d died, I’d continued to draw Joy in my doodles. She would appear in our family scenes: faintly drawn and smiling, still with us and watching over us. I began to post my doodles on Twitter so family and friends could keep track of how I was dealing with my grief, and soon I had tens of thousands followers; strangers who’d contact me from across the world to talk about losing their own loved ones. When I was approached by a publisher to turn my doodles into a book I was overjoyed. It felt like a perfect tribute to Joy.
It’s almost three years now since Joy died. Lockdown was strange as I know she would have risen to the occasion: keeping us all cheerful with good food and silly games. One day when we were sitting watching TV as a family Lily asked me if I’d ever get married again. ‘I think it would be nice,’ she said in that matter-of-fact way that kids have. I nodded and thought: yes, maybe one day it would. When I moved my wedding ring on to my right hand I knew that Joy would approve. I needed to acknowledge that it was time to look forward rather than back.
My grief has matured now into something more wistful; and there are more good days than bad. Nineteen years was all that the universe gave Joy and I, but I feel like the luckiest man to have known her. If I keep her in my heart I know I have hope of finding joy.
Finding Joy, by Gary Andrews (John Murray, £16.99), is out now.
The Bereavement Trust’s free helpline is on 0800-435 455
I’d continued to draw Joy in my doodles, smiling, still with us and watching over us