The Day With the Funeral
Added at 2:57pm and filed under Offline, Random Thoughts
I fucking hate funerals.
Okay – so no-one likes them. No-one wakes up and thinks Way-HEY! I get to see my friend/family shoved into a FIRE/hole today! (or at least, I certainly hope not). But for me – God-doubting, heaven-denying, spiritual-less me – I find the whole experience nothing but a mess of awkward pauses and self-conscious silences. I don’t sing the hymns; singing – hell, even miming – the hymns seems painfully hypocritical considering I’m faithless, so I keep quiet instead. Same for prayers – it would be ridiculous to stand there and murmur Amen when I consider pray to be nothing but sophisticated talking to myself. So all I end up doing is sitting there, uncharacteristically silent, and trying not to cry. Because I always, always cry.
I may be faithless, but I’m not heartless.
Today I had to watch the curtains draw around the husband of a friend of mine. At one time we shared an office, and so her husband’s name was once as much part of my vocabulary as my own. But then I changed positions, and then companies entirely, and so we’d subsequently drifted apart. And then I got the message that her husband had died and I just felt awful … for him, for her, for having been a shitty friend and not properly stayed in touch. It seems inconceivable that this colossal clusterfuck of thing could have happened to her and I found out sixth-hand and via text message. At one time we couldn’t have a bowel movement without the other knowing.
So. Yeah. It was raining. It always seems to rain for funerals on TV, but my experience is that this isn’t always so. I distinctly remember the funeral of my grandfather, a gloriously day with an azure sky so clear it looked painted on, a day so bright and happy that it was almost blasphemous to be dressed in black, to be shaking and crying in the back of an unfamiliar car. The vicar took credit – told us that it was the Lord celebrating my Bampa’s return – and I remember being annoyed at that. But I was annoyed a lot around that time.
Today was the antonym of that day. Grey and cold and wet – like I said, a TV funeral. Over 150 people turned up which left us standing, steam rising off of our wet winter coats, nervously hopping from one foot to the other whilst crammed in the vestibule. The service was English-led, but peppered with Welsh scripture and hymns that I got the jist of but ultimately didn’t understand. That was probably just as well.
But the reading was in English, and it’s always the reading that fucking destroys me. You know the W. H. Auden poem from Four Weddings and a Funeral? Stop the clocks, cut off the telephone – prevent the dog from barking with a juicy bone? It wasn’t that, not exactly, but not a million miles off, either. Filled with tremulous love and regret and grief. And I can’t deal with that – I can’t cope when grief is red and raw and reeling. I cry because I don’t know how not to, and I cry less for the people who have gone and more for the poor, grieving bastards left behind. Those charged with picking up the pieces when the pieces are minuscule – atom-sized – razor-sharped and spread across a universe.
And if I’m not crying, I’m laughing. Inappropriately. Embarrassingly. The more I know I shouldn’t do it the worse I am, to the extent that I’ve had to leave a crematorium before now, had to sneak off to a toilet to calm down and wipe my eyes. That funeral of my grandfather’s I told you about? The one with the sunshine? My brother and I lost it there. I can’t remember what it was now – someone’s shit singing, or body odour, or maybe just the ridiculousness of the situation – but I know that it got so bad that I had to cram four Polos in my mouth to shut me up. My shoulders were shaking so bad that my cousin – stood behind me – put a comforting hand on my back because she thought I was crying. Which maybe I was at that point, I don’t fucking know.
So. Yeah. Funerals. They suck donkey balls.
Comments: (5)
The Day It Was Saturday
Added at 4:19pm and filed under Oh Mama, bff, family
Saturdays are frantic.
In recent months they’ve ceased being a cushion between the busy working week and Sunday’s laze around and have instead become a nothing but a blur of changing rooms, clothing changes, swimming trunks and football boots. I’m often up by 7am, out of the door by 8.45am, and then rarely back in again until late afternoon. And while yes, obviously, this is preferable than going to work, you’d better believe me when I tell you that this is harder than work. I rarely have to undress people and rub them down with towels in the office.
Unfortunately. Or fortunately – guess it depends on who it’d have to be.
So first up is swimming. S goes because it’s important and I make him, but bless him – I don’t think that there’s a dry-and-won’t-go-under-the-water-for-love-nor-money hair on his head that enjoys it. I’d like to think that it’s because he has, like, ridiculously sensitive eyes, but whilst that’s true I suspect he’d dislike it just as much even if he were immune to chlorine. The only time he seems to enjoy swimming is when he doesn’t have to go. Or when the pool is drained.
It’s not helped by the fact that despite starting off with his bezzie friend A in tow, A is progressing much faster than my little lad. Within within six weeks A got promoted up to the next stage whereas poor S had to tread water (HA! See what I did there?) in the beginner’s class for an additional term. This is further compounded by the fact that despite being only six, he’s currently the height of the average eight-year-old (actually, eight-and-a-half going by Next’s kids’ height chart). This is not a good thing when you already feel self-conscious standing on the side of the pool.
He’s getting better, though. We found out last week that he’s finally moved up a stage, and you can just imagine how proud we were, and how chuffed he was with himself. From us he got an extra £5 pocket money, and from the teacher he got a certificate, a lollipop – for reasons that escape me – a sticker (seriously: who’d put a sticker on in the water? And affix it to what exactly – his nipple? OUCH). Between you and I, I have no idea how it’s possible to progress a kid who essentially refuses to get his hair wet – IT’S A POOL, SAM! WET HAIR IS PAR FOR THE COURSE! – but apparently he met all the criteria, so next week we commence Stage 2.
I’ll wait here for a second whilst you give my son a well-deserved W00T!. It’s okay – I won’t say anything until you’re done.
Finished?
Incidentally, and before I get a barrage of complaints about forcing him to swim … look, I only force him because I care. This is not a bad thing I’m making him do. Not only might it save his life one day, but I started high school unable to swim and nothing he can experience now will match the agony of being a beginner at eleven years old in a mixed swimming class. In front of a boy you liked. Who laughed his ass off at your doggy-paddle.
I essentially blame most of my disastrous high school career on this.
Anyway, next up is football. S goes to a great little club that has 5-12 year olds running about, learning about fitness and training and healthy living alongside soccer skills. Despite initial wobbles (apparently, S isn’t great at hiding his feelings or concealing his dismay when fellow teammates arse something up – I have no idea where he gets it from … :p) he’s settled in great, and despite the odd flare up here and there, he’s learning how to be part of a team. It’s here where A and S invert themselves; S would play football naked and in a blizzard if that was the only option available, whereas A would prefer standing on the sideline with his hands in his pockets chatting to the sideline judge about the weather. Apparently. I can say this with confidence because that really did happen (the weather chat, not the blizzard. That really would be shady parenting, even by my standards).
The sessions lasts an impressive two hours, which means that we – the parents, carers and guardian types – have to leave them. Therefore, his first session back in March was the first time I’d ever left him with another adult I didn’t know and explicitly trust (friends, family and school excepted, obviously). It sounds like something that should be celebrated – WE’RE FREE! WOOHOO! PASS ME THE PINOT! – but it’s actually – surprisingly – not. It’s simply another illustration of how he doesn’t need me as much as he used to, yet it only reinforces how badly I need him. Rather pathetically, I pine the whole time we’re apart and the only reason I don’t feel embarrassed is because D – A’s mother and my BFF #4 – is much, much worse than me. Hah!
So football lasts two hours. At first D and I would retreat to one or other’s house for a cuppa and a catch up, but increasingly we’re spending this time doing crappy chores and errands – think tester pots, car cleaning, clothing returns and birthday card selection and you’ll have an idea of what we usually end up doing – but that essentially means we’re more frazzled when we pick the kids up then when we dropped them off. Surely that isn’t right? Surely we should be getting facials?
Anyway, by now it’s midday and the boys have been active for almost three hours. We’ve fallen into the habit of going for lunch, which as a default is at Pizza Hut, but sometimes we go all out and make it to a Beefeater. I know. I’m living THE DREAM, right? Never thought of myself as a champion of middle-class suburbia, but alas, here I am. My only saving graze is that I am neither a soccer mom nor a over-compensatory parent, and I drive neither a VW Beetle or a pointless city-bound Range Rover. Gotta have some standards, right?
At this point sometimes we split up for the day. Most often we don’t, unless we’re forced to because M is off-shift and therefore able to take S to see City play.
(An aside: D and I have fallen into a friendship that is more sisterhood than anything else, which is weird because I’ve never experienced this before despite having three other best friends whom I love with every fibre of my being and for whom I’d gladly take a bullet. Maybe it’s because we live, literally, across the street from each other, or maybe it’s because the closeness of our kids have forced us into it. Whatever it is, it’s amazing and it’s only now – thirty-three years later – that I realise what I might have missed out on growing up without a sister.)
So. Yeah. Saturdays? Told you they were frantic.
Comments: (7)
The Day With Everything Getting Older
Added at 11:26am and filed under Oh Mama, Random Thoughts, family, go me
Still haven’t located my notebook. :(
I’ve opened this up – this WordPress admin panel, I mean – about seven GAZILLION times over recent months. I start hammering out an entry only to find – a few hundred words in – that I’m boring myself. That, my friends, is not a good sign. A bored WRITER is not an indicator of an awesomely immersive and enthralling blogging experience.
Today, I’ve promised myself that come hell or high-water, this one’s gonna make it. Even if you pass out from boredom midway through. Don’t say I didn’t warn you.
Thing is, I don’t have much to say. The older I get, the more reclusive I seem to be. I used to use this place as a cheap alternative to therapy, somewhere to vomit out all the snarling angry parts of me. And while I’m still very much a black bubble of hostility, apparently I’m a sly black bubble, because I internalise the shit out of everything and share fuck all. Right now I can’t decide if this is simply maturity or the on-set of personality-altering brain tumour – or possibly even a little of both.
So, let’s see … what’s new with me. Well, work is still work – crap but tolerable. Family life is as it’s always been – occasionally problematic but essentially worth the effort. M and I recently celebrated our ninth wedding anniversary, which is crazy and mad and ridiculous because surely I’m not old enough to have been married that long? I mean, I know that we were young – too young, actually, given hindsight – but still … madness, right? As for S … guys, he’s my everything. I just – I consider myself to be pretty verbose, but even I struggle to properly convey just how bright a light this little kid is in my otherwise dark and snarly world. No, it’s not all sunshine and smiles (only this morning I could’ve happily throttled him over his cornflakes) but as a rule he just … he completes me. Generally so full of love and thoughtfulness and fun, it’s kind of hard when I see glimpses of the teenager I know he’s going to grow up to be: arsey and morose and monosyllabic. I know it’s gonna come – as a mother, you have to know – and I have to acknowledge that he’s already over half-way through to reaching his stint as a teenager. I just hope he will read these words when he’s older and realise that even when I’m screaming at him for not putting the video games back in the right cases (OMG THAT PISSES ME OFF) or ranting because he hasn’t picked up his room … even if he thinks that I hate him, I still adore him with every fibre of my being. Heh.
Whilst on the topic of awesome kids, I’ve started my first 1:1 placement with Barnardo’s. As I hope you would expect, I can tell you nothing about it really, other than the fact that I see my placementee for a little over an hour once a week, and we spend that time hanging out and trying to help her buffer her confidence. We’ve met three times now and whilst I was suffering a crisis of faith the other day, wondering just what kind of help I can be seeing her for such a teeny amount of time each week, the look on her face when I picked her up a few days ago was just … precious. It’s time-consuming – just as I’d expected it to be – but it’s incredibly rewarding, too. It’s a great gig – if you have an hour or two to spare a week, I cannot stress enough how much good you can do by doing the same. You really should look into it.
Otherwise, things are much the same. We bought a new fridge-freezer, as our existing one is twice as old as our son and threatening to explode. We have a new car on order, which is hella exciting but only made possible by the fact that my awesome brother works for awesome Renault and they have this awesome family loan scheme thing whereby I get a brand new car every nine months (did I mention that it was awesome?) On the weekend we’re off to London for a night out at the O2 and to see, ahem, Lady Gaga in concert. Although I certainly don’t mind her stuff, this is neither my idea nor to my tastes but as BFF #4 is desperate to go and I’m a fabulous kind-hearted friend, I’m going along to keep her company. Our men are also coming despite being ticketless, a weird turn of events which has transpired either because a) scared we’re going to have too much fun without them; b) scared that we’ll have too much fun with other men; or c) they simply want to get shitfaced in the various outlets around the arena whilst we’re inside. I’m opting for c), but pft, who knows.
Finally, I joined that rollllllling bangwagon and signed up at formspring. I held off for ages because I figured no-one would ask me anything and instead I’d plunge into a deep, spiral of self-doubt and depression. But seeings as I’m ME and I’m probably going to do that anyway, I thought fuck it and signed up. Ask away if you wanna keep me off those anti-depressants …
I <3 you, guys. Thanks for sticking around. :)
Comments: (10)
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