Chez Spud

News just in…stop press…stop all the clocks…hold the front page…those well-meaning people who say ‘time heals’ to those who are grieving, probably uttered in that slightly whiney, knowitall voice, head cocked to one side, perhaps nodding a bit for emphasis (“Believe me! I’m right, I’m nodding my head and using my special whiney voice, thus I know everything…”time heals”). Well, ya suckers, time does NOT heal grief. It ‘might’ heal preteen broken hearts and the devastating disappointment of not being made headgirl…but time does NOT heal grief. Can I just repeat that for those at the back of the class, not really paying attention, just doodling on their desks or taking photos of the back of their hair with their mobiles to see if it looks OK (as a feisty girl taught by my cousin does..eeek)….TIME DOES NOT HEAL GRIEF.

You never, ever ‘get over’ someone dying. You don’t ‘move on’ or ‘draw a line under it’ or ‘get on with the rest of your life’. Really, you don’t. And any kind of suggestion that you can, or should, is as insulting to the person who died as it is to the person in front of you, paralysed by grief. They might ‘look’ like they are coping, they’re OK, they’re putting a brave face on it and all those other things we say to make ourselves feel better about their situation. But they’re not OK, not even a little bit…they might be going through the motions of everyday life, to the extent that everyone stands back and admires their spirit and their courage. But inside they are screaming ,’WHY ARE YOU ALL ACTING SO NORMAL? WHY ARE YOU SHOPPING/WORKING/WATCHING TV/JOKING ABOUT SHIT WHEN THE WHOLE WORLD HAS BEEN TURNED UPSIDE DOWN. CAN’T…YOU….SEE?’. But they don’t scream those things, they rarely even say them…they just carry on as best they can because, after all, what else can you do?

“Oh you’re coping SO well!”, is what I heard so often in the weeks after my mother died 10 years ago. This was puzzling…what else did they want me to do? Lie down on the floor and die? What choice do you have when unwanted, unexpected grief comes along and smacks you in the face? You have two choices: you suck it up and carry on or you keel over and let it consume you.

Time doesn’t heel, ever. All it does is give you some space to get used to the idea of a world without the person you loved…but your world is never, ever the same. I miss my mother every single day of my life; on the special days…my wedding day, the birth of my two wonderful boys, their birthdays, my birthday, her birthday, Christmas….all those markers of life. But I miss her on the ordinary days, when nothing much special happens…when I see something, read something, feel something that I need her to know. A little known fact of death is that you can have a relationship with someone even after they have died, I know how odd that sounds by the way. But if I want to tell my Mum something, I just go ahead and tell her…and I always know what she would say, or how she would laugh. Or have another fag and a coffee xxx Are they drip feeding you caffeine and nicotine up there in heaven Mum? Hope so xxx

The downside of this is that my mother is always ‘there’ wittering in my ear, always telling me what the right thing to do is, what she would expect of me. Ideally I’d like to ignore this on the occasions that it doesn’t suit me, but she’s irritatingly persistent. In the midst of life we are in nagging, and all that.

Ten years on, I’m ‘on top’ of my grief. I’m not over it, but I’m on top of it, or so I like to think. And then something happens and it hits you between the eyes…no warning… no mercy. And, believe me, it’s every bit as painful, bitter and shocking as it was right at the start.

Today I was driving home having dropped my boys at nursery, focused on the busy work day ahead….anxious to get home for a conference call. The radio was on, just buzzing in the background and the BANG…right there, with two chords…I was drowning in my grief all over again. They played one of my mother’s favourite songs…it won’t mean much to most people but it’s like a knife through the heart to me. In seconds I was dripping with tears and had to pull over…ten years, and yet a couple of chords can defeat me like that. I can’t think that it will ever change and to be honest I hope it never will. I never want there to be a day when my mother’s death means nothing to me, because her life meant absolutely everything to me.

So, just take it from me, when someone dies…you never, ever get over it.

xxx

PS for the people who need to know what the song was…it’s pasted below, ‘When you were sweet sixteen’. She met my Dad when she was 14 and adored him from that day on, she never ever stopped loving him. I think this song kind of encapsulated it for her. Sobbing again just listening to it on Youtube…I am SUCH a sap!

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