The Colour of Grief: "Dad Was Dead, Drowned."
People don't know how to behave around you when you lose a parent as a kid, they don’t know what to say, how to be. It’s a bewildering time for everyone. Many try to carry on as usual in the hope that normality might be soothing. Many crash in with obvious statements thinking it’s better to be head on than say nothing. Mostly though people just give you that tilted head and sigh. But school…that’s the hardest place to be. Your grades inevitably slip, your friendships become more difficult and often fall away. Eventually the whole thing just seems like a huge waste of time and you don’t want to go. You don’t much want to be at home either, even though you’ve been well protected from the blast, the devastation is all around you.
When I think of the day the news came it’s like it happened to other people, a dream almost, the story told so many times over the years it’s lost the harsh and glaring reality. But it was harsh. I imagine my Mum and my older siblings trying to deal with the shock of it all. At 8 years old it sort of rolled off me, too big to take in I expect. I was called from next door where I’d been playing with my best friend, they were crowded around the end of the piano where the phone lived, a space opened up and I was enveloped inside it as the news was told. Dad was dead, drowned. I really don’t recall the words exactly, but I do remember how the atmosphere felt, all thick and dark and still. It was too intense so I went back next door to play. My siblings were all in their very early teens so it must have been horrific for them. For me…a weird absence of somebody who wasn’t really there anyway. But I do remember a distinct change of light…like someone turned off the sun.
What remained was murky, damp, grey. All the colour had gone. The changes were obviously very big but life went on and Mum was amazing. She must have been so broken, but to me…a skippy wee kid…she kept it going as best she could and always made it fun for me.
Christmases became a solemn affair for a while. Before, they’d been fulsome, bright and peopled. And after, they became quiet and diminished! I also watched the light drain out of my Mum. She retreated into herself for some time. Despite them being divorced since I was two years old, they still loved each other a great deal. Mum once told me her and Dad used to bonk in the loo sometimes on his weekend visits. I love that!
Bullies…we all have ‘em (and truly, if you don’t, you are blessed indeed)! Mine were relentless and heartless and cruel in their words and, later on in their actions too. But in Junior school, a fatherless child, a single parent family, a Mum on benefits, clothes not always neat and ironed, shoes sometimes a little tatty, second hand stuff…that was some big neon lit fodder for the Tina’s and Tony’s of this world. I didn’t care about any of these things but the other kids did and picked on me for it. The Junior school headmaster, Mr Collins, a sweet old fashioned man, would sit next to me on the bench sometimes at lunch times with a gentle arm over the back of the seat and a kind word or two. I struggled to integrate, still do sometimes, but he made me feel like I was someone worth talking to. Such a kind man.
And then came *BIG SCHOOL*, and jesus, it was very big. It started out ok but quickly became yet another place to feel unsafe and unseen.
Thing is…we carry these early experiences through our whole lives and it shapes us in ways we sometimes can’t wriggle away from. The *poor me* thing was strong and I milked it. I thought that might make people sympathise with me and stop being mean, but it made them worse. Abandonment issues…big time! I have a huge need to protect others and that sometimes gets me into scrapes, but being a defender of the bullied means it wasn’t all in vain…was it?
When my Mum died in 2016, though expected, it seemed all those decades of grief that I held onto came flooding out in all sorts of ways. I was an orphan, an adult orphan, and I couldn’t quite get my head around that. The one good thing (not really that good) about losing a parent when you’re so young is that you don’t have to go through it all as an adult. After a death the paths one has to navigate are covered in brambles, the direction shifts unexpectedly and at times you feel utterly lost in the forest. There are tiny eyes in the darkness, all out to get you of course. It seems like you’ll never find your way out but you do, eventually, and you spill out into an open space and you don’t feel quite ready for it…but you are. You don’t know how, but you are. When you’re low, depressed, anxious, sad…it’s like the world is in black and white. When the colour comes back it’s a very wonderful thing.
Grief is a strange beast and we all do it differently, but there are a lot of things that are always the same and anyone who’s been through it can understand you. We all know how it can wash over you like a big wave, taking you with it on a tumbling, chaotic ride until you’re dumped on the shore, bloodied, bruised and exhausted from trying to stay on top of it.
The feeling as you reach for the phone for a quick chat, it stings like nettles. The story you can’t quite remember, the questions linger like ghosts. Big gulps sometimes form and it’s hard to swallow back. You feel heavy, tired, a bit useless. But all this fades a little, though it never passes. You manage it better, live with it, and at times learn to enjoy those conversations with absent people. I spent most of my childhood and into my teens not really thinking about Dad that much. But as I grew older, had a child of my own, went through all sorts of things including losing Mum, he became a very strong presence and absence. I keep a photo of each of them holding me and the memory of the story my Mum told me about that day. I was a moon faced baby in a bonnet. The sun was shining. I was getting a bit cross by the time the second photo was taken. I can sort of hear my Dad hurrying my Mum with the camera before I lost it, and I can hear my Mum laugh as she tells it.
Written by Vonalina Cake
“My name is Von, I’ve lived in Bristol since 1992 and I’ve lived a lot of lives since then.”