I’m not yet up to writing one of my usual posts. I’m aware that quite a few new readers have found this blog through Instagram recently, so to you, I apologise and hope you understand that life events have suddenly taken over. My ‘gearing up to sixty’ campaign will be back soon. To the many of you who have been reading my blog and therefore been part of my life for years, I know you’ll understand. Today’s post is about the aftermath of grief and the things we leave unsaid so if you’re in a fragile state, you may want to swerve it.
Delia’s death has impacted us both more than we would ever have imagined. Even though we knew she was declining, we thought we had at least two more years with her – time to talk through her wishes even though she was always reluctant to discuss them. So today’s post is going to dwell a little on that and the problems that arise when these things aren’t shared but then have to be dealt with by a grieving family, and I’m writing with Mal’s full permission.
Without being too Tolstoyan about it, every family is complicated in its own particular way. When you choose your person for life you become part of their family too, and when that family is very different to your own it can take a while to work them out. Delia came from a second-generation Irish family and so having lots of children felt natural to her. They were a branch of a big, extended family who loved and fought each other with equal passion – if you were casting them, Jimmy Nail, Tim Healy and Julie Walters would be up for lead roles.
Mal is the youngest of her seven children. There was a baby who died soon after she was born. His closest brother died in a fall from scaffolding when he was working as a builder. His eldest sister was cruelly murdered by her husband. His next brother died suddenly of a heart attack while he was mowing the lawn. His dad wasn’t in great health, but nobody expected him to go at the age of only 61. And then Delia died suddenly too. I’m starting here because for Mal and the rest of them, each time, life-shattering phone calls came out of the blue.
It’s unimaginable… just the thought of receiving a call like that once, never mind multiple times. Being tough Geordies the way of dealing with it has always been to push it down and carry on. You’ll remember that backfiring last summer when the loss of our youngest’s girlfriend’s brother in a moped accident hurled Mal straight back to the memory of his own brother’s catastrophic fall. That’s when I really learned how grief can lie dormant like a canker, only to explode years later.
There are just three of that family of nine left now, Mal has two brothers remaining but the toll of the years of buttoned-down emotions are telling. One brother chose to estrange himself a few years ago after his divorce. It was a divorce of his choosing but when the rest of the family refused to cast out his former wife who had been so central for over 30 years, he severed relations not only with his torn-apart mum and brothers but with his own children and grandchildren too. The other brother has always been what my mum would have called ‘troubled.’ He remains a part of the family but on his own terms.
So the result of all of this repressed pain wasn’t the pulling together that everybody hopes for when the last parent dies. Unspoken feelings meant we hadn’t realised that the troubled brother had felt slighted when Mal was asked to take on the role of LPA. And we didn’t know that he had then taken Delia to write a new will, naming him as the sole executor. The outcome was that in his new role, he took sole charge of the funeral, refusing input from the rest of the family and forbidding both the undertakers and the celebrant to speak with us. The only part that his siblings were invited to play was to follow the hearse in a funeral car.
We were so shaken by the way it had all been planned that our instinct was to travel there separately – but that wasn’t what Delia would have wanted and so on Friday, we took deep breaths and went to wait at her house. We waited and we waited for brother number three to join us, thinking that surely he would come to honour his mother on her last journey, but he didn’t. We travelled together in painful silence, the two brothers too hurt and too far apart to speak.
I just want to say something about that because sitting in that car, I knew that it wasn’t how either of them wanted it to be. For generations, boys have been raised to be tough and, on the 13th of August 2003 when I realised my family was going to consist of three boys, I knew that it would be down to me to make sure they grew up to be thinking, talking, feeling men. I’ve always insisted on our kitchens and dining spaces being screen-free, and I think it’s having that regular, predictable time over breakfast and dinner every day that has made them into men who can comfortably dive into any conversation, even deep and uncomfortable ones. I was glad of that last week when we went out as a five on the night before the funeral. It gave me the chance to have a talk that I’d been meaning to have for a while, but that the events running up to the funeral made urgent.
Both Mal and I are youngests and we’ve both been told regularly throughout our lives by our siblings that we’re the spoilt ones who had everything that they didn’t. It may be true, it may not, but our birth order isn’t our fault and the feeling of resentment that you pick up when you’re told you’ve been overly favoured doesn’t help anyone. I’m sure there’s something similar whatever birth order you hold; children vie for their parents’ love jealously. So I wanted to talk to my boys about the unique anguish that comes when you lose the last of your parents and, specifically, the days when they will plan the final funeral for whichever of us goes last. I was keen to point out that we’ve parented them each differently and we’ve done it consciously and deliberately because they’re such individuals. It means that when they’re planning their goodbye to us, their feelings and recollections will differ but none of them will be wrong. I was pleased to see an understanding settling over their faces. These are the conversations that I want to start having now, while we’re hopefully years away from that day – I want to do whatever I can to ensure that we leave them united. Siblings should be your most staunch supporters, the people you can call on at any point in life.
Family dynamics were a big topic of conversation over dinner at one of our Midlifechic Retreats this spring. I think a lot of us were surprised that even at this stage of life, an ‘always-on’ family doesn’t just happen easily. There’s an evolution of parenting that begins after your children grow up and leave home. Yes it’s about pulling them all together as often as you can, but while they’re there, it’s also about having hard conversations about the future when you’ll no longer be there to do that, ensuring that they realise that they will need to work to stay on each other’s side. The value of your siblings is something that only really becomes apparent as you get older and grow away from the many fair-weather friendships that fill that gap at different stages in your life. If you haven’t kept close contact, by the time you reach midlife it can feel too late to pick up from where you left the family home at the age of eighteen. We can teach our young adults that lesson now – and use our own experiences as examples.
So, on that note, back to the funeral. The service that had been arranged was short and factual, not what we wanted for Delia – but it was comforting to see the crematorium full to standing. She had touched so many people’s lives.
Earlier in the week we’d discovered that there were no plans for a funeral tea – a ‘wake’ as the Geordies call it – and so Mal, along with two of our former sisters-in-law, pulled together to put one on. We arrived to find legions of cousins and friends and neighbours waiting there. Mal brought with him a large framed photo, the final one that was ever taken of the whole family together. He stood up to say the words he’d wanted to hear at the funeral… about what a character Delia was… how much she loved her family… and how everyone who met her loved her back. My heart broke for him when he gestured towards the photo and added, “I used to be part of this big, happy family and yet today I’m the only one here.” But then I looked around to see his nephews and our boys listening intently as he went on to insist that the men of the next generation must do better, that they must stop any family feuds and always, always talk through their feelings.
Suddenly, almost everyone in the room was crying – all the tough Geordies were feeling the release that they needed. Because that’s what funerals are for aren’t they? You need to shed your tears, to say goodbye, to put your arms around each other. Only then can you move on to celebrate a life that was, as well as the lives that go on.
We’d spent two weeks dreading a day that in the end turned out to be wonderful. Delia would have been so proud of her nine grandchildren, her eight strong grandsons and one cherished granddaughter. We toasted her with a glass of her beloved Baileys, we feasted on homemade pies and ham and pease pudding stotties, we danced to her favourite 70s disco tunes. And her grandsons even sang for her; very fittingly they chose “I did it my way”… which she so certainly did.
There’s a lot to be said for stoicism but there’s a lot to be said for candour too and I think the generation below us is doing better on that front. Of the nine young adults above, as a result of death or divorce, only our three have a father in their lives. However, they have incredibly strong mothers – and families can morph and reform. I know Mal feels a strong sense of responsibility towards them all now. We’ve lost the person who held us all together so we are now the elders who must step up.
We spent last weekend with our boys at Mal’s family home sorting through things. There were shelves of framed photos and bags more, covering years gone by and as we sifted through them we talked about what makes a life. Photos remind you that it’s the high days and holidays, the births and the weddings, the people you’ve loved and lost, the people who will take your name into the future long after you’re gone – these are the things we hold on to.
Deep down in drawers we found reams of Mal’s dad’s writing. We knew he was a very clever man, a proud member of Mensa despite his lack of formal education but we didn’t know about his way with words. There were childhood memories that we were so pleased to find – to our surprise and delight in one of them he mentioned the very pub where we’d held the wake, saying that his mum used to call it “the Wicked House” because his dad spent too much time there! There were poems about nature, his love for Delia and little ditties about his grandchildren. And then there were his pained outpourings following the deaths of his children. Yet another example of how hard it was for men to talk openly about their feelings on the darkest of days.
By the time we got to Tuesday, the date of the interment, most people had returned to their busy lives. Standing by the family grave were just the troubled brother, Mal and me. As I watched Mal tenderly tuck his mum into the ground alongside all of her loves who are buried there, I couldn’t help thinking of the years of tears that have been shed in that same spot.
And I shivered as I looked at the inscription next to the space that has been left for Delia’s name. It reads “Malcolm Garnett” – because my beloved husband has the same name as his dad. And just at that moment an envelope blew from the undertaker’s hand. Picking it up I saw written “the late Mrs Garnett”… my name too. John Donne couldn’t have conjured a darker omen.
As we turned to leave I saw Mal move closer to his brother who looked so alone. He opened his arms to him saying, “I know we’ve had words but we’ve lost everyone else, I don’t want to lose you too.” And they hugged. And I’m so glad that they realised then – and there – that it’s important and it’s never too late.
The last few weeks have been filled with pain, but with thoughts… and words… and deeds… people can start to heal.
