Rusting custard
Things like Christmas are hard to get used to when they have been steeped in trauma/loss/sadness etc. In this case, when I say "things like Christmas", I mean things that don't happen that often but which are very reminiscent of themselves - things which carry some kind of tradition among your circle or in the wider world, or, in this case, seemingly completely and utterly everywhere you turn or run or try to hide. So, birthdays, new jobs, visiting a friend in far-flung climbs - they're not every week these things, so they often carry a very powerful and specific flavour in our emotional memories. And so while one might become accommodated to watching their favourite soap without our dead flatmate, facing their birthday without them is rare and so much harder to get used to. Everything else moves forward one day at a time; Christmas moves forward one day a year and seems, in my case, minded to never retread itself properly as a current experience. It seems to be only what it was and what it isn't and what it might have been or be if things were a bit different. Just the one road accident and/or bullet away.
And so you discover me, dear reader, frozen to the spot, pinned there by the unfolding of Jesus Christ The Apple Tree, broadcast live as part of Nine Lessons and Carols from Kings College Cambridge. I know I am still alive as I am breathing hard and I hurt, not physically, but, well, somewhere inside my self. The pain is coming from where it usually hurls itself, Cato-like, the place which has been twanged or bitten or stamped on, or whatever this carol service has managed to do, and like Mr Bond in Casino Royale, sitting on that bottomless chair with a baddie attacking his underclappers with a knotted rope, I want to howl, but I recognise it won't do me any harm. The lyric which stops my breathing for a brief time, giving me the dizzies, is “For happiness I long have sought”. Of course, the carol’s solution is Jesusy and all, so as unrealistic as any other way of finding happiness, but it laughs at my self-pitying plight nonetheless.
Surrounded by stalled wrapping chaos, I wonder maybe if Dad hadn't died (and Kate hadn't gone and compounded things in her murdery way) I might have a different relationship with listening to this utterly Christmassy programme. My grandmother loved it, my sister loved it, my mother - who is efficiently wrapping away in the next room - loves it; and while there is so much I adore about it, it fully winds me every year.
And so you discover me, dear reader, frozen to the spot, pinned there by the unfolding of Jesus Christ The Apple Tree, broadcast live as part of Nine Lessons and Carols from Kings College Cambridge. I know I am still alive as I am breathing hard and I hurt, not physically, but, well, somewhere inside my self. The pain is coming from where it usually hurls itself, Cato-like, the place which has been twanged or bitten or stamped on, or whatever this carol service has managed to do, and like Mr Bond in Casino Royale, sitting on that bottomless chair with a baddie attacking his underclappers with a knotted rope, I want to howl, but I recognise it won't do me any harm. The lyric which stops my breathing for a brief time, giving me the dizzies, is “For happiness I long have sought”. Of course, the carol’s solution is Jesusy and all, so as unrealistic as any other way of finding happiness, but it laughs at my self-pitying plight nonetheless.
Surrounded by stalled wrapping chaos, I wonder maybe if Dad hadn't died (and Kate hadn't gone and compounded things in her murdery way) I might have a different relationship with listening to this utterly Christmassy programme. My grandmother loved it, my sister loved it, my mother - who is efficiently wrapping away in the next room - loves it; and while there is so much I adore about it, it fully winds me every year.
On Sunday I went to one of the churches I used to be part of as a child for their carol service and I realised one of the problems I have with trying to be myself without these dead folks, is that I am largely constituted of rusted hinges embedded in concrete and covered in custard. There is no part of me that is not some kind of amalgam of me and whoever else, in this case Dad and/or Kate. It's made me wonder whether there is actually any pure iron or sand or egg of me, in me, at all. Do I even exist without these unwitting collaborators? I stand in the beautiful church of my childhood and face a carol service without my sister. And without my dad. And I know I'm supposed to keep going and enjoy myself and look to the future, but I have been trying to do that for 40 years and I'm utterly shit at it. Beyond shit at it. I’ve almost certainly had that bit of me removed, or maybe it was never there.
I grew up singing carols in choirs. I grew up a Christian, and though my faith is quite and long and sensibly gone, the utter physical and emotional delight of singing in my village church and school choirs is hardwired into me. I know at least three parts to so many well-know carols, and two parts to so many more obscure ones, I fancy it might explain my inability to remember your name when I bump into you... even though I might have known you since those so-distant-they-seem-to-be-an-anecdote-from-someone-else's-life days.
And so standing in this ancient church I face a nearly-new-becoming-familiar dilemma: do I sing the descant or not? These soaring, special additions to Christmas carols (they are available for other hymns, dear reader) are a particularly uplifting part of the rite for me, or, rather, they were. These days I can find myself singing a descant with tears pouring down my face, and they aren’t those oft-described unicorns-to-me of the emotional world: tears of joy. They’re the real deal. The incredible volte-face of something which used to bring so much joy, when the flour of the other person is extracted, removes the entire custard of my self - you cannot unstir tea or get those gravy granules out of the hot water - and I am reliving grief through a particular activity. And because it's only, like, 40 days since Dad died and 13 since Kate died, I am unpracticed and in some early phase of grief, for a while.
I remember the Christmas after my sister died and facing the same dilemma. Singing with Kate always gave me confidence. She was indeed, the kind of singer who had, for the school carol service, been chosen to sing the opening solo verse to Once In Royal David's City in the cathedral of our home town, twice. (I was the kind of singer who was never chosen, not once). To sing the descant in one of the lovely, small churches which formed the parish I grew up in, is to Show Off. No avoiding it. Somehow my sister didn't mind showing off, it carried no shame for her. So, singing together, we did it as a pair. Or, we looked like a pair: I did it under her wing, with her protection and, most importantly, her approval. A lot of the time she was not my big sister at all, but when it came to this, I sheltered beneath her. This is part of the rolloercoaster of grief so often described, but being on it for 40 years is becoming exhausting. And what with Kate gone, it’s now two, independent rollercoasters. And being on two distinct, independent rollercoasters simultaneously, means that you’ll find yourself braced in entirely the wrong direction a great deal of the time.
And as for who they were to me when it comes to singing, well. Both my father and my sister were shameless singers. They were shameless in other ways too, my father being quite the showoff, but they didn't suffer the apoplexies of shame about singing that I do. It was a looooooong time before I realised it was my father's absence in itself which had caused so much of my shame in general, but specifically about singing. It's such a direct expression of feeling, the singing voice, and so exposed, springing straight from the well of feeling and self on the sound of the voice, that somehow my ability to allow it out collapsed under the weight of my childhood grief.
When it came to so many things, if Kate said I could, I could. I think this was also true of my father. These two people were the ones who powered my ability to think I could, they held the shame at bay. So I stand it church, an innocent bystander as the battle rages within me between shame and desire, a desire to be myself, to express myself, and fear and sadness and.... so many Other Things - I realise this is a Christmas, blog but I'm damned if I'm doing lists.
For the record, I barely remember Christmas with my dad. There are some memories, but far clearer are the post-Dad Christmases where my mother worked like so many people the world over trying to make a day which should be lovely for those around you, especially your children, lovely for them until you fall into bed, hopefully the kind of exhausted which sends you to sleep rather than the one which spins you endlessly on everything you cannot solve which makes life hard. Wonderful Christmases, wonderful people, abundance, warmth, food, presents, kindness, endless kindness.
I grew up singing carols in choirs. I grew up a Christian, and though my faith is quite and long and sensibly gone, the utter physical and emotional delight of singing in my village church and school choirs is hardwired into me. I know at least three parts to so many well-know carols, and two parts to so many more obscure ones, I fancy it might explain my inability to remember your name when I bump into you... even though I might have known you since those so-distant-they-seem-to-be-an-anecdote-from-someone-else's-life days.
And so standing in this ancient church I face a nearly-new-becoming-familiar dilemma: do I sing the descant or not? These soaring, special additions to Christmas carols (they are available for other hymns, dear reader) are a particularly uplifting part of the rite for me, or, rather, they were. These days I can find myself singing a descant with tears pouring down my face, and they aren’t those oft-described unicorns-to-me of the emotional world: tears of joy. They’re the real deal. The incredible volte-face of something which used to bring so much joy, when the flour of the other person is extracted, removes the entire custard of my self - you cannot unstir tea or get those gravy granules out of the hot water - and I am reliving grief through a particular activity. And because it's only, like, 40 days since Dad died and 13 since Kate died, I am unpracticed and in some early phase of grief, for a while.
I remember the Christmas after my sister died and facing the same dilemma. Singing with Kate always gave me confidence. She was indeed, the kind of singer who had, for the school carol service, been chosen to sing the opening solo verse to Once In Royal David's City in the cathedral of our home town, twice. (I was the kind of singer who was never chosen, not once). To sing the descant in one of the lovely, small churches which formed the parish I grew up in, is to Show Off. No avoiding it. Somehow my sister didn't mind showing off, it carried no shame for her. So, singing together, we did it as a pair. Or, we looked like a pair: I did it under her wing, with her protection and, most importantly, her approval. A lot of the time she was not my big sister at all, but when it came to this, I sheltered beneath her. This is part of the rolloercoaster of grief so often described, but being on it for 40 years is becoming exhausting. And what with Kate gone, it’s now two, independent rollercoasters. And being on two distinct, independent rollercoasters simultaneously, means that you’ll find yourself braced in entirely the wrong direction a great deal of the time.
And as for who they were to me when it comes to singing, well. Both my father and my sister were shameless singers. They were shameless in other ways too, my father being quite the showoff, but they didn't suffer the apoplexies of shame about singing that I do. It was a looooooong time before I realised it was my father's absence in itself which had caused so much of my shame in general, but specifically about singing. It's such a direct expression of feeling, the singing voice, and so exposed, springing straight from the well of feeling and self on the sound of the voice, that somehow my ability to allow it out collapsed under the weight of my childhood grief.
When it came to so many things, if Kate said I could, I could. I think this was also true of my father. These two people were the ones who powered my ability to think I could, they held the shame at bay. So I stand it church, an innocent bystander as the battle rages within me between shame and desire, a desire to be myself, to express myself, and fear and sadness and.... so many Other Things - I realise this is a Christmas, blog but I'm damned if I'm doing lists.
For the record, I barely remember Christmas with my dad. There are some memories, but far clearer are the post-Dad Christmases where my mother worked like so many people the world over trying to make a day which should be lovely for those around you, especially your children, lovely for them until you fall into bed, hopefully the kind of exhausted which sends you to sleep rather than the one which spins you endlessly on everything you cannot solve which makes life hard. Wonderful Christmases, wonderful people, abundance, warmth, food, presents, kindness, endless kindness.
So after Dad died, I carried on singing, and I was mortified by not only my voice - that was the easy part - but also by the audacity of singing, of making a sound, of thinking I could after my Dad and his great singing voice were gone. And Kate took on the mantle, Kate had the wonderful voice, not me. So I sang in her shadow, hidden by her brilliance, but able to sing beneath her.
And then she was gone. I faced singing alone in the village carols or midnight mass, or BOTH. Standing in the congregation singing descants, which we had always done as a combo, and received thanks for it. But, gone as she was, I suddenly knew I wasn't good enough, that the thanks had always been for her. So I stood there, watching my breath, wondering, and then singing, high and loud and often in tune. I was driven to do it it, like an itch. But not the good itch, relieved by the scratch, rather the mosquito itch, the eczma itch, the eczma my sister had, the condition itself compounded by the confounded scratching. Every time, strung out across the horns of the dliemma, carried forward by the Reindeer of Christmassy hope, balanced on his horns, I sing, and always I find myself wanting, I find myself showing off, I find myself without the custard that was Kate and me singing together.
When I move on, when I can cope, when Christmas is a good experience, when I enjoy it, purely, like I should. When I am not tempted to write a miserable blog, when I can just let it be good, appreciate my considerable good fortune, then I'll have arrived. I'll be a good person, as I should be, whole. But for now I'll hobble along, unclear as to what to make of every micro decision, and every event which rolls around far too rarely and all too soon. For the good not only of myself but everyone around me, I should forgive myself: it is only 40 days since Dad was killed, and less than two weeks since Kate went and got herself murdered. At Christmastime, it’s still the very early days of my bereavement.
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