Grief – somewhat abstract

Life Happens

Featured Image by K. Mitch Hodge on Unsplash

Hello, everyone! Time sure does go by fast sometimes, doesn't it?

Before you continue reading, I want you to know that this post may be triggering for some folks. If you don't feel ready to read about topics like loss, death, grief, or home ownership¹, stop reading now and do something else. And remember, you are loved and worthy of that love, no matter what you are going through.

If you need to talk to someone, no matter the issue, no matter where you are…

Head over to https://findahelpline.com/. Talk with a crisis counselor today. Verified global support for anxiety, depression, suicide prevention, domestic violence, sexual abuse and more.

The last time I posted, I had finished up my series on server-side rendering and had every intention of doing more posts on other topics, but as John Lennon famously said (and probably borrowed from Allen Saunders):

Life is what happens while you are busy making other plans.

While I had plans, life happened.

Close up portrait of a vibrantly redheaded woman and bearded man in glasses, both grinning. — Martha and me, April 2022

My last post was in August 2022 and life was amazing. Earlier that year, I had met the love of my life (so far) and had been enjoying an amazing summer building a relationship that we both knew would last forever. In October, just two months later, Martha died of a stroke, aged 39. Life is what happens while you are busy making other plans, and so is Death (it's a big D kinda word). It is an understatement to say that it came as a shock; my world fell apart in an instant and I am still working to rebuild it into something new. Not only did I lose her, but so did her family, including her daughter, and I miss and worry about that smart, sassy, and curious girl every day.

In 2021, about a year earlier and before I ever met Martha and her daughter, I had decided to buy a new home. It was a condo being built in my neighbourhood and I was excited to become a homeowner again to begin a new chapter, post-divorce, post-pandemic. I signed some documents and paid my deposit, then watched as construction proceeded. During this time, I met Martha, fell in love, learned that love could be very different than what I had known before, and became excited that this new condo would be a place where we could build memories together. Life happened. The whole time I was building my relationship with Martha, I could see the progress as folks were building my new home. I remember being on a call one time with my parents while Martha was at my apartment, and I joked that she wasn't invited – it was my new home, but of course I didn't mean it, she was most definitely invited.

In July this year, on Martha's birthday – something I did not plan, I finally moved in. Moving is a great distraction and goodness knows, grief needs distractions. Though I am an atheist and I don't believe in ghosts, grief is a powerful thing and I was genuinely worried about moving. I was worried that if I moved, Martha would not be able to find me; that I was leaving her behind. With hindsight, this was a foolish thing – love isn't anchored to times or places, only to ourselves. I can see that now. My new condo is amazing and I love it, and she is everywhere I need to see her when I most need to feel her love. I talk to her everyday. I wish she was here to talk back.

Since she passed, among other changes, I stopped taking dancing lessons (though I might start again one day), and I started trying stand-up comedy. At this point in my life after the experiences of the last five years, I carry this distinct feeling that nothing matters except that which we choose – it's a scary place to be but it is also powerful and liberating. It is a lot easier to stand up on a stage and tell jokes when you really do not care that much about what others think.

There is so much more I could write about these last two years and about grief, and maybe I will, at some point. For now, what am I trying to say? I am trying to say that this sucks, that I miss her everyday and wish you had got to see just how bright she made every room she entered. I am trying to say that I am still growing and learning. I am trying to say that it gets easier. I am trying to say that I am still here and I still intend to write more blog posts. I am still making other plans.

A redheaded woman in a dinosaur dress feigning a scream at a dinosaur puppet on her shoulder, with a concerned man in a lab coat next to her. — Martha dressed as Marthaceratops pretending to be scared by my T-Rex hatchling puppet, Oct 2022

Soon, within a few days of Halloween, it will be the two year anniversary of Martha's death (perhaps I will start counting her death in years instead of months, though I suspect it will be both). Halloween was arguably her favourite holiday (she loved a good costume), and I'm thinking about aligning my housewarming party with that holiday to honour her, create new memories, and build the future I have to live without her (though not without her love). In the meantime, I've been busy trying to make a home that I am comfortable in, both within my new condo and within myself. Some days are easier than others.

Life is what happens while we are busy making other plans; making other plans is what creates the circumstances for that life to happen.

🖤

If you need to talk to someone, no matter the issue, no matter where you are…

Head over to https://findahelpline.com/. Talk with a crisis counselor today. Verified global support for anxiety, depression, suicide prevention, domestic violence, sexual abuse and more.

I don't mean to make light of the heavier topics, and I think humour is a valuable coping mechanism [↩]

🎂 Birthday 2020

Photo by Adi Goldstein on Unsplash

I know, I know, we are supposed to be talking about server-side rendering, but it was my birthday this weekend. Though for a moment I considered writing something on GitHub Actions, on reflection, I decided I would do better to hold that for a time when I can give it, too, more focus.

Of course, you might think the lack of a new technical post (and the presence of this prosaic interlude) were down to over indulgence in alcohol. It seems like a natural conclusion to draw. It is wrong though; I have not had a drink since New Year and, October, before that. Alcohol had not helped my mood while dealing with intense emotions, so I cut it out. No, I cannot blame the lack of a technical post on the drink. In fact, there is nothing upon which blame could be placed; I just did not want to spend time writing a detailed technical blog on my birthday weekend. So, I did not. If we cannot treat ourselves to what we want on our birthdays, when can we?

Since not drinking I have really struggled to work out how I celebrate things. My life to this point has the concept of celebration deeply anchored by drinking. I drank socially and, thankfully, without addiction – my drinking problem was emotional rather than physical. Whether promotion, birthday, or some other news to commemorate or celebrate, my immediate inclination has been to have a beer or perhaps something stronger. Recently, since I don't drink, I would remind myself of that and then my brain would say, "Well, smoke then." But I do not smoke anymore either – I am an addict when it comes to nicotine. Suddenly, celebration has meant reminding myself of past joys and then having to find the willpower to deny myself those things. It does not feel like celebration.

Since my birthday was not going to wait while I figured this out, this weekend, I tried celebrating regardless. Instead of smoking and drinking as I would have twenty years ago¹, I focused more on love and laughter, spending time in the company of wonderful, supportive, and funny friends, old and new. The emotional turmoil of the last few months, and its associated uncertainty has meant a lot of change. This weekend was delightfully entertaining, and on occasion, awkward, uncomfortable, and entirely, humanly reassuring. Although I am still learning exactly what celebration means to me now that I am an ex-smoker and non-drinking Englishman, I still had an absolutely lovely time.

I feel so much better having shared that with you. Please do join me next week when normal programming will resume. I really value our time together and am very grateful that I was able to take some time away to spend my birthday with friends. 💙

yeah, I am getting old, it seems [↩]

🤔 Musings on Loneliness and Grief

Photo by Karim MANJRA on Unsplash

This week, I am taking a break from my posts about server-side rendering to share something non-technical I wrote recently while dealing with some intense emotions¹. We do not get to choose when the symptoms of grief spend time with us, yet I am starting to see them as a gift rather than a burden. An opportunity to look deeper and peel away the intensity to see what lies beneath. This was one of those occasions. I hope that by sharing, I challenge the stigma that men face when publicly acknowledging their emotional and mental fragility and health.

One of my greatest revelations regarding loneliness has been that it requires much more than the mere presence, love, and companionship of others to be rid of it. It is such a strange prison in which to be cradled. A seemingly permanent margin between the self and everything else, yet with no obvious keeper maintaining it. A state of mind that the mind seems incapable of altering by will alone. I suspect it is a conceit, a curtain drawn on deeper emotions, much as boredom is a non-thing that we label to avoid labelling the thing, or things that are otherwise concealed.

So what is it? What does loneliness hide? A feeling of not being wanted, or worse, being unwanted? A fear of rejection? Of failure? Of accepting a failure that already happened? Grief? Is it just grief disguised as desire? Like listening to music, searching for that perfect song to fit the moment, but never quite finding it? Perhaps it is an intangible ghost of where one believes safety lies, or where it once lay.

And just as the feeling has taken me, in a moment it vanishes, lying in wait till the next time. An unease and uncertainty return. But what was ever easy and when was it ever certain?

Thank you for reading my ramblings. I am not some sort of expert, I am working things out as I go and doing what feels right for my own well-being. What you need may be different, so if you are feeling not quite right, please talk to someone. Therapy can be amazing. I myself started by chatting and ultimately breaking down in front of my doctor, but you don't have to be as melodramatic with medical professionals as I was in that moment.

You are not alone. You are not wasting anyone's time. Seek help. It is there.

If that all seems too daunting, there are online resources available to you, just a click away. Here are a few.

This was originally posted to a personal social media profile; it has been edited for this blog [↩]

😣 Good Grief, 🥳 Happy Holidays

Photo by Mike Labrum on Unsplash

🥳The Holidays are upon us. In the US, what folks refer to as The Holidays is generally accepted to start around Thanksgiving – the third Thursday of November, though my observations suggest it really starts at the end of October, with Halloween. In the UK, in my anglo-Christian family, it was Christmas and the commercialised build up to it. Perhaps it is something else for you. Whatever The Holidays means to you, they are here and they can be a struggle for many. Suffocating societal expectations of Happy Holidays. Debt-fueling challenges to shower loved ones with gifts. Reminiscence of happier times. Remembrance of past pain. "Happy Holidays", we tell each other, persevering to manifest it as truth, wearing it like an inverted halloween mask, the scary facade on the inside. Upon us like a rabid gang armed with tinsel, Christmas music, and peppermint candy canes, intent on forcing us to ignore how we feel and join in with someone else's idea of fun, The Holidays lie waiting to sabotage some of us when we least expect it.

Collage of me and friends on a few different Christmas Days — A few Christmas memories

😣The Holidays are complicated. This post is not intended as some War on Christmas manifesto or a downer on the holiday season. I have incredibly happy memories of The Holidays: traditions, roaring fires, home-cooked family meals. The camaraderie of working shifts with friends at the local pub. My Grandma's birthday on Christmas Eve. Waking up early to open gifts. Going to bed late after too much food and far too many drinks. Friends, family, church, caroling, and more. I fondly remember my time in the church choir¹, singing at midnight mass, or walking the village, caroling door to door. Or my Nana staying with us on Christmas Eve so that she could spend Christmas Day with us. And that time my Uncle Peter surprised my Nana and the rest of us, showing up at the local pub in England after calling us from his home in Canada just the night before (he was really in a hotel nearby). Or the time I surprised my mum with a visit when she thought I was spending Christmas here in the US (and yes, it was my Uncle's visit years before that inspired that surprise). My first Christmas meeting much of my girlfriend's family long before she became my wife, and the time I was welcomed into the home of Gary and Carol to eat together with many neighbours and friends. The Holidays have been filled with happiness for me and I am grateful to carry these memories with me. Yet The Holidays also represent an unhappy, twisted, ugly place. A place that ripped my cousin away in a tragic plane crash and stole the sparkle of my friend Mary, both far too soon. The annual reminder my Nana will visit nevermore, that my Grandma's birthday will be remembered without her.

The Holidays are happy moments and sad, and these moments do not cancel each other out, they weave themselves together into a complex tapestry of deep emotion that can in an instant swing from joyful remembrance to helpless sobbing and back again. This is The Holidays for me. A complicated dance of happiness and grief. Grief is good, grief is healthy if we embrace it rather than dodge it. I find my grief is a journey, walking hand in hand with my emotions as I learn a new way to live without the loves I never expected to lose.

😔The Holidays are lonely. This year is my first year alone for The Holidays since my partner and I concluded our marriage was over, since we separated, since we divorced. This is my first time publicly acknowledging that as a thing that happened. It felt crass to announce it as some thing worthy of everyone else's attention. I do not know if that is because it is or because I am just afraid or something else. There have been many days where I wished for my Nan or Mary to show up for a cup of tea and a chat to help me work that out. In some ways, they did. Grief is complicated.

After reading this, you may think I am misguided to be alone right now or to be sharing all this so candidly. Your gut reaction might be to reach out and invite me over to spend time with people for The Holidays. Please don't, though I very much appreciate the sentiment. I already have the right amount of plans (I will be spending Christmas Day with a few of my friends) and I need to do this. I need to do this and I need to do it now, this year, this moment, with these feelings. If this isn't The First Holidays Alone then I have to wait a whole year before I can get past that seemingly arbitrary yet looming milestone. Right now, I need to spend time with me and my grief, and continue our journey working out exactly how things work from this point on.

🤗The Holidays are hopeful. The Holidays are whatever you need them to be. For me, this year at least, they are a time to reflect and to grow as I come to terms with my grief, my loneliness, and the path I have lying ahead, somewhere in the unknown. I have been here before and I cleared a path to get where I am, I know I can learn to clear a different path than the one I planned. You can too. Whatever you are facing as the year end draws near, whatever The Holidays mean to you, you have the strength to endure. We all have our own paths to clear, and no one is better suited to clear yours than you. You can do it. You have done it before. Do not let society shame you into thinking you are not succeeding just because you don't fit the Hallmark picture of The Holidays. You are enough, you are loved. 💝

this may surprise those that know me to be an atheist – our roads are long and winding, with many turns and stops [↩]

And so it goes

You may have noticed I have not posted in a while. We recently moved from Michigan to Texas and during that time, I let a few lesser commitments slide. That is not to say I do not value my blog, I merely value other aspects of my life more¹. Now that we are settled and some of the more frantic aspects of the move are over with, I thought it appropriate to get posting again and began crafting my next entry in my series on Octokit. However, there is something more pressing that I have to share first. I want to tell you about someone very special.

In 2001, a few months after having graduated from university and moving to Cambridgeshire, my housemate, Adam, and I decided to check out the local pub². It was on that first visit to the Red Lion in Stretham that I met Mary, who at the time was working behind the bar. She was joyful, sparkling, kind, and funny. Like the most excellent of those who work a bar, she made us feel welcome, like we belonged. For the first time, I felt like Stretham was home.

The next time I remember seeing Mary was a day or so later when Adam and I were walking across the village green. She came walking towards us, holding the hand of a little girl.

Adam memorably said, “Is that yours?”

“That” turned out to be Mary’s daughter, Jordan. It also turned out that Mary, along with her adorably cheeky daughter, lived next door to us and over the months to follow we became friends. Most Thursdays³, Mary held her “Top of the P, Top of the I” club⁴ where we would share a drink, a smoke, and a lot of laughs, often while watching “Enders”⁵ or some other nonsense. I have many fond memories of us sitting in her lounge, kitchen, or backyard, in the pub, or in the beer garden behind it; all of them with Mary smiling and laughing and sparkling.

When I was happy, she would laugh with me. When I was sad, she would sit with me. When I was stupid, she would tell me. Mary became the best of friends; unafraid to be honest, never judging, always supportive. A counsel and a partner in crime (I suspect this is the case for many of her friends). On the day I left for the US, it was Mary that stood in her dressing gown in the backyard of her house to wave goodbye, smiling and sparkling.

On return trips to England, I always did what I could to get to Stretham and see all my friends, stopping by the Red Lion for far too many drinks and never enough good times. I did not always succeed. For those that live far from their friends and family, it is an all too familiar experience to never have enough time to see everyone. On one occasion I visited Cambridgeshire but could not see Mary, she understood.

“Next time,” she said.

And so it was that earlier this year, Chrissy and I stopped by Stretham to see Mary and Jordan. Though we spent some time at the Red Lion catching up with some old familiar faces, it was back at Mary’s I remember most. There we met the amazing young woman Jordan grew up to be, we shared stories of the times we had shared before⁶, and we got to know Russ, the love of Mary’s life. We spent as much time with them as they could stand and it was wonderful. Jordan was sarcastic and sassy, Russ was witty and wonderful, and Mary was smiling and sparkling, more than I ever remember her doing before. There was even one surviving PEPSI glass from the “Top of the P, Top of the I” club and we put it to good use. The time we spent with Mary and her family, seeing her happier than ever, surrounded by love was one of the highlights of our trip.

"It takes a minute to find a special person, an hour to appreciate them, and a day to love them, but it takes an entire lifetime to forget them."

And so it goes. Yesterday, a dear friend reached out to me and informed me that Mary had died. Some time, while I was asleep or doing something else unremarkable, the world lost some of its shine. No reason. No fanfare. No sparkle.

Russ, Jordan, and the rest of Mary’s family and friends are grieving and I with them. There’s nothing more to say about that.

Every day of our lives, we carry our friends with us, no matter where they are. They are there when we cry and when we laugh, when we have to make difficult decisions, and when we just want to reminisce. I am grateful for the moments shared with my friends and for them making me a part of their world. Mary was one of a kind and everyone that knew her is better for it.

like food, shelter, and love [↩]
I do not remember why we had not gone there sooner, nor the impetus that led to us going for the first time, though I dearly wish I could [↩]
I’m pretty sure it was Thursdays…my memory fails a little to be certain [↩]
Named after Mary’s PEPSI glasses, that had letters on the side making convenient measures for the mix of Bacardi and cola that we drank [↩]
EastEnders [↩]
like when Chrissy and Mary held me down while an 8 year old Jordan bound my hands with Selotape for no good reason other than “just because” [↩]