A Difficult Time

Losing someone close to you is an odd thing. That in itself is an odd (and in the same way, obvious) thing to say, but It seems to be true. Aside from losing my grandfather five years ago, I’ve never been through this sort of thing before, and my experience of reading or watching fictional situations of people dealing with bereavement and the subsequent grief attached to it is limited, but it always seems to be a fairly clichéd attempt at representing real life.

The truth of the matter – at least in my experience so far – is that it’s frightening how quickly you get used to the situation. It’s this which has made me come to question my reaction and behaviour so far, as according to all the books and films, are we not supposed to be in a permanent state of despair and depression?

My only explanation thus far is that I didn’t actually see my Mum that often as she lived in the Midlands; it wasn’t as if I used to see her every couple of weeks or pop in on a more regular basis. In fact on average I’d say I saw my Mum every 3 - 4 months and so had a fairly limited time in her presence. This has been the case for the last 13 years or so as she and her husband had lived away from London since then, and so my most frequent contact with my Mum was by phone. To that end, the strange thing is that I’d probably miss one of my work colleagues more than I miss my Mum at the moment, purely through the amount of time in their presence. Is that an awful conclusion to reach?

It’ll come as no surprise that I’ve been thinking an awful lot about the situation of late, be it reminiscing over childhood memories, worrying about what the future holds for everyone affected by the situation, or regretting not having spent more time with her. Even though it’s just over two months since she died, I’ve already come to the conclusion that it’s not the flesh & bones that I will miss about my Mum, it’s her spirit and life force, those things which one doesn’t necessarily need physical contact with to experience and appreciate.

No more will I be able to ring her up on a Sunday evening as I used to and hear her chirpy voice down the phone telling me what’s happening in her life. No longer will I be able to hear her enthusiastic accounts of her most recent walk with ‘the girls’ (as she used to refer to their two Border Collies), or the latest course she had enrolled on. It’s these intangible things that I will miss because that’s how I knew my Mum; that was my relationship with her most of the time.

The great tragedy for all concerned, including her, is that she was only 58 years old. She will never get to celebrate her 60^th birthday with a big family party. She’ll never get to enjoy her retirement and do all the things that active retired people do. She’ll never see her grandchildren grow up and be proud of how they would turn out. When we grieve it’s in different ways. We grieve for ourselves, we grieve for those around us who are also affected, and we also grieve for the person who has left us, for they will never experience anything more than they had already done.

From a personal point of view, I’m eternally grateful that I always had a great relationship with my Mum. Aside from fairly inconsequential moments when I was a kid where she shouted at me for some silly reason – the sort of thing that all kids do – there was never a big falling out during my teenage years as seems to be the case with a lot of people. I was never the rebellious teenager and so enjoyed a very good relationship with her, and so however much I may regret not spending enough time with her over the last decade or so, at least it was purely due to geography and nothing else.

The difficult thing now is that her husband (technically my step-father, though I’ve never really thought of him as that) is up in Staffordshire on his own with no family around him; only a few friends and colleagues. He and my Mum were together for fifteen years and I always got on well with him. When I say ‘got on’, I actually mean that I’ve never had a problem with him as so many people seem to with step-parents, but he’s never been an overly sociable bloke so it’s difficult to know how to handle the situation now. The only thing I really have in common with him is the fact that he was married to my Mum; we don’t share any interests, hobbies or musical tastes, so keeping in contact with him now is difficult. I’ve deliberately kept my distance from him so far as he knows that the only reason I would phone him is to see how he is coping, and I don’t really want to keep on and on about it. Unfortunately that means there’s very little for us to talk about other than my Mum, so it makes for quite a difficult conversation whenever I speak to him.

Saying that, he’s actually a very nice person once you get to know him, and I’m eternally grateful to him for making my Mum’s life a happy one for the last fifteen years. I’m certainly not intending to abandon him now and will definitely keep in contact.

It’s odd; now the weeks go by and life carries on as normal, though I do think about my Mum every day. But every so often my emotions overwhelm me and I shed a few tears, sometimes for the silliest of reasons. The most recent occasion was last Saturday as I was listening to an erstwhile forgotten jazz CD which I’d recently discovered again. A particular track featured a trumpet player whom I’d very much admired and who died last year. I’d actually spoken to him on the phone once a few years ago for some advice when I was having some difficulty with my own playing ability, and he was genuinely concerned and offered me some sound advice for which I was very grateful. My Mum had been a fan of Traditional Jazz and this particular track prompted me to be reminded of that fact, along with my own sadness of the trumpet player’s passing.

I took it upon myself at this point to look at a photo of my Mum which my sister had copied recently for me, and it being a really beautiful picture just sent me over the edge. I was thinking about including a copy of it with this post but I think it would have been too much for me. To be honest I’m not really sure why I asked Lissa to post this for me. I guess sometimes it’s good to ‘talk’ about these things, and conversely for people to ‘listen’.