by Jane Riley
It sounded like a good place to start so I agreed and Andy started up the car again and drove to the pub. I wiped my face on my suit sleeve and thought about the dual properties of hot chips and beer – comforting and celebratory treats at the same time. But I knew now that nothing could beat the endorphin-induced euphoria of discovering you were loved by the woman you had been secretly in love with. The instant gratification of salty fried food didn’t even come close.
Seeing Blue
When Andy dropped me home, all I wanted was to wallow in the warmth of love. To hold that feeling of joy, as if I had overcome my fear of jumping off the diving board and was freeze-framed in a forward dive in the tuck position, hovering mid-air, suspended in a ball of happiness – blue sky around me, blue water below me. Where I was sitting in a bubble of mutual adoration that no one could pop and where nothing else mattered but Marie’s love for me and my love for her. I flopped into an armchair and wallowed. I was a bee with a flower bed all to myself. I was a sommelier in a barrel of Penfolds Grange. I was a chocoholic in a lake of melted Mars bars.
Until I opened my eyes and realised I was once again alone in my one-bedroom flat with no one to keep me company, not even a goldfish. An overwhelming feeling of loneliness and despair came over me. What was the point of finding out Marie loved me when she was no longer around to share it with me? When our love for each other was going nowhere but down a dead-end street? I should have taken my own advice and stayed in the blissful state of being ignorant. I remained in this befuddled and despondent mood for at least half an hour, doing nothing but feeling sorry for myself. A pathetic, lonely Oliver Clock.
Eventually I got up. If for nothing else but to change, to get out of my work clothes and into something more comfortable. Then I pootled around the flat, aimlessly tweaking the minutiae. Ensuring the remote controls sat parallel in a row on the coffee table, the spices were aligned in the spice rack, labels facing out, and the pictures on the wall weren’t crooked. These tasks usually gave me comfort; they were small rituals around which I could retain a feeling of order and control. But today I felt more discombobulated than I had ever been and no amount of symmetry seemed to ease it. I had basked in a momentary high and then, bam, it was over and I felt flatter than a flat-pack IKEA table. I was soon to turn forty and what did I have? A business that was dying and a life that was lifeless. I was a funeral director burdened with an inheritance I hadn’t asked for and an overbearing mother. I was a man with no sweetheart to cherish his love handles, no siblings to confer with and no children to foster into the future. I was a man knocking on the door of middle age with no hobbies, a minimal social life and an unbearable love in his heart for a woman who had passed away. A man who could have spoken up about his love before she died, and maybe, just maybe, they could have had a few precious months together, yet I’d let the moment slip away and now it was too late.
This called for more drastic action. I turned my attentions to the bookshelf, whose lack of order of any kind – height, alphabetical or otherwise – I found most upsetting. How had I not noticed before? I decided colour-coding the spines of the books would be the most aesthetically pleasing configuration and threw myself into the task of taking apart and reordering the bookshelf with the fervour of a dog digging sand. Anything to try and make myself feel better. Then I found my notebook of resolutions in a colour that didn’t match the rest. That stopped me in my tracks. Not its pale lemon colour so much as what lay inside – my vows to change, to ask Marie out; the determination I had exhibited but never followed through on. I flicked through the notebook. There were pages and pages of lists here.
Earlier resolutions were broad and loose, like Thou shalt go on an overseas holiday; Thou shalt go on an adventure (although what sort I hadn’t specified); Thou shalt learn a language – Italian perhaps, but not French because that was Mum’s foreign language of choice; Thou shalt stop eating cheese and lose weight. Then they got more specific, like Thou shalt buy an abs Kruncher machine as seen on TV; Thou shalt watch less television; and Thou shalt get a pet.
I had achieved none of them. Most, I hadn’t even tried. They were fanciful notions of a chubby man fixed to his sofa. A man who was turning forty, when? I did a quick finger count. Soon, very soon – three months soon – and what did I have to show for it? I had spent years thinking up resolutions and jotting them down. The time and mental energy I had wasted. It was all for nothing!
This realisation abruptly ended my colour-coding. I dropped the notebook, rested my wine glass next to a thriller by Jeffrey Archer and held on to the corner of the bookshelf to steady myself. Then the bloody thing started shaking, threatening to spill the first books I had arranged with spines of a red hue. I should have had that custom built-in made after all. It was like I was in the middle of an earthquake. An earthquake to ruin my tidying! I collapsed into the armchair, buried my head in my hands and let the earthquake of emotion do its thing as tears spluttered down my cheeks and my body shook with the full force of Mother Nature. I was a burst water mains of grief, expunging my sorrow for Marie, pity for myself, my unrequited love and the loss of my dreams – however fantastical they might have been.
I was crying so much that tears came out of my nose and I had no box of tissues at the ready, or even a nicely ironed handkerchief to pull from a jacket breast pocket. My right sleeve would have to do. Then the left. Then the bottom of my shirt, which had half come out of my trousers. When finally I emerged, puffy-eyed and clothing-dampened, the earthquake over, I felt exhausted, drained like a corpse of its blood. I couldn’t even remember having rearranged the bookshelf and couldn’t be bothered putting it back together again. I splashed water on my face and changed into my pyjamas. I opened the fridge to tempt myself to eat but couldn’t even do that. I lay on the sofa in front of the television, hugging a cushion. When I woke, it was nearly time for bed. I don’t remember cleaning my teeth, turning out the lights or even putting my clothes away. All I wanted was to forget who I was.
I slipped under the covers and dreamed of what a life with Marie could have been like. Days spent holding her floral-scented hands, kissing her cherry lips, planning a future together in which we worked and lived as one. I dreamed of resurrecting Clock & Son’s standing in the community: a funeral home that flourished, one I would be proud to pass on to the next generation. I dreamed of a future Clock & Son where there was a new son or daughter to pass it on to. I dreamed of eating all the cheese I wanted without putting on weight. I dreamed of travelling with a companion to wine regions in France. I dreamed of not being alone, lonely, with a business that was doomed and a future that was empty. I dreamed of the next decade of my life that included a woman who loved me and my quirks, and I her and her quirks, with two children by our sides, living in a house, not a flat, the contents of which I had neatly ordered and arranged. A life that was perfectly symmetrical in every way. I dreamed of everything I wanted but didn’t have. I don’t know if they were proper dreams or awake dreams. The two merged into one, with me drifting in and out of a sleep that was far from restful.
Advice from the Grave
I’m not sure what’s worse: being in the middle of a breakdown or coming out the other end, exhausted and empty. When I woke, not only did I feel physically and mentally spent, as if flushed of all my innards, but the flat felt eerily hollow as well. I padded around it aimlessly, every move I made echoing miserably; my slippered footsteps seemed loud, my own sneeze made me jump, my jaw creaked audibly with every chew of a Mars bar. How utterly soul-destroying.
It made me realise how terribly alone I now was. That my dreams of Marie joining me in the apartment would never be. That my flat was not to be a home for the two of us but would remain as it always had been: a one-bedroom dwelling for a single man. Even the term ‘bachelor pad’ was too lofty a nom de plume for it. For that implied a place of carefree fun for a man who enjoyed the single life, revelled in it, even. I was not that man. I had nothing to revel in.
All
I had was a tired old double bed whose mattress dipped on one side only – not because of any amount of over-exertion but because of my own dead weight lying in the same spot by myself, night after night. I may have had a kitchen that was big enough for two to cook in and a family of four to dine in, a living room that could comfortably seat six and a courtyard just big enough for a small drinks party (if you didn’t mind touching your neighbour and not attempting to mingle) and yet I was always there alone, microwaving meals for one, sitting in the same middle section of the sofa in front of the TV as I always did or perching on an outdoor chair staring at my attempts at potted decor as if waiting for Marie or other guests to arrive.
For a long time I had been dreaming of Marie arriving and never leaving, imagining what it would be like to know that every day she would wake up next to me and join me in the flat after work in the evenings. If I got home before her, I would open the place up, start preparing dinner and have her favourite drink ready for when she walked in the door. She would burst in like a bright bunch of peonies, kick off her shoes, and we would kiss – passionately, of course – then talk about our day. The flat would hum with the chatter of two people connecting, two lovers uniting. Oh, how romantic it all was. Oh, how romantic it could have been. How real it had once seemed – even if it was only in my imagination. Now, the flat was like an abandoned bomb shelter with me the sole survivor. The only shoes being kicked off were mine, the only kissing to be had was on the TV, the only chatter came from my thoughts clattering in my head. And outside seemed a scary place that was undesirable to be in.
So, what did I do? Well, I didn’t know what to do with myself. I didn’t want to leave the flat, encounter other people, go to work and pretend everything was just fine. I wanted to be alone and yet, ironically, I didn’t want to be alone! Oh, the torment of loneliness, the anguish of grief. It wasn’t like it was a weekend, when I had my usual routine. These few days were unlike any day off I’d ever had. It was a never-ending time of nothingness in which I had no purpose and no meaning; and nothing was achieved. I would go to make a cup of tea and then forget I’d put the kettle on. I’d turn on both the radio and the television for company until the ingratiating voices of presenters and soap opera actors irritated me and I turned them off. In the shower, I would stand under the hot water, staring into space, and forget to wash. I would start to dress but only get as far as undies and track pants. Is it possible to look homeless when you have a home? Is it possible to feel homeless when you have a home?
I can tell you that it is.
Then, when I was rummaging in a kitchen drawer looking for my toothbrush, which I was starting to absent-mindedly leave in odd places, I found an old key ring of Dad’s – one he had designed himself. I’d forgotten it was there. It may have been his pride and joy but it hadn’t been a hit with customers. The design of a coffin-shaped key ring in brown-coloured stainless steel with a silver rim and the Clock & Son name in the middle was never going to take off. Who wants a coffin dangling on the end of your keychain? Only Dad did, and so he was the only one that we knew of who used it, until the link broke. Then he died and I inherited it – another little memento I shoved in a drawer. The thought of it made me sad. Not that I’d left it in a drawer never to be fixed, but that I never got to spend more time with Dad. I ran a finger over the shiny coffin. Dad used to say, ‘Coffins are not the end, they’re merely a new beginning.’ It was not how everyone saw it, but you could rely on Dad for the one-liners. Like the corny pun he once coined, to be said in jest after costs were discussed, which always got a giggle from me but no one else: ‘And if you don’t cough up, you might be cough-in.’ Mum quickly put an end to that one-liner and made sure it never entered The Folder of Systematic Funeral Protocol – that gem of a document filled with Dad’s sage advice. I had a copy of it in the flat, for Dad had insisted we all take one home with us, just in case we needed to dip into it after hours or, in my and the embalmer’s case, if we got a call-out in the middle of the night and needed to refresh our words of consolation. I went to the bottom drawer at the end of the kitchen bench, found the Folder, took it out and flipped it open to the introduction.
Grief takes many forms. It’s like the sky: one minute rolling with angry thunderclouds and rain, the next lightly sprinkled with cumulonimbus . . .
Dad actually said that to people, and most were too overcome with sadness to register what he was talking about or to ask what ‘cumulonimbus’ meant. I took it upon myself to explain if they were looking quizzical. I’d quietly whisper, ‘A thick fluffy cloud,’ as Dad continued on with his analogy. When I took over from him, I discounted the intro as too meteorologically jargonistic but now I realised how true his words were. Right then I felt blanketed in stratus, a low-lying grey cloud that hung heavy over me.
. . . But eventually, I promise, the clouds will lift and then dissipate to reveal a freshly washed blue sky.
At that moment it was like Dad was talking to me and me alone. It hadn’t occurred to me to use the Folder for my own purposes and I bet Dad never thought his son would get solace from it either. It had only ever been meant for others, as if we were immune to the effects of grieving.
I took the Folder to the kitchen table, sat down and listened to what Dad had to say. You’ve got to accept all the different cloud formations that come and go and may do so for some time yet. They’re all part of the process, Oliver. Do not berate yourself for the clouds, do not worry if they hang around, do not fret if they bring storms; let them. Let them wash you, cleanse you, refresh you. It was like he was talking to me from whatever cloud type was, at that moment, lingering over my flat. Dear old Dad. His at times gruff exterior belied his ability to help us as purveyors of funeral management to sensitively handle the grieving, even if it was in the form of a geography lesson with a sermon-like tone to it.
A tear bubble burst from the corner of my eye. It didn’t feel the same as those from the day before; it was more of a sentimental tear, from knowing that Dad was still with me and that, perhaps, in death, he was giving me more emotional support than he ever had when he was alive. How strange but, also, how immensely comforting.
I don’t know how long I sat there reading his cloud-inspired introduction over and over until I wasn’t really reading the words so much as clutching on to Dad’s voice, but eventually I mentally returned to my seat at the table. I glanced at the wall clock; it was two in the afternoon. I suddenly felt hungry. There was a tub of strawberry yoghurt all on its own on the second shelf. It would be breakfast and lunch rolled into one. I took it out, gave the fridge shelf a quick wipe down while I was there then slurped the yoghurt with a spoon as I leaned against the kitchen bench. There wasn’t much other food to tempt me but it didn’t matter; my appetite had not properly returned. Yet already I could tell something had shifted. I wouldn’t say I felt better, more that a little of the cloud had thinned. While I didn’t resume normal activity for the rest of that day and couldn’t face it the next day either, I did a pretty good job of not fighting the cloud. And I had Dad to thank for that.
Rescued
After two days, several unlistened phone messages and a few door knocks, Andy turned up. His head appeared at the living room window, like that of a newly acquired giant gnome.
‘Mate,’ he called out, tapping on the glass. ‘Mate.’
I opened the window. ‘What are you doing?’ I said, even though it was perfectly clear: Mum had sent him over.
‘Everything OK?’ he asked.
‘I needed a few days off, that’s all.’
‘Do you want to talk about it?’
‘There’s nothing to talk about.’
‘OK, but since I’m here, do you want to let me in? Or we could chat like this, me in the garden, you inside with your untamed beard and old track pants I’ve never seen you wear before. What is going on?’ Andy looked horrified.
I touched my chin. It had never felt so hirsute. I feared a resemblance to an overused cat scratching post.
‘I jest,’ Andy laughed. ‘I’m jealous. You know I can’t even grow a goatee and am already half bald at thirty-eight.’
I looked at him and pondered the idea of an Andy gnome. Perhaps if he’d had more of a paunch . . .
‘So are you going to let me in?’ He looked at me, waiting expectantly for an answer. Of course I was going to let him in. I left the window and went to the front door.
‘Jeez, what happened in here?’ he said, gesturing to the gross untidiness of my flat. It did look pretty bad, now that he pointed it out. ‘This is not like you, mate, not like you at all.’
‘Tea? Beer?’ I said.
‘Whatever you’re having.’ He pushed some books to one side with his foot so he could get to the sofa.
I handed him a beer and we sat in silence for a few seconds.
‘Is this about Marie?’ Andy asked.
I shrugged.
‘It’s OK, mate, you know you can talk to me.’ Then he let the silence do the talking, urging me to speak.
‘It’s everything, Andy. Marie, the business, my life . . . I’m nearly forty, and what do I have to show for it? Nothing, Andy, nothing. I may not even have a job by the time I turn forty.’
Andy looked at me thoughtfully. ‘You know,’ he said, ‘I’ve always been envious of you. Your tidy, ordered life, the safety and satisfaction of an inherited vocation.’
I couldn’t believe Andy was saying this. I was the one who had been envious of him, with his dad who was always travelling to exotic places, his artistic mother who let the kids do whatever they wanted so long as it was legal, and four sisters who were encouraged to follow their hearts. They’d all ended up in a creative job of some sort and Andy had become a photographer. He was a man who could live in the moment and enjoy the moment without worrying about what came next. And he had an uncanny ability to counsel, acquired I suspected from being surrounded by women and girls as a child.