I don’t have a shortcut to remembering the calendar details of his death and burial. I remember hanging the cerebral palsy angel on the tree, which means he died after we’d received Zig’s diagnosis; C.P angel’s legs were still tightly crossed that year, which means it was the first year we had her, which means it was 2000, which means he would have been 38.
Although I’ve got 36 in my head. Perhaps the edge to dieing suddenly, alone – allegedly – in bed aged 36, is dulled just slightly by its being 38. I don’t see it myself, but the drama of dieing young is a funny beast.
He would have loved the drama. The pathos. The grief of half a handful of women weeping at his coffin and his graveside. Which is one of several reasons I didn’t go to his funeral. The main one being I couldn’t be arsed, and felt irritated at having been asked.
Irritation was more than a floral top note of our relationship. Last night I wrapped (ignore that if the idea of wrapping pressies already gives you a bit of a panic) a stocking-filler for Zig: a pair of zeppelin-shaped magnets that crackle like the devil when you throw them together. That was our years together: a constant, electric, polar crackle.
Bloody irritating.
I was irritated at my assumption that I was self-aware enough at eighteen to find a true friend and lover for life. Irritated that I couldn’t chop off all the bits of my drives and dreams and personality that would make me the perfect fit for his. Irritated that he would want me to be.
He was irritated that I would never behave. Irritated that I’d question his absences, and then question and question again his lazy, careless, clumsy lies. He was irritated that nobody else smelled like me, and that I didn’t act the way I smelled.
I was irritated that his full chest laughter would have me laughing along, every time. Irritated that, although he liked big boobs, the black lacy bra he gave me one late Christmas was both padded and two sizes too small.
We were both insanely, underskin histamine inflamed irritated that somehow some glitch in the narrative made too hot, too cold, too big, too small, too hard, too soft, of what should have been just right.
He was irritated that I was Liz; I was irritated that he was Billy, and he knew that I didn’t want milk.
I was irritated that he was scared of growing old, and I wanted someone to grow old alongside. Irritated that when he learned that growing old was not at all bad; that being a faithful partner had a lot going for it; that being a parent was a terrible, ecstatic experience, it wouldn’t be safe to sit alongside him in a pub with a couple of pints of Thwaites and wonder about the wonder of it all.
Even though we has no shared friends at the end – although I only lived a couple of dozen miles from him, I was very careful that he never found out – I heard about his death on the day they found his body.
I put the phone down and howled. Screamed and stamped and wailed and rent and gnashed and and kicked and stomped and dripped gunge and all that. I thought I was sad that he would never learn that growing older is not at all bad; that being a faithful partner has a lot going for it; that being a parent is a terrible, ecstatic experience.
I thought I was grieving.
It’s not until now, today, feeling irritated by a bauble that doesn’t want to be rethread, that I recognise in the irritation a portion, a shaving, a whiff or a sniff or a ghost of this time five years ago, and realise I wasn’t grieving.
I was bloody furious.
Things To Do
Cake:
Pressies:
Pressies from kids:
Cards:
Decorations:
Christmas dinner: yeah, right.
Booze:
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