Talk About It

This past year has certainly been a very tough year for a number of people I care for dearly. Since Tony’s passing there have been further deaths to mourn, further losses for my family or friends to endure.

It has seemed to me that Tony’s dying was the first of an episode of untimely departures; not that any death could be called ‘timely’ but for those around me there have been awfully unexpected departures of loved ones.

Nine months after Tony’s death my much loved and ever energetic step-mother passed away, only a week after competing in a 10 kilometre walking event in Rotorua.  Between her death in December and May, the month I left New Zealand this year, there were two other dreadful and sad losses occur to people who really matter to me.  

Since arriving in the UK three months ago one more dear friend and two other long term, sweet and lovely friends have departed our living world.

The obvious conclusion is that I have reached the age when my contemporaries will die as we are in the latter part of a normal life span.  But not all of those who died in this past period were contemporaries.  There were heart breaking tragedies.  The tragedies are the hardest for family and friends to deal with, due to their total unexpectedness.  The trauma of the unexpected only adds to the agony of the sudden bereavement.

It is not until you have experienced death of someone you deeply love that you can truly comprehend the heart break, anguish and misery it gives those closest to the departed.  I know, as even though I lost both of my parents some years ago, the effects of losing Tony, my partner, my husband left me in a  far deeper chasm of torment and misery than when I lost my parents.  We live with the knowledge that inevitably a parent is going to depart – and as great a loss as it is, there is a deeper, yet more agonising grief of the untimely loss of a partner or a child.

Losing Tony has given me a greater understanding and insight of the difficulties families and friends of those who have recently departed are going through, at the time of the initial bereavement and in the many months and years that follow.  A much greater understanding.

Due to my own experience I know I have better tools with which to be a more helpful and supportive friend, for which I feel grateful.  Not a great way to learn, but at least a learning has come out of it, as I hope does for many others. 

Wherever possible I shall share with others the value and skills of what Tony’s death has taught me, and whenever possible I shall point the learnings out if I consider it would be helpful for the future for anyone who listens.

We have all gone to funerals or wakes and shed a tear for the departed and the family they have left behind but we have not always fully comprehended the depth at which some may be feeling that grief.  Naturally so, until it occurs to us.

And of course, the post period of someone dying is the time when those left need to feel the support and comfort from all areas of their lives – whether home, family, work, social, sport. Knowing there are people there to reach out too is vitally important.  Usually it happens that there is a rallying call for those closest to the inner circle to do just that, rally around and provide the support and love required to help the bereaved in those challenging days afterwards.

And then time passes.  Months pass.  The support is there, but there with less intensity.  Friends stop calling in as often, the phone calls become less, and the invitations to socialise become less.

It is not a criticism this occurs, it is a mere fact of life that people’s lives are busy and there is only so much support in grief time many people can give before moving on with their own general lives.

Then a year passes, maybe two.   To everyone’s relief the one left behind appears to have moved on with life and overcome the initial obvious signs of grief.  Those who have lost partners are often lucky enough to meet someone else, others don’t.  Sometimes by choice, often not.

During the past three months here in the UK I have spent times with others who have gone through their own distressing losses.  Two tragically, two along similar lines to me (which in our view is still a tragedy but am sure the reader understands the difference).  

Whilst some may deduce that my being with others who have lost a loved one could possibly create a depressingly solemn and mournful situation, it has actually done the opposite.  After all, we have all had something very life changing in common.  We have all shared the deepest grief and despair one could possibly endure.    That has given us mutual understanding.

In each case with each person I spent time with it was the mutual understanding which gave us all the common thread that made talking about our losses sometimes up lifting, supportive, often encouraging, always enlightening and many conversations were delightfully happy.

It felt good.  Because we could talk about it.  Certainly there was the odd tear shed, but hey, that’s what losing someone does, and very often that was momentary before the conversation ended with a touch of humour or warmth on our reflections.

There was never a time limit on these conversations.  They were never planned.  They were never melancholy or distressing.  They were naturally occurring through a mutual understanding, a bondship almost.  

They were nice.  They were nice because they allowed each of us at some time, time to talk.  To talk about the loss, the grief.

That is what all this long script is about.  Talking about it.

I am one who experienced bereavement fairly recently.  One gorgeous lady lost her loved one eleven years ago, yet the loss is as great now as it was then.  I know, because we talked about it.

We talked about our own experiences, the way we managed our ways through, the serious, the light hearted and macabre of our losses.  We talked and shared.  It was good.  It felt uplifting.  And there was an almost relief of a heavy weight being share and lifted off the shoulders. A little of the burden lessened.

Uplifted and unburdened because of talk.

It was this that had most of us realise a commonality that we had each noticed.  A thread that became a theme.  And that was - the friends, associates or family, who we see or meet whether regularly or infrequently, who don’t, or won’t talk about it.

All of us found it baffling, sometimes irritating, sometimes awkward, often perplexing – and usually difficult to understand.  People who won’t talk about it, or seemingly can't talk about it. Whether it is because they don’t know what to say, or whether they feel awkward or embarrassed; whether they think it will upset the bereaved and therefore try everything possible to completely skirt around the topic. Or whether they don’t want to raise sad memories for either the bereaved or themselves. Or whether it is just plain inconvenient and they are not the least bit interested in conversing about it, or you, or the parted one -that is, those that don’t give a damn and don’t care.

Each one of us had experienced glaring examples of this, of the elephant in the room.  Of being somewhere with someone or some others where silence seemed a preferred option to them rather than bringing the deathly topic up.

Of all the people I have had who come to visit, or call, or who I happen to encounter in the supermarket, the gym, at dinner parties, over a coffee, on a run, a walk or at a social function, the ones I have truly appreciated the most are those who have the intelligence and sensibility to say to me, “Do you want to talk about it?”  

It is as simple as that.  “Do you want to talk about it?”  

The best support a friend can give is to ask if it will help to talk, and if it is not wanted the person has the option to say, no. Let it be their choice to talk or not – if they would rather not then move onto another subject.  The weather is always a good fall back!

It’s so easy to do. It stops those awkward moments, the squirming moments of finding something else to talk about. It is better than the short, yet long moments of deathly silence.  The elephant in the room moments that you pretend you cannot see.

“Would you like to talk about it?”   “Do you want to talk about it?”  Then talk. 

 

          

Alarming Liverpool Highlight

Have certainly had some most interesting adventures these past three months.  Both physically and mentally.  Overall I think I have laughed at myself more in the past three months than I have for the past five years. 

 

If you have ever watched the comical series ‘Miranda’ you will chuckle at her baffooness – her clumsiness, her weird and inapt thought patterns.  There have been many occasions where I have felt like a pint-sized Miranda.  None more so than my Liverpool experience – but others come to mind – the smashing of a large crystal glass across a large marble floor – the dropping of a large, full bottle of olive oil all over someone’s kitchen floor – the dropping and smashing of a valuable glass liquidiser jug - burping loudly in a busy and full railway station café – tripping and landing in the lap of some poor fellow passenger in a train - the silencing of an Irish pub by merely walking in – the directing of peak hour traffic in the huge metropolis of the Shropshire village in Chun -  but the night in Liverpool when I managed to evacuate an entire central city hotel would probably as rate the best achievement yet.  

I laughed out loud at myself at the time and still laugh out loud whenever retelling the story to those who keep wishing to hear it again and again.

At the time I did not think it warranted a story for the blog.  But it’s wet and inside day today and only a few hours ago I regaled the story once more to friends and thought I should record it for future memories.  When I am dead and departed an inscription can be put on my tombstone – She evacuated the Liverpool Parr Street Hotel.

 

 

The beginning

Had visited Dumfries in Scotland and decided to drive my little rental car back to Wales via a night’s stopover in the grand city of Liverpool.  It was almost thirty years since last visiting Liverpool and I had been told the city had reinvented itself and was now a city well worth visiting. So went onto my favourite booking site, Latebooking.com, and at the last minute booked myself into an economic and very central hotel, informing them I should be checking in between 4 to 5pm on the day booked. 

I was pleased with my booking as the hotel website had shown that it was unique and very much aligned with the revamping of Liverpool as it was a renovated warehouse-come-music-recording-studio which still operated as a recording studio on one floor with two other floors having being turned into hotel accommodation.  With it being  only two blocks from the regenerated port and wharves and a couple of blocks away from the Liver and Cunard buildings it meant I would step out of my hotel door straight into the heart Liverpool’s culture and history.

Ayr – Commonwealth Games

The night before driving to Liverpool I had stayed in a B&B in a Scottish coastal town called Ayr, in the county of Ayrshire.  That stay was a mini experience in itself as the town is just south of Glasgow where that night saw the Glaswegians host the opening of the Commonwealth Games.  I would like to say I spent the night watching the opening of the Games on some large outdoor screen somewhere among the heartiest of south Glaswegian sports fanatics, but try as I might, one would almost never had known the Games were about to start as I wandered every street and square and park in the central area and never found a big screen anywhere to enjoy sharing the experience.  Popped my head into the odd pub where there was a TV screen showing the ceremony and enjoyed a pint or two for the first hour but the atmosphere was not quite the rah-rah I had expected.   I was hungry and am not a fan of pub meals or food, that stodgy staple diet of regular pub attendees is not for me, particularly when viewing some of those portly regulars tucking into their chips and deep fried.  So sadly I decided to dine solo and resort to yet another trip to the local supermarket to purchase a ready-made salad, some LOVELY smoked Scottish salmon, a crunchy bread roll or two, and of course a couple of mini bottles of wine for £1.75 each and retreat to the welcoming softness of the B&B kingsize bed to spread myself an indoor picnic, propped up with pillows, television remote control in one hand, a glass of wine in another and the picnic laid out on the duvet around me.

Sad.  But I did still enjoy it.

British Traffic Jam

So, next day, it was goodbye to Ayr and off to Merseyside and Liverpool for the afternoon and night. 

Because it was a beautiful day, I decided not to rush to Liverpool but to take my time travelling down the Scottish coastline to view the scenery and stop to smell the sea air at leisurely intermittent intervals.  Then it was inland, through alluring, rolling hills and forests on the way to the motorway that would take me directly into Liverpool.  Eventually.  Via the M65.  But why hurry? … there was ample time and the scenery too picturesque to not take my time and enjoy.  I stopped at little places to take in more views, enjoy the gloriously hot summer day, and take more snapshots for the memory banks; even stopped to sip my last cup of Scottish tea at a motorway cafe.  

Then back onto the M65 to merrily drive the little rental with all windows down and the radio blaring out classic 60’s and 70’s music for me to bellow out without the inhibition of others within hearing range, thankfully, for them.  It is a glorious thing to do – travelling solo, hot day, all windows open and music blaring; hair blowing with the breeze.   Until … driving over a rise of the motorway was the view of four lanes of the motorway traffic half a mile ahead, all at a dead stop.  In moments my little car  was in the queue with all the others, idling and not moving.  From there it was a five hour experience of enjoying sitting in the infamous and traditional and classic British traffic jam.

Fortunately I had a stocked supply of water in the car – those that did not would have perished after a mere hour in the jam as the heat of the day was the hottest on record for the year and in this country the sun keeps shining at that time of the year until almost 10pm at night – so even at 8pm the heat inside the non-moving cars was unbearable.

                     

I was not daunted by being jammed in this traffic stand-off, but, I did begin to worry about my hotel booking.  After all, I had stated I would be checking in between 4 to 5 pm and by this time knew it would be a minimum of 10 pm before I would get into Liverpool and by that time they may have let my booking go to someone who walks in off the street.  I had a mental picture of me wandering the Liverpool streets at midnight, trying to find accommodation.  And impossible task and one which would no doubt see me bunking down for the night inside my little two door car – not an option.

The obvious thing to do would be to ring the hotel to let them know I would be eventually checking in; that is if one had the phone number to the hotel.  I had diarised the name, street address, postal code, booking reference and confirmation number but had not diarised the hotel phone number. Whilst I had cell phone coverage on the motorway, I did not have any Wifi connection and therefore the PC was impotent.  I began texting all my UK friends and family to have them look the number up and text it back to me.

Thank goodness for modern technology

No one in the UK responds to texts when they are urgent ones.  At least, they did not on this day.

After an hour of waiting for someone, anyone to respond to my pleading texts I had a light bulb idea.  Jason, my friend Jason, in Whakatane, New Zealand.  He would help me out.  It was only 6 o’clock in the morning in New Zealand but I knew Jason was a very, very, very earlier riser – or if not up and out of bed at 6am he sleeps with his iPhone tucked under his earlobe and would be guaranteed to respond  to a maiden in distress on the M65 in the English countryside.

And he did.  Within three minutes of my texting him I received back a whole website front page copied onto the text with phone number, address, web addresses and anything else one could want to know about the hotel.  Yet again white man’s magic and Kiwi ingenuity saved the day.  One call to the hotel solved the problem.  Mind you, it took a while to organise and confirm they would keep the booking for me as the person who answered the hotel line had a very heavy accent that I could not define – sounded very black African, from my perspective (or maybe it was a Caribbean accent?) but did manage to comprehend, eventually, that he would be the person I would meet when eventually arriving at their front doors at whatever time of night.

The hotel lift

At 10.30 pm my little rental car pulled up outside the weirdest looking hotel, it looked anything but a hotel and at that time of night looked most uninviting. It appeared to be a warehouse only.

              

Went to the front door, rang the night bell. A very tall, overweight, pasty, young white man answered the door and greeted me in the African accent I had heard on the phone.  It was the same man.  The African accent was not African.  It was Liverpudlian.  I had forgotten they had their own strong accent and had presumed the phone voice was another nationality.  He was a scouse. But I could not understand him.  I had to rely on lip reading to grasp some of the quick phrases he spoke and link the phrases to the odd noun I could define and hope that my head nodding, smiles and facial gestures were appropriate to whatever it was he was saying.

Once inside it then looked like a hotel, a nice foyer, nice decor.

 

Check in done, room key uplifted and the young-black-African-speaking-white-Liverpudlian-young-man picked up my case and indicated he would walk me to my room.  This meant crossing the foyer to one of the oldest cage lifts I have seen since I was a child some 30+ years ago.

                                      

                                      

                                   

One of those lifts that had two old metal doors, the first heavy outer door that concertinas open with the clunking, clanging noises of old metal and screws rubbing against one another.  Then the second, inner door made of the same metal, with the same heaviness and the same clunking and clanging as one heaved it open from right to left.  One then steps inside and has to clunk and clang the outer metal door shut – which never quite shuts at first attempt so one has to reopen it then use both hands and full body force to clunk and clang it harder and faster in the hope it eventually gets to the attachment which will then allow us to close the second inner door.  One repeats the performance with this door and clunks and clangs that shut, then pushes the appropriate button which should then automatically have the lift take us to the correct floor.  It does, eventually.  It takes a good few ten seconds before the old mechanical engineering begins to chug into gear and eventually, with one initial, sudden jerk, begin to move ever so slowly up.  Ever so slowly.  These lifts always feel they are moving up or down in inches per minute. 

Eventually it reached my level, level two.  Then the procedure of exiting the lift has to be repeated, in reverse, to that which we did when entering.  

The night porter-reception man was most friendly and engaged in conversation all the while of taking me to and up the lift to my room.  I had no idea what he was talking about but he was smiling during conversation so I smiled back and nodded and agreed.  As he was opening the lift doors to exit I commented about the grand age of the lift and the difficulty of opening and closing the doors and how one would not want to be in a hurry if you had to use the lift in any emergency.

He responded by telling me that it would probably be easier to use the stairs to come and go from reception and that he would be at reception all night and should I require anything at all to just pop down the stairs to reception and he would assist in any request.

Things were heating up

It was after 11 pm when I was finally directed into my hotel room.  Or, it would be better described, into my hotel oven.  I walked into a room that had had the sun shining directly into it all that day, the hottest day the UK had recorded.  I had walked into a wall of heat.  I looked for the air conditioning controls.  There were none.  I looked for the air conditioning units.  There was none.  I looked to open the windows but this was an old converted warehouse and whilst there were ample windows only one window opened outwardly from its top and only opened a mere three inches.  Not enough to make the slightest bit of difference to the horrendous room temperature.  It was so hot in the room that by now my under garments were totally soaked and the outer garments were sticking to my wet skin.  I had had enough of truly sticky, sweat make heat whilst sitting in the car during my five hour motorway hold up.  That was barely bearable, this room heat was unbearable heat.

This was not good enough – it was nearly 11.30 at night, I was tired, I was grumpy, I was dirty, I was sweaty - and I knew I could not just check out of this hotel and find another at this time of night.  If there was no ventilation or air conditioning in the room I would head back down to reception to either be checked into an air conditioned room, or management would have to find some other remedy for this very grumpy, tired, hot and sweating guest who was still having to pay £80 for a mere few hours stay (believe me - £80 or $NZ160 is cheap in this country!).

Wait for it

Quickly unpacked bag then headed out of my room to go down to reception.  

One look at the empty elevator shaft and the decision was made to head down the stairs to find my lovely Liverpudlian night reception man.

Into the stairwell and quickly down the first set of twelve stairs, turn, then down the next set of twelve stairs, turn, then down the next, turn, then down the next, turn, then down the next and through the big, heavy, wooden door at the bottom to step through into the hotel lobby.

                    

 

Weeeoooo  weeeooooo weeeeoooo weeeeoooo – the LOUD alarms went – in triplicate – from every direction.   Weeeeoooo weeeeoooo weeeeoooo from my left, from my right, from behind me, from above me  …  weeeeoooo weeeeoooo weeeeoooo  …..

Oops … it was no co-incidence that the sound of the weeeeoooo weeeeoooo and my opening the big, heavy, wooden door happened to be exactly synchronised.   Weeeeoooo weeeeoooo …

Oops.  I spun on my heels and quickly stepped back inside and tried to quietly reshut the big door in the hope that it would stop the fire alarm sounding.  Then perhaps no one would really notice or take notice of the few seconds of weeeeoooo weeeeoooo.  

Door shut.    Weeeeoooo weeeeoooo weeeeoooo  Well, that didn’t work. 

I looked back at the door and down below the big metal opening lever that runs across the door at waist length was an old and tatty piece of A4 paper cellotaped BELOW the lever at crutch level for crutch to read.  It read ‘Do not exit this door.  It is alarmed.’  

Well, crutch read it but eyes didn’t and, unlike most men, my brain is not in my crutch, it is placed behind my eyes so therefore the sign was rendered useless with its stupid placement.

Meanwhile,  Weeeeoooo weeeeoooo weeeeoooo

Oh dear – I turned and saw no other exit door so retreated back up one flight of stairs to meet a small number of people heading down the very stairs I had earlier descended and heading for the same door on the landing where I was heading.

We all went out the door together onto an open mezzanine floor that overlooked the reception area.  Looking down at the area were a lots of funny people running in all directions.  There were flashing red lights on the ceiling and on the walls, flashing with the synchronising of the weeeeoooo weeeeoooo. There were three uniformed hotel staff members rushing around in different directions going in and out of other doorways to and from where ever – there was my nice Liverpudlian reception man standing behind reception with another man looking up into an electrical fuse-box on the wall where there weremore red lights flashing above and below it.

There were more people coming out the door from the stairwell behind me, in various states of attire.  Meanwhile  Weeeeoooo weeeeoooo weeeeoooo

People were exiting and pouring out the hotel front doors.  It actually looked like mayhem from above.  Like an ants nest of total confusion, but ants’ confusion is organised confusion.  This was not.

Oops, me thought.  What do I do now?  

I rushed down the stairs across the lobby and to the reception desk where the chaps were pulling out fuses and flipping switches and trying anything to stop the incessant  weeeeoooo weeeeoooo weeeeoooo and the red lights illuminating everything.

“I did that!” I declared loudly, trying to be heard over the din but at that point we could all hear, woooo-oo woooo-oo woooo-oo … I looked toward hotel front doors and pulling up outside was one great big, red light flashing, very red fire engine.  

“I did that,” I loudly repeated to the two behind the desk.  They stopped their switchboard activity, turned and looked, “I did it. You told me to come down the stairs to reception and I did and went out the door at the bottom. But the sign is BELOW the handle and I didn’t see it.”  Decided it was a good time to turn the blame back on them rather than stand sheepishly admitting that I had made an error.  It was, after all, their fault for bad placement of sign and I used that in my capacity of being the offended rather than the offender.

“There’s no fire, it was me who set the alarms off.  You told me to come down to reception if I needed anything so I came down the stairs to get a couple of fans in my room because it is far too hot to expect any human to stay in there for the night, unless you have an air conditioned room I can move to.”  All this while firemen were running to and from their engine to the switch board, more people were coming down the stairs and exiting the building, then ‘neee-uu neee-uu neee-uu’ of the police cars.  

Suddenly the entire foyer area was full of firemen, police, hotel guests and staff, all rushing in total opposite direction with the  Weeeeoooo weeeeoooo weeeeoooo still going and red alarm lights still flashing.

“You want what?” enquired my nice Liverpudlian receptionist. 

“Fans, big fans, it’s stinking hot in that room – it’s unliveable,” again using defence attack.

“And you need to do something about that sign on the fire door, it’s stupid where it is, no one would see it, not just me. It needs fixing.”

“Oh, OK,” he responds, “what room number are you?”

“224,” I replied and turn on my heels to head back to the stairs from which even more people were quickly scurrying down from.  

I climbed the stairs to my room, fighting the flow of hotel guests on the stairwell as they came down while I went against the flow and headed up.  Surprisingly not one of them stopped me to advise me there was a fire alarm – it was like Moses parting the water, they made way for me as I continued up to the my second floor.

Fan-tastic

My fans arrived, within fifteen minutes. Just after all the alarms were turned off.  Two of them.  Big fans.  I plugged each one into a socket on either side of my lovely king size bed and faced them in the direction of my now near naked body laying atop the bed linen; turned the bedside light off, lay my head on the pillow and went into a very deep and well-earned sleep.