We see the sun go down in your eyes

I'm in a pub - on my own. Many years ago that would not be an unusual thing to hear me say but the outcome would be quite different. Perhaps not the thought process but definitely the alcohol intake, the drunkeness, the aggressiveness, waste of money and wondering around somewhere trying to self destruct. Anyway, tomorrow, as I have for about 10 years, I am safe in the knowledge I won't have a hangover. 

While Mich rehearses with her band and because they’ve no milk behind the bar for me to have a cuppa whilst watching the footie I played some solo pool. It’s amazing how poor you can become at something you used to be so good at. To be fair I was playing pool every day and every night as a kid as my parents had got me a pool table one Christmas. 35 years on and the belly gets in the way for positioning, the failing eye sight means the end of the cue is about as far as I can clearly see and that gut instinct on positioning, lines and angles has long since departed. My mind wanders as I play. The odd shot flickers back to a less complicated time. The deep red sunset sears through the misted pub glass reinforcing a loss suffered nearly 32 years ago. A loss that weighs a heavy grief that I carry with me constantly. 

"The sun so bright it leaves no shadows only scars carved into stone"

I recently blogged about stress and anxiety and it’s talent for exacerbating grief. I mentioned in a video after a miserable run that as time ticks by and memories fade it gets harder and harder to remember my mom’s face. I can look at the few pics I have and of course I know what she looks like but as a real memory, an actual mental visualisation I can recall whenever I want, it’s becoming harder and harder. She appears in the odd dream. I don’t know, when I wake up, just how clear she was but it always leaves me so utterly devastated that it was only a dream and it is always so brief and unlasting. Often ruined by me being late for a job somewhere important like Buckingham Palace which will inevitably be set in somewhere weird like a football stadium or the local chippy and I’ll have lost my teeth or I’ll be naked trying to fry a mars bar and daffodil. That kind of dream! That brief moment though, where she comes in to order a battered Corgi or Swan, she’s in the queue talking to me and I have to ask her to hang on a sec while I serve the customer before, who could be Kevin Pietersen or Sport Billy, but she gets served by Richard Prior instead and leaves before KP’s pitta has popped for me to make his kebab! Of course I wake as I chase after her. Usually getting pretty close.

"Dress torn in ribbons and in bows like a siren she calls to me"

The last time I saw my mom was 27th June 1987. I’m sure it was a Saturday and it was bloody hot. I’ve no recollection of any part of the day until about 5:30pm ish. I had been out doing my paperounds. During that time my only moments of clarity, moments entirely devoid of stress and worry, were on the rugby pitch or whilst doing my rounds. I’d finished my rounds and had cycled the last couple of miles home no handed. A common challenge I set myself. There were only two tricky junctions to negotiate. Tricky when no handed that is. A right turn off Walsall Road into Little Aston lane being particularly hazardous and therefore all the more satisfying to complete without face planting onto the tarmac, because it’s a downhill build up and no handed means no braking so swinging a right at speed. The last turn was a more sedate right into The Grove which only became complicated if there was a car approaching and disrupting my window of opportunity to turn, again without braking. That day it was clear and I leant into the turn and set myself to power to the top of the hill with the aim to not fail by touching the handlebars. I remember the sun was shining through the spokes of my Raleigh 10 speed. I powered up the hill only looking up as I passed The Goldstones. Instead of a clear view to our house, at the top just to the left, I saw my Auntie Sue stood outside the Prices’. My heart sank and I dropped down onto the bars. My challenge suddenly entirely irrelevant as I was ripped, abruptly, back to reality. I pulled up and walked the last couple of houses up to Auntie Sue. 

I took out my ear phones and switched off my Walkman. I don’t remember what I was listening to although it was almost certainly Clapton or Hendrix. If I was a betting man I would say it was probably Hendrix Live at Winterland. I struggled to ever get past Red House and constantly rewound the tape to listen to it over and over again. There was something magical about Hendrix. A sound that I was transfixed by. I think The Cry of Love gripped me as much as any of his albums (most released posthumously!) and I would often seek solace in the emotion of his guitar and his delivery.

"Drifting on a sea of forgotten teardrops"

The Joshua Tree had been released 3 months earlier on 9th March ‘87 and whilst that album has held my hand throughout my life and all of it is associated with love, loss and grief, I don’t think I had been captured by it just yet. In fact whilst I know exactly how I can’t pin down when I discovered it. The how was down to Gavin Wade who gave me a taped recording of the album he had made. I can picture now quite clearly, in Gav’s very individualistic writing style, the label read ‘ The Joshua Tree & Unavailable B Sides ‘. Each letter styled with a flourish that covered just about anything he could doodle on! Since that day, whenever it was, The Joshua Tree has consoled me, accompanied me, comforted me and acted as an instant reference to my mom. Which is strange as I don’t think I listened to it until after she died. Similarly though, I remember a few years earlier, probably ‘83 or ‘84 ish, whenever I hear Night Swimming by REM (an absolute favourite of mine). I am taken back to sitting in the back of my Dad’s company car travelling back from The Priory Hospital in Edgbaston after visiting Mom and I’m looking out the window watching the street lights whizz by trying to light the dark. It’s weird because Night Swimming wasn’t released until Automatic For The People in 1992! In fact I can tell you the actual song that should spark that memory and it was The Flying Pickets - Only You! The mind has a funny way of dealing with things.

"Every streetlight reveals the picture in reverse"

Anyway, whatever I was listening to I turned off. My Auntie Sue sat me down on the corner wall of No 7. She put her arm around me allowing a momentary respite from the glaring sun on my neck. “It’s time” she said as she gave me a hug. “It’s time”. If ever my world stopped spinning it was probably then. I knew, we all knew, that it was any day now that mom would die. What had started as breast cancer 4 years earlier had returned as an inoperable brain tumour with a vengeance. It had sucked the life out of her pretty quickly. I don’t think she had been ‘with it’ for a while but certainly she hadn’t come round for a couple of days. It had stolen everything from her. Her movement her figure her looks her wit her love her care.

I know we didn’t get up and go to our house straight away but I’ve no idea how long we sat there for. It could have been an eternity encapsulated in a second. It could have been a fleeting moment that dragged out forever. Everything that had ever happened in that street over the previous 8 years played out in front of me. Every game of volleys and headers, hedge hopping, knock and run, fights, tantrums, threats, laughs and stunts sliced through time to pause for a second as if to offer a moment of support or to unravel and fall away at the end. Eventually we did go in and the house was full, or at least appeared to be. Aunties and Uncles, friends and neighbours. Tears and silence mixing uncomfortably. My little brother was with Dad and I joined them. It might have been hours but I remember it as minutes. I said goodbye (she couldn't hear me) and I kissed her on the head. She took her last breath and in our dining room, converted to a bedroom, she died surrounded by us all. In that moment I was hit by every failing, every weakness, every time I let her down and acutely, so acutely, how much I still had to learn about her and from her. You don’t get a chance to right any wrongs. There’s no final words. No goodbyes. No last exchange. Just loss.

"Sleight of hand and twist of fate"

The sunset was deep red that evening. It trawled the horizon sucking in the odd wisp of cloud along with the last ounce of daylight. The Grove stood still and took it in. The world held it's breath as if in shock. I watched from my bedroom window in a house full of grief, sadness, loss and love. I took myself away - physically and emotionally. 

There’s nothing afterwards. No comfort. No gravestone chatter enjoyed by  Ricky Gervais in After Life. No videos to watch with prepared monologues to get you through the aftermath. No Post It Notes dotted about as a guide to how to live your life without. There’s no conversation you can have. Someone once suggested I write a letter to her as a way to help with the grieving process. It’s not for me. I’ll be waiting an eternity for a reply! We just die. We burn or rot and that’s that. We don’t rise. We don’t return as an animal. We don’t float about visiting. We don’t talk through old wrinkly women who can only deliver the message if we pay. We grasp at straws. At glimpses of comfort. We’re vulnerable and there for the taking. We accept the con in the hope it makes us feel better. It’s no coincidence the biggest con of all is the richest con of all.

"I'll see you again when the stars fall from the sky
and the moon has turned red over one tree hill"