“I open at the close,” says the message hidden in the Golden Snitch, revealed only as the threads of Harry’s story are woven together in the final Harry Potter book. Helen’s great love of these stories makes it an inspiring maxim for this, my final Widower of the Parish column.
My writing has been cathartic and a witness to fact being more extreme, provocative and, frankly, funnier than fiction. I have learned too much about grief, but have discovered even more about myself. So while my column was never a generic guidebook, I can offer some sharp-elbowed nudges to help others who are grieving or who simply need to deal with change, welcome or not. If you want clarification after reading on, you can contact me at mradamgolightly@gmail.com.
Love: You cannot love someone who is dead as you did when they were alive. Fail to understand this and you’ll end up like Miss Havisham. Your love kept evolving from the day you met your partner, and grief is just yet more change because true love prevails.
Children: If you are lucky enough to have them, they will pull you along in the early days. Over time, the better you are, the better they are. Involve kids in your grief and don’t put on a brave face for their sake. Children need permission to cry as much as encouragement to laugh. Thanks, Millie and Matt.
Time: Not really a great healer. The cliche is true – the first year is literally shocking, but the second is harder. Grief and loss will never diminish in size, so suck up that thought as early as you can. Use the passing of time to shape and enlarge the new world around your grief, so diminishing its dominance.
Money: Bereavement is dreadful, and you should not be worrying about bills. If you are not bereaved, get lots of life assurance today. If it is too late, then work out your true cost of living and adjust to suit before hitting a crisis. Easy to say, I know, but putting your head in the sand won’t help.
Crying: Don’t beat yourself up about not crying. It will happen in time. I still can only really do so when triggered by another’s loss rather than my own.
Friends: Don’t judge them too harshly – everyone processes grief differently. Some will step up and some will scarper. If you need new friends who “get it”, join WAY (Widowed and Young).
Health: Being fit to grieve means being healthier than you were because you have new stresses. Exercise, eat better and, if a man, go to the doctor with anything odd and accept where his finger might end up. Don’t smoke. Drink less booze, but accept that you will occasionally fall off the wagon.
Counselling: People who don’t want it need it most, months or years later. It allows you to get over the guilt of surviving and the greater guilt that the future may be equally as happy as the past, albeit different.
Job: You will realise after loss that working is just renting out chunks of your life. Is it worth it? If you have kids, maybe own less stuff and support them more. Bereavement is the ultimate in forced change and you might end up doing something new that you enjoy.
Sex: You are single, but don’t hurt people or beat yourself up for finding comfort and affirmation of life between the sheets or over the kitchen table. It is bloody great.
Help: Use the magic words “I need help” and people respond. It extends beyond family to friends and acquaintances if they have the skills and resources to give you domestic, financial, professional or whatever aid.
New love: Don’t be surprised if the first single member of the opposite sex who shows you kindness becomes an object of rather too much esteem. They are inadvertently planting attraction in your freshly tilled emotional seedbed. Hello, sister-in-loss Jo.
Cancer: It is always fucking cancer. It just is. Raise or give money if you can to fight the fucker.
Epilogue: I’d like my sharing to have helped those who have experienced loss or provoked those lucky bleeders who haven’t lost anyone into thinking differently about the gap between what they want for the rest of their lives and how they are living it now.
Being Adam Golightly has granted me sanity and self-awareness enough to see Helen’s legacy to me. I am probably kinder, calmer, a better father, more fulfilled professionally, will live longer and am better equipped to support my fellow bereaved. The irony and the tragedy is that the opportunity to be this better man only opened at the close of Helen’s life. Yet part of me believes that I am living now for two and that, somehow, Helen is here guiding me still as I steam on, head down against the storm, bringing Millie and Matt safely to port just as I promised her I would as she lay dying.
“The ones that love us never really leave us. You can always find them,” said Sirius to Harry and finally and so fittingly say I to you. Thank you.
Adam Golightly is a pseudonym
