It is well.
Well, is it? Can it be?
I mostly forgot what it feels like to be part of the pandemic when Seb died. What took over was far bigger for us. An inconvenience in the tragedy.
I didn’t get to have a significant final conversation with him, to close the book. We got the memo that the moments you share with loved ones are the most precious but we thought we’d get the chance to think about it later. Seb put an excitable LP to bed twice the night before he died; a bonus goodnight for all time.
When it happened I tried to state how I understood that everyone was having a hard time. Someone very clever recognised my empathy but gave me permission to prioritise my own experience. She held my hand. She is a friend and also a coach and you can find her here if you need help too.
This morning I am struck with a heaviness that is not just pastry related. Sometimes it feels like an oppressive hand on my shoulder. I am not actively sad for me- I am sad for you. Not because Christmas has changed- it is that, but it isn’t. It is that you may not really know what life means in terms of how precious and fleeting it is. Perhaps even if you do, you don’t know how to act on it. Without this knowledge there is the potential for you to miss out. I am sad all the time, but I am alive. I am full even in my emptiness.
I could give you a list of all the ways in which your 2020 may have been significantly better than the year my family have had. It would serve no positive purpose.
We as a society keep trying to control nature with our calendars, our timings. Our wants for instant access to things and to each other. First it was the school terms, now Christmas; soon we will want it to end with Big Ben next week and a deserted South Bank. It reminds me of the year that Bowie died. We pointed to numbers and marked the whole 365 as a bad time for us, but we didn’t lose the man in his truest sense. I didn’t compute that at the time. The son, the dad, the husband.
We have lost time and we have lost choice. I hope we have been blessed with the gift of empathy and perspective. We are richer than we would like to admit. If we can choose what to eat and what to watch. If we are not looking at the coins in our hands to feed a metre or queuing for the things that someone else has deigned to share with us- then we are abundant in so many ways.
There are losses this year that will echo through the rest of our lives.
I sincerely wish you nothing worse.
I recommend you go outside if you feel stuck in. I hope that you are able to tell the people in your lives how much they mean to you- if you’re not the kind of person to share; now is the time to speak up. If your heart is hidden behind locks and coded keypads- throw open the doors. We have already lost- if something else is lurking to get you, you may as well face it wholly and with fullness.
Make noise with your tears and laugh it up- we are loud animals who have been well trained. Let it out.
End the year with looking at a reflection of a wiser and better human. It will be well- but it is simply down to you to make it so. There is nothing else that you can do.