Not Mid Morning Matters

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Tag: grief

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A kindly Brexit?

Today would have been my brother’s 66th birthday. Francis would have celebrated it in his unusual way, doing all the things he loved and being with those who loved him. But no, he didn’t make it as he died on the 6th December last year, my sister’s birthday. She would have been happier with a wash bag.

My brother lived his life on his terms and, when those terms changed, others helped him get back on track. Francis would be the first in your corner and the last to leave your side with his generous, kind, loving heart combined with creativity that knew no bounds or boundaries. His pictures, from various phases of his painting hang proudly on my walls. One water-colour that he painted 20 years ago when we were on holiday is one of the most precious things I own.

Francis was no saint. Who is? It would be trite to wax on about him yet, as I reflect on my brother and on my own last fifteen months, the one thing that stands out as the greatest attribute anyone can. It is kindness. Love is okay, but it is often confused with lust, sometimes mixed up with duty and invariably comes with strings attached. Generosity has the same conditions. Kindness is whole. In its true form it requires nothing than for you to show it. Kindness doesn’t even require acknowledgment. My brother was kind, truly kind. I try to be kind and I could do a lot worse than aim at his mark.

This year will see a lot happen. I predict nothing. Polls will tell us one thing and the opposite will happen. Bet against any poll. The world holds its breath for the 45th President of the United States to take office, start doing deals and building walls. As a country we about to divorce the EU and anyone who has been through a divorce (I have two under my belt) will tell you that you may start out in one place but you never, ever end up where you think and, long after it’s over, it is not. It might as well be called a Pan Fried Brexit. A kinder country would be a good thing, kindly respecting both sides of the argument. A kinder world would be even better.

This year I will try harder to be kinder. I urge you to do the same too. I thank my brother, my erasable, clever, creative brother for reminding me just how important being kind truly is.

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Decisions, decisions

Life can be seen as series of choices, right and wrong turns, decisions. We, as a nation, face a few in the coming weeks and months. Like all choices, turns or decisions they will have consequences and outcomes that we can never fully predict. Change is good thing and it is, mostly, a positive part of life. To not embrace change is to not embrace all life is or can be. Change is possibility realised.

It’s been a while since my last blog, before Christmas last year, and much has changed. And yet much more remains the same, constant, continues. Living with the loss of a child is dreadful. It’s not in the natural order of life. Having lost a parent, close family and friends both older and younger than me, this particular loss is consuming. At times it is all-consuming. Yet from this you have to change, evolve, make new turns and make decisions to combat it, to try to ride it or it will beat you.

This week I made the decision to take two days off work. I was tired, my mind is not as sharp as I want or need it to be (and has been this way for some time now) plus I could feel the hands of depression on my shoulders. I recognise these hands from times past and I am scared, truly scared of them grabbing me again. Work, my role, what I do with and for the BBC is a privilege and it has been my anchor since Polly was killed. For a few hours each day I can take myself out of my own porous wallow and help others, maybe. My fear of taking time off was that I would end up in my wallow with no escape. I was right. Yet I have made a couple of decisions to try to turn my one life around.

Firstly I have begun counselling. My fear of this was that I would end up popping the lid off the container of my life and may not be able to get it back on again. I liken it to a forgotten Tupperware container of leftovers at the back of the fridge that you should never pop the lid off to smell the contents, you should just throw it away, both container and contents. Well my lid is off and I shall see (and feel) what comes next. The hardest thing of all in counselling for me is answering questions, not asking them, and my not trying to control the conversation to arrive at the story’s denouement. I have no idea how this story will end and that is both frightening and comforting at the same time.

Secondly I have joined a gym. I don’t like gyms. They are not my tribe. Why would you run on a machine and not get anywhere? I needed to exercise though, lose a stone and paying to be a member of a gym means I have to actually go or I will fall into what gyms really want from their members, which is their money but not their attendance. I have often wondered what would happen to a gym is every member turned up at once? A week in and having been four times, including a great session of boxing, I can say that it is having a positive effect on me. I have only joined for three months so being a member of a gym has a beginning, a middle and an end.

And this is my biggest challenge.

Memberships, life, relationships, work, love all have a beginning, a middle and an end. The reality is that most of the time we don’t know where we are along this trio of progress and reality. Ends can happen unexpectedly. Sometimes you can see them coming and sometimes you can even avoid facing them. Sometimes you can even pro-activate them, such as our EU ‘in or out’ choice we all face on the 23rd June. But an end, any end is never as simple as that. Never.

The only thing we can all do is to try to make informed choices, to decide based on what we know and try to realise what we don’t. To blindly follow others, to make choices just based the past, on others or plain ‘leadership’ is both foolish and naive. Others choices are not our choices. You own your decisions and choices much like you own your vote.

My aspiration this year is to have the dullest year possible, to react rather than pro act (not ever my natural state) and this proving harder than I thought. I have some big decisions coming over the hill that may surprise me and others in their outcomes. One thing I have certainly learnt since my daughter’s death is that change comes in many guises. It is what you do when change comes that makes the next moment, the unknown, both challenging and revealing.

Here’s to the next choice, turn, decision and revelation.

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November 28, 2015

Good Grief Polly

It has been exactly four weeks since my eldest daughter Polly was killed in a car crash. It has been just over two weeks since her funeral, which was attended by 480 people. We thought about 100 would come.

In my last blog I wrote about how my daughter’s death had been reported by the media. This included the BBC, an organisation I am proud to work for, love and yet worry about on a daily basis as it faces attacks on all sides. The BBC were accurate in their reporting of Polly’s death, even if they did not include all the information they had sought from the family. They have written to me and I feel for my colleagues who are among the best journalists I know. We can all learn from this. I will certainly be a better journalist for all this.

The newspapers however were not accurate. They lifted quotes from social media without checking the provenance or the facts, causing further distress. They made claims of contact to me and other family members when to date no evidence of this can be found. The Bristol Post published my blog, contacting the BBC press office to see if I was going to get the sack for it. The credited ‘reporter’ did tweet me in the afternoon prior to publication to try to speak to me. In the Bristol Post’s published ‘report’ on my blog it says I had ‘been spoken to’ by the BBC, with all the disciplinary tone this implies. The BBC have been nothing but supportive. Other papers produced articles that were poorly written, inaccurate, with questionable personal relevance and lacking in either fact or respect. Formal complaints have been made.

This first four weeks of grief has been, err, yes. I have been back to work at BBC Radio Bristol and although I am trying I am finding it very hard. The listeners have been brilliant and the staff, my team have been complete in their support. I always said to my two elder children that they should never go to bed on a Sunday dreading Monday because if you do then you really are in the wrong job. Stop. Change it. Go to bed fundamentally happy. I love what I do and I can only hope the joy will return too.

Sitting here four weeks to the day after Polly’s death I thought I would start to make a few changes to my life. I’ve been told this is a life-changing event and I can see it is. I’m not unique, nor is our family. Other children have died in many tragic ways. Death is life and grief is not a competition as there are no winners.

The first week was awful, truly awful but with moments of real, honest, heartfelt laughter. Laughter is vital. Gallows humour is essential. You can learn from grief. I believe that.

Talking with my family, my dearest friends, my partner and my boss at work has been a huge comfort. This small group of people have been extraordinary and have reminded of who I am when I still really have no idea who I am at the moment. They have all done their best to keep me from jumping off at the deep end.

I won’t go through each day as I don’t want to read it back next year and be reminded of it but I can tell you that the first Tuesday was the worst day so far. See earlier blog. Last Sunday was awful too but lead to a Monday that I felt better. The grief kicked me in the nuts again on Tuesday. Simply, no parent should carry his or her child’s casket into a funeral. I now know what is really meant by a dead weight.

So what have I learned so far?

Drinking really does not work. I am a drinker and a cigar smoker. Don’t rely on drink; rely on your family and friends. I will give up smoking.

Right any family wrongs when you can. Don’t ever let them fester. Right beats wrong as much as truth beats lies. Don’t think you can put things right later. There really is no time like now if it needs to be said or done.

Listen to those who know you; your colleagues, your friends, your partner and your family. You are not you when you are grieving but a version of you. They know you and they will help you do what you should be doing when you really are not you.

Ride the support, the love and the messages you will get. The social media world means that you will be swamped by it. Take it, scan it, save it and then in time you can come back to it.

Cry. When you feel the need to cry just let it out. Don’t hold it in. Don’t stiffen your upper lip. Don’t worry about where you are or whom you are talking to. Cry when it comes. You need to and perhaps others need to learn from you that it is okay to cry. Try not to suppress how you really feel. I find this very hard as it is changing a habit of a lifetime.

Try and eat. I’m failing at this one but trying too. I’m either a simple snack that gives me all I need to keep going or a lavish taster menu with fine wines sort of chap. Polly, I am told, was the same.

 

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