TWO DAYS that
SUNDAY, 29 JANUARY, began with a walk, sunglasses affixed to my slightly bereft face, headphones on, purposely playing songs to remind me of my father: Neil Diamond, A Woman’s Heart. Since his mid-December passing following an arduous battle with cancer, I’d formulated an orderly way to deal with the anguish. Rather than allowing it to unexpectedly strike midway through a heavily assisted pull-up at the gym or in the queue at Lidl, I’d visit it at a time that suited me.
Granted, losing Dad was my first real experience of loss, and I was no expert, but my appointments with grief appeared to work. They incorporated a healthy walk, fresh air and music to catapult me straight to thoughts of Dad, thus allowing the tears to flow on my terms.
I’d just listened to Caledonia, Dad’s funeral song, and had moved on to Neil’s Cracklin’ Rosie when my phone rang. I might have ignored the interruption to my pain rendezvous, but it was one of my oldest friends in a similar place to where I’d been with Dad just six weeks before – death watch. Soon after Dad died, my friend’s mother, who also had cancer, began her decline.
From what my friend had described in the previous days, I suspected that her mum’s death was imminent. Having recently been at the undulating frontline with Dad, I recognised the signs. I noted the desperation in her tone, teamed with guilt for wanting it to be over. ‘I’m essentially wishing Mum dead,’ she confessed. ‘Does that make me an awful person?’
‘No,’ I replied. ‘That makes you awfully selfless.’ Those who have watched someone we love waste away from terminal cancer will understand. It’s not that you want them to die, but you need their suffering to cease. It’s the strangest form of anticipation imaginable and it can often feel never-ending, so much so that you begin to question if the doctors have it terribly wrong or if you’re losing your mind.
‘It will happen sooner than you think,’ I told her before hanging up. ‘All of a sudden, things will change just like that.’
Still walking, I got a text from her to say that after my prophetic statement, things had indeed begun to change, and by the looks of it, her mother’s passing might be later that day. I remember looking at my phone to note the date. As I did, my brother John, who lives nearby, drove past me. Feeling saddened by the news, I texted him to meet me for coffee, but he didn’t answer.
Preoccupied with thoughts of my friend and how she’d likely be feeling as lost as me in the weeks ahead, I made for home. On the way, I
passed a lady I know from the local school, waved and smiled while I pondered how life can turn on a sixpence, oblivious that mine, too, was about to pivot further than I could ever have imagined.
Half an hour later, I stood in my 48-year-old brother’s house watching a team of paramedics try to resuscitate him after he’d driven past me on his way home to his wife and two young daughters before suffering a massive cardiac arrest. Quite unbelievably, the lady I’d waved at earlier was also there as a first responder, presumably after she’d returned home from a Sunday stroll to receive a similar distress call to the one I’d had.
That lovely lady later told me it had been her birthday that Sunday. For as long as I live, I’ll never forget the day she was born, for it would become the day my beloved brother died, followed hours later by my friend’s loving mother. Three days later, my brother lay in repose in a room next to my friend’s mum in the same funeral home while I clung to my friend muttering, ‘you honestly couldn’t write it’. And yet, here I am. That’s the thing about life. It goes on, as hard as it might seem.
Some days I feel immense invincibility that the unimaginable happened, and we’ve survived. At other times, I question what the point of it all is.
I’ve settled that loss is the price of love and life. I certainly wouldn’t give up the chance of loving Dad and John for the 44 years I was privileged to have them, despite the vacuum they’ve left in my world.
Nowadays, I share my grief appointments with them both. My trigger music peculiarly flits from Neil Diamond to Snoop Dogg, and my sunglasses are comically large to encompass both sets of tears as I learn to navigate this new life filled with twists and coincidences.
I’ll leave you with one more. Early last year, I block-booked all my hair appointments a year in advance. By chance – at least I hope – the two most recent fell on the same day as Dad’s and then John’s funeral, just seven weeks apart.
Despite the obvious risks to the people I love, I’m not giving up on being blonde or on laughter. Not when laughter was my brother’s currency, and determination was my father’s. But be warned, I’m in for a full head of highlights in three weeks, so maybe lay low that day because, seriously, you couldn’t write it. Or could you?