‘I still love him even though he’s not here’
In the March 2020 issue of Red, we published writer Joe Hammond’s beautiful musings on love, after he had passed away from motor neurone disease. Here, his wife Gill Hammond explains how their love lives on
My son, Jimmy, is four years old and his toy train set is a mishmash of differing makes, models and glued-together pieces. It was passed down from his eight-year-old brother, Tom, and it is now my nemesis. The task of creating unity between the rails had always fallen to my husband, Joe. No matter how hard I try, those damned pieces don’t fit together. Joe died in November 2019, aged 50. He suffered for two and a half years with motor neurone disease, and, prior to paralysis, he loved building train empires, possibly even more than the boys do. Now, looking at the broken tracks, I experience the same feeling of disconnection I have when I think of Joe. It regularly causes a jolt in my heart. The pieces of our relationship are broken or, at least, they don’t fit together like they used to. But, strangely, it’s okay. If I didn’t experience the empty spaces, I wouldn’t know so well the profound love we shared.
I met Joe at around 4pm on an autumnal afternoon. He walked into a lecture hall carrying a leather satchel paired with green corduroy trousers. Yes. I thought the same thing. His stature and smile meant that he carried the look off and, although it wasn’t love at first sight,
I was immediately intrigued and was pleased that he sat next to me. We were both training to be teachers, but we acted like the worst students, who flirted and giggled at the back of the class.
We soon realised that we both knew a great deal about breakage. We shared similar stories of growing up with parents who were broken, their hearts bruised and their heads not attuned to the small people in front of them. With Joe, there was an opportunity to confront the sadness I had always been running away from. I didn’t have to be alone with all that felt wrong inside. To me, this is love.
When someone dies, it is easy to imagine that their love was heightened or somehow ethereal, but we weren’t always connected. There were times we were both stuck in some tunnel, wondering where the other was. A terminal diagnosis, however, offers you the chance to appreciate the wholeness and connection you do have, even when it isn’t always obvious.
Since Joe died, I don’t feel more, or less, in love with him. In that way, ours is still like any other relationship. Some days, I can feel wholly aligned with him, and others I’m out of sync. Even now, I find myself reaching for my phone with thumbs poised to type some quip of Tom’s or to photograph Jimmy’s attempt to lick icing off his cheek. When I remember the two ticks on Joe’s Whatsapp will never turn blue, I feel like a fool.
I’m still loving him, but it’s hard to say what exactly I’m loving. His bones buried underground? Our memories? Do I consign him to the place in my brain where you put old lovers; the people who are not really discussed any more because they are the past? No. I find myself cringing when I say, ‘Joe used to…’ He’s not an ex. He’s in the present tense. I still love him, even though he’s not here.
Not long after Joe died, Tom asked if we could have a ‘daddy day’. We dressed in his T-shirts and ties. We danced to his music and I attempted to make Joe’s perfect scrambled eggs. This hurt, but when my friends sent pictures of their efforts to recreate ‘Joe day’, the blood flowed through our bodies again and we carried on.
The surest way I keep Joe’s memory alive is in the gentle kindness of others. After all, isn’t kindness what love is? Months after he passed, a dental nurse placed her gloved hand on mine and told me she had been thinking of me. She knew my circumstances because I had sobbed while filling out the emergency contact form. This gentle moment of bonding left me speechless. More recently, a friend stopped by, but I only noticed after she’d left that she had cleaned the sink and toilet in my bathroom. She cared enough for me to do this simple, tender act Joe would have done, if he were here. When I experience kindness, I feel the same warmth of love that I felt with Joe. I think there’s a universal pot of this love and kindness mixture that cannot be separated. We all dip into it when we do something good for someone else.
Just like his father, Tom sees the world through patterns and shapes. He knows wholeness when he spots it and he takes the train track out of my bewildered hands to reconstruct the route. Thank goodness. Jimmy is relieved, and we can all keep going. This is how we are loving Joe, and we hope somewhere, somehow, he feels it, too.
‘I cringe to say, “Joe used to…” He’s not an ex. He’s present tense’