August 2010
I had been driving back and forth from Basildon for work for months before Jemima died. It continued afterwards unabated save for a single week in February when I worked from home. Life had been difficult before January 29th anyway when it had felt like I was living on Jemima’s borrowed time since she had been diagnosed with Lymphoma in November. After I lost her I started to feel less bothered about the day to day difficulties and retreated into what seemed like hourly reminiscence – sometimes more frequently. The worst time of day however was the long drive home. It was also the best time of day – an hour of letting myself go emotionally without the glare of attention upon whatever my ‘mood’ may be.
I would get into the car after a late evening in the office and the music would go on. Not just anything but the same four or five songs over and over and over again. I would start with ‘About A Boy’ from the film of the same name and this would be playing from Basildon till after the Dartford River Crossing. Once I was through the toll I would move onto ‘Minor Incident’. I had heard this particular song while I was out shopping shortly after January 29th and the words reached out and grabbed me. It was if a message was being passed to me from my baby girl. Listening to the song made me cry – every time. Hearing the words and the tone of the song took me back to the Vets table where Jemima lay before the end. The message of the song felt real to me and it helped me to let out the pain of loss. Somewhere around Clackett Lane I would move on to ‘So Much Life’ a piece from the final episode of Battlestar Galactica where Admiral Adama takes Laura Roslin on her final journey. This would transport me to the last time I took Jemima to Epsom Downs a month or so before she died – somewhere that we had spent many hours walking around when she was much much younger. This would be played over and over again until somewhere around where I turned off onto the A3. At that point I had usually drained myself emotionally enough to be able to handle coming back to the house that now felt empty despite the presence of a loving Wife, 5 Children and 2 other Black Labradors.
This same process was repeated every night for weeks and weeks and I felt better for it although it kept the pain close – but that was the point. There comes a time in the grieving process where you feel that the pain is all you have left – that to not feel the pain is to not have loved them enough. Guilt it seems plays a large part in your perception of life when consumed by grief. The phrase ‘if only’ is always close to hand but ultimately serves a healing purpose along the road back to a measure of normality. My ‘if onlys’ were centred around the fact that I don’t think I played enough with Jemima, that I shouted at her 3 days before she died and that had broke her spirit, that I didn’t pay enough attention to her in the final years of her life.
Regardless of the level of true reality in your thoughts when grieving once you recognise the truth in how you’ve lived your life and once you have felt the pain of loss you start to see more clearly the things that matter and those that don’t. You see the uselessness of many things but you also discover the strength you have forgotten and the lost freshness of outlook but tempered to perfect balance by the misfortune of life. So it has been with me.
