H

One of the lingering effects of H’s passing is that four times a year, I go through a phase where I especially struggle for words to share with my father. Although triggered by four specific days – her birthday (the 8th of July), their wedding anniversary (the 11th of November), the day she passed (the 19th of July) and the day she was buried (the 8th of August) – these tend to be long drawn out affairs affecting the days leading up to and the days after these days. The struggle takes various forms primarily centred on whether to call my father or not, and on the days when I manage to call him, what to talk about - to keep things as normal as possible or broach the difficult subject of H. He and I have never been the best of conversationalists - we’re much too similar for that – but these days make that tenuous relationship an even more difficult one, so much so that on most of these days, I have opted for not calling him in the end. ...

[Image Source] It has been a deeply emotive week for me, bookended as it were by Sunday’s Remembrance Service - a year exactly to the day since we lost H- and the quiet, deathly stillness of my office today as I stand here, cup of coffee in hand looking out at the lunch time crowd milling about. As the week has gone along, the flurry of phone calls, emails and messages of commiseration I have had to field from people has eased off, allowing me some time to begin to reflect on where I am, and how things have evolved over the past year. Not much has changed by all accounts, I still haven’t brought myself to delete H’s details from my phone or my FB page for that matter - deceased 19th July 2014 is the only addition I have made on my phone - which led to a birthday reminder from FB in my feed the other day, as raw a reminder as there could be of the keenness of the loss we still feel. ...

For H - untitled, off prompt… I said I wouldn’t cry Wouldn’t let the quivering of my lips win, break me. I said I wouldn’t bend, Wouldn’t sag beneath this weight this unrelenting burden of grief A harsh wind clasps Me by my throbbing throat Enrobing me in the scales Of its cold, wintery fingers. Something’s stolen you From me, and all I have left Is hope, that when tomorrow comes The Sun will shine.

It is sometime after 5pm – between chomping down on a very meaty beef burger and swigging from a can of apple juice - that the call comes in. Up until then, I have been having the exact weekend I had in mind when I dragged myself away from work to catch the 727 to Aberdeen Dyce airport a few days earlier: go-karting and then a BBQ, with the prospect of Lakeside shopping with B. to come. The scene is one of self-indulgent relaxation; two grills fully stocked with burgers, chicken drumsticks and barbecue meat on the go, little children running about, wives and girlfriends munching on burgers and sharing intimate gossip moments, and men standing around the grill sipping from cans and surveying the scene - wife, 2.5 kids, picket fence and a few hundred quid to burn on a splurge in tow. It takes a while – probably the better part of ten minutes - before the gravity of the news begins to sink in. When I return to the three-way conversation I was having before the call, B senses there is something wrong. In response to her quizzical look, I motion for her to break out of the conversation and explain what has happened. All told, twenty minutes after hearing the news – give or take – my mood has morphed from indulged, self-congratulation to inner turmoil as I attempt to digest the news in the relative quiet of B’s. ...

I spoke on behalf of the family at H’s funeral. The plan was to go over the points raised here in sequence, mid way through it, I broke down and cried uncontrollably. Here is the original text, for the record… My earliest, lucid memories of growing up are inextricably linked to green bowls of soup and stew, and Sunday afternoon cooking marathons. Back in those days, in the early eighties, extenuating circumstances required that the family lived in two homes in two different cities. One of the enduring images from that time is the meticulous attention to detail and the foresight to plan long term with which both homes were run with incredible efficiency. ...