Don’t stop thinking about tomorrow
Don’t stop, it’ll soon be here
It’ll be better than before
Yesterday’s gone, yesterday’s gone
Fleetwood Mac – February 1977

My sister brought Rumours back home with her when she returned from her first job in New York.

We bought the Fleetwood Mac ‘White Album’ the very next week.

To my great delight, over three decades later she’s coming to see the band live with me at London’s Wembley Arena tonight.

Liz has been there, all that time — through good years and bad, in the happy times and the very darkest days of all.

It’s a great skill in life, I think, to be close when you’re needed, whilst standing more tactfully distant when required. And it’ll be quite an evening, drawing that circle around us while fulfilling a lifetime’s ambition together, after all this time.

I thought about this song last week. After its adoption by the Clinton campaign, perhaps I should hesitate to use it, for fear it might seem too politicised now. But the song predates that election by a distance, and it stands up today all the same.

Its message is resolutely, almost brutally optimistic. That however bad life seems, we must always look forwards.

For the bereaved, that kind of advice is awfully hard to accept. When today lies in ruins, how on Earth can you think about the future?

But the hard truth is that time is an unforgivingly linear equation, and it’s in short supply. Finally there is just no getting around it.

So reflect a while on the past, by all means. Let grief do its work. Then find a day, one special day, to gather all your energy around you.

And start from there, to build a new tomorrow.

Yesterday’s gone. So don’t you look back.

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July 8th 1997
A day trip to France to meet the Brittany government. Rachel was brilliant as always, arriving at dawn as I left for the airport and staying until very late.

On my way home there was a huge thunderstorm, the motorway was blocked, and so the taxi took me back across the Downs.

Had it really only been two summers before when I’d driven that way home from Gatwick? Emily had been learning to walk, with William soon to be on the way.

It seemed such a short time ago, and yet so far away. Just the blink of an eye, and that life had gone completely.

Jenny’s legacy was waiting at home, though, since the kids had stayed up to welcome me.

It was always later, when they were fast asleep, and I was tired and lonely, that the enormity of it all would strike me.

It was a relentless battle, squeezing in work and travel and childcare – a long struggle behind and yet still looming so very far ahead.

But amongst all those thoughts, I could see that the children were doing well, and that vision alone was a huge reward.

Perhaps it was that slowly growing sense of achievement which finally saw me starting the upward climb.

And I needed that perspective, because now there were other problems to face.

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On our way home we visited Jane, Jenny’s friend from ante-natal, who had now returned from Hong Kong to live in Wiltshire, too.

Jane’s daughter Orla was three that day, and it was a fine party, with toddlers and mums and dads everywhere. I found it incredibly hard to be there, alone like that, but it was worth it all the same.

Because as I left, Jane gave me Jenny’s last letter, and the one I’d written to Jane to go with it. It was only five months before, and yet it felt like five years.

It was such a marvellous gift, but I cried when I saw the evidence of all that suffering in Jenny’s rambling writing on the page.

You’d cry too. Anybody would.

June 28th – 29th 1997
The next weekend we stayed with Sal and Tom in Wiltshire. They live in an idyllically peaceful spot, and it is great to go walking in the fields around their cottage.

But despite the restful setting, Emily or William would always wake at six, and there still seemed so much to do. It left very little time to relax – just half an hour or so in the whole weekend when I escaped on a pounding run across the Cotswolds, letting it all out through the aggression under my feet.

We all went for a pleasant walk on Sunday, but unfortunately when we returned, Sal and Tom picked a fight. Tom stormed off, and Sal just sat down.

I could hardly criticise them for arguing, but now I had to make the lunch alone, pack up the cot, the high chair and all our other paraphernalia. None of us had remembered to take Emily to the loo, so suddenly there were wet pants, and finally a whole wet outfit to change, right in the middle of everything else.

And as we left, I thought to myself, it’s harder to come here and do all of this than it is to stay at home.

But, in the midst of my frustration, I did feel a certain sense of pride. Jenny and I had often argued like that.

I could see that Sal and Tom were under pressure then, as parents of small children always are. Jenny and I – we’d coped with that pressure, more or less.

A lot of the time Jenny had been ill, and we’d had other worries, too. We’d had a lot of help along the way, but we’d got through it.

And now, it was just me. There was no one to argue with over whose turn it was to wash up, to clear away the toys, to change the poohy nappy, or to clean the sick from off the carpet.

It was always me, and it only ever could be.

And yet, I was managing, somehow. Yes, it was exhausting, and it was only with my parents’ help at the weekends and Rachel’s every day, but I was managing and that was still one hell of an achievement.

Most amazing of all the gifts from the party was a whole album from Karen, Jenny’s best friend at Oxford.

It proved to be a fascinating record of Jenny’s first year at college, before we’d started going out together.

Buried in there unexpectedly, I found a photograph taken in my kitchen at the ‘Under 7’s’ party where Jenny and I had got together for the very first time. There I was, in my schoolboy tie, standing next to Jenny in her short skirt, with another friend on my other arm.

I had no recollection of that picture being taken (it must have been an even better evening than I remembered). But a few minutes later, Jenny and I were snogging on the stairs and it had all started.

In reliving all those special memories, that’s when it hurt me, really hard. It made me realise just how much I had lost in Jenny.

All those good times, all that friendship, and all the potential for so much life left to come.

Jenny had been so happy in her life, and surely she would have gone on to achieve so much more. But we never would see that potential realised.

I’d cried before, but perhaps I hadn’t heard myself wail until then. And it didn’t stop – not for weeks.

I’d be fine at work, but then I’d come home, get the kids to bed as quickly as I could, and sit alone for hours, so that I could feel the pain.

And although it didn’t happen as I had expected, and I didn’t realise it at all back then, I think that actually it was from deep within that deepest trough of all that slowly, and imperceptibly at first, I began to climb back out.

Because during that lowest time, amidst all those reminders of Jenny all around me, that was when I had to face up to losing Jenny for good.

That realisation hurt so much then, and always will, and yet confronting that pain was just the first and tiniest of steps towards the future.

And so perhaps it was exactly there, in that endlessly dark tunnel, that the most distant light did at last begin to glimmer.

It shone so faintly at first, through all the travails of that summer, that it was all but invisible to me then.

But it was definitely there.

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Lying in my bed I hear the clock tick and think of you
Caught up in circles – confusion is nothing new

If you’re lost you can look – and you will find me
Time after time
Cyndi Lauper 1985

June 23rd – 27th 1997
After the party, I felt a huge sense of accomplishment.
I had survived the day, and it had gone as Jenny would have wanted.

In looking forward to the event over all the months before, and in writing the invitations late into the night at home, I’d been aware of fulfilling Jenny’s wishes, and of wanting to draw her life to some sort of close, for her, for her friends and for our families, but most of all for me.

I knew it would be an immensely emotional day, but I did think that afterwards maybe I’d feel some sort of release and even a permission to move on again.

But the following week, back at home, it all hit me again.

And rather than looking forwards, now I found myself looking backwards instead, for all of the best reasons.

I sorted through those photographs and stories which people had left for us.

What a resource! It’s true that every portrait gives a different insight into the person, but of all the wonderful moments captured there, three highlights stick in the memory.

There was a picture taken by a professional photographer at Summer Eights in 1984, which showed Jenny rowing with my housemate Cathy, in the week when they won their ‘blades’.

Those identical commemorative oars still hang in both our houses today. Cathy’s kindness in giving her picture to the children was amazing.

Then there was a picture taken by Greg, Jenny’s old friend with the girlfriend oop north. Greg was a geology lecturer these days. He was away at a conference.

But Sandy, his wife – one of those weddings Jenny and I had argued at – brought a fantastic picture of Jenny on a field trip, sitting on a rock on the Isle of Skye.

That photo summed up the Jenny I knew then, capturing the girl I had grown to love all those years ago more closely than any other picture.

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Five years ago, I ran across a hilly autumn dusk at Newlands Corner and wrote the piece which became the Prologue for this story.

The time had come around again, and so last week I returned to catch the fading rays of this year’s extended Indian Summer.

As evening fell slowly all around me, the ground beneath my feet was dry as bone, the grass long since bleached by unbroken September sun. The Chalk downlands lay calm and quiet now, under a gaping void of warm, still air, awaiting a winter still faintly glimpsed but not that far ahead.

The view across the hillside at nightfall was as captivating as always, repainting lost days from memory with scarcely a brush stroke missing.

Under a clear sky, the light dimmed through blue towards a steely grey and suddenly a high moon appeared — a light that was always there, but lay hiding out of view until that moment.

And so it goes with life and love gone by.

Last Monday, on your fortyfifth birthday, we returned to your beloved Cotswold Hills to lay your father to his final rest. It wasn’t the day I’d have chosen for a funeral, but that’s the way it was to be.

Later, I took the children to share our love at the spot where your ashes lie.

No small infants now, this nearly-grown young woman and this boy soon to become a man, we stood together, lost and teary-eyed in a moment of shared reflection — for a few seconds transported back to all those times we’d stood there lost before.

Time passes, and gradually the world looks different. We didn’t always agree, your father and I, across the hard years we shared after you had gone.

And yet, we struggled on, as best we could. We worked it through, recognising conflicts if never quite acknowledging them. And before he died, we didn’t patch it up, because finally there was no more patch required.

Now he’s left us, and the space he filled for twentyfive years lies empty. The world lies closer to its natural order now, but that offers no solutions.

The place where you grew up, a hill, a church, a house, a view — they all remain, exactly as you left them, but the scenery and stage of your early years — where I arrived, much later, to share an Act or two — they’ve lost another player.

We stand here together on your birthday, and for a moment I wonder how it might have been, if you’d been here. But there’s just no future in a different past.

At the house, another life is waiting. Warm hearts which complete us, yet still ring at times uncomfortably with the echoes of yesterday. It’s not easy, this stuff, not any of it, and it’s not straightforward for anyone involved.

There are no rules, no roadmap nor final destination and even now, after all these years, I never know how we’ll really get there.

And still, I know deep down, that this is it — we’re here today, and in truth we arrived quite some time ago — with the elusive trick being only to recognise it.

The past is as we remember it, and the present is where we live and where we are. The future? Who knows.

Arguably, our tomorrow will be poorer by one person, but I learned many years ago that such a narrow, limited view of life and death hides the truth entirely.

The reality speaks of time behind us, of now and all the life that’s still to come.

We’ll return here often, in our minds and in our memory, to reach across that span of years.

And I know we’ll take your father forwards with us — just as we take you.

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Five years ago, the Indian Ocean tsunami took 200,000 lives.

This week, twin earthquakes in Indonesia and a tsunami in the Pacific Ocean have written pain and destruction into the lives of thousands more.

This site is about bereavement and recovery, on an individual scale. It’s important to tell that story, so that people can understand it far better than they do.

But it’s important to see the wider picture.

Because as this week’s events have shown, bereavement is not an isolated event.

I have every sympathy for the bereaved, because I appreciate how difficult it is to lose a loved one, and the far-reaching impact which loss like that can bring.

In our society, it’s understandable for the bereaved to feel singled out by fate.

Yet finally, if we can learn anything at all from bereavement, it’s surely that the anger and victimisation we feel are based on some really huge false assumptions — namely that there is some kind of guarantee in life towards happiness, good health and blissful longevity.

You only have to spend a single day in the third world, or ponder a few moments on the natural and political disasters unfolding across the globe, to realise that beyond our comfort zones in suburban Europe and North America, those guarantees just simply don’t exist.

There are millions (in truth, billions) of people on this Earth of ours who face heart-rending loss every day, with little recognition, no understanding and scant compassion from us.

And so it’s easy to feel angry, but really, there’s no justification. Life is hard in bereavement, but the truth is that it’s awfully hard for half the world around us, and we do very little to help.

What’s happened in bereavement is really that our miraculous cocoon of good fortune has been punctured, and suddenly we’ve been brought the gift of so much understanding that we always lacked before.

The world looks quite unfamiliar now. Never again can you see film of a natural disaster zone and detach yourself from the consequences.

Every time you hear of another pointless death on some foreign battlefield, you’ll think about a family’s loss in an entirely different way.

No longer will you see a widow weeping beside a newly-dug grave in Palestine and compartmentalise that scene into a world that’s far away and safely different from your own.

Bereavement is an awfully hard school of knocks — but we can really learn from the experience. So open your eyes a moment, and look around you.

Because the pain you suffered brings a completely new perspective on disaster.

That’s wisdom. And it’s up to you to use it.

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For Jennifer.

I feel so extraordinary
Something’s got a hold on me

I get this feeling I’m in motion
A sudden sense of liberty
New Order — July 1987 / November 1994

I must have slept a little, eventually, if only because I can remember waking up.

That’s when it hit me for the first time.

Just for an instant, it was a day like any other. And then I remembered that she was dead.

It’s hard to explain how that realisation felt. But I had to relive it every single day, for months and months and months.

What was I going to do now? All my efforts had been spent in getting us this far. But for what?

Now that she wasn’t here to care for, what did it all matter?

Was there a tomorrow? Or even a today?

I didn’t know, and I just didn’t care.

I lay there, unmoving, unthinking. Numb.

A soft sound came from the other bedroom. An infant was awake now, and gurgling contentedly. I listened.

A minute later came a faint cry, growing steadily louder.

I threw back the covers, and crawled from my empty bed.

On this, the blackest of days, I had to go on.

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Soon after Jenny’s death, it had seemed that four months was an impossibly long time.

It’ll seem difficult now, I’d written, to think about a celebration in June.

But that is now, and June will be then. And that’s how it was. It wasn’t a difficult day.

There were just a couple of tricky moments. One where my old tutor took me aside, and said, look, you have to move on now, and live your own life from here onwards.

Of course that’s exactly what I planned to do, but it wasn’t really the time to tell me.

And then, whilst we were eating, Emily banged her cup on the table and everything fell completely silent. Suddenly I thought, wait – they’re expecting me to make a speech. But I wasn’t going to say anything, since it was Jenny’s day.

So I laughed, the kids laughed too, and the conversations all resumed.

I knew that Geoff had been apprehensive about the party, thinking that he might only stay an hour or so.

Yet finally he was the last to leave, and I could see that he had enjoyed the day as much as anyone.

Eventually, all the guests had left and we were all completely shattered. I drove back to Stratford along the old road, as I always had done after visiting Jenny in Sunbury.

And when I got home, we simply flopped.

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