In 2016, I decided to move to Australia.
Having worked overseas in Europe before, I shook the dice of my twenties one last time and opted to try somewhere new. I had been living in Manchester with no real reason to stay, but didn’t feel like moving back to my hometown of Sheffield. At the end of 2016, fleeing Brexit and a failed relationship, I moved to Perth, Western Australia, and thankfully, found work as an English teacher in an adult college.
Not long after I’d moved, I had a phone call with a close friend, called Adam. We had always talked regularly and I kept him updated on my latest adventure. But on this call, he had some news. He told me that he’d been experiencing some strange symptoms and he likely had some kind of neurological disorder. He told me the doctors weren’t sure what it was exactly, but were trying various treatments. He said not to worry about it, and that his girlfriend had insisted that he tell people. We moved on to other topics, and kept in touch as always.
A few months later, I got an unexpected text message from my dad in the morning before work. He told me that my mum had had to go into hospital quite urgently, and they weren’t sure what the problem was. This wasn’t a total surprise as my mum had had some non-urgent surgeries in the last few years, but obviously still worrying, especially given how far away I was. Later in the day, I saw a new missed call, so during the break, I stepped out into the warm afternoon sun to call back.
My dad explained that my mum had been diagnosed with a brain tumour, and had been rushed into the operating theatre. She would be undergoing life-or-death surgery, which would take many hours, over the course of the next day. After the call, I went to my shared flat room, packed my things, and booked a flight home that evening. Fortunately, my employer at the time were understanding, and my new, just-about girlfriend helped me with all the arrangements.
The 18 hour flight (not including stopover) form Perth to Manchester is difficult at the best of times. Spending the duration not being able to check your phone for updates was excruciating. When I finally arrived in the UK, switched my phone on and spoke to my brother. Standing in the drizzly train platform, I immediately knew that the worst case hadn’t happened. He didn’t need to tell me: when he answered, I could tell from the tone of his voice that she had come through okay.
We were told that the surgery to remove the tumour had been successful beyond all expectations and my mum recovered surprisingly quickly. However, any sense of relief was short-lived. We were told that despite how remarkably well the surgery had gone, the overall prognosis was poor: a matter of months. This was devastating news for all of us to deal with.
Again remarkably, my mum was able to buck this prediction. Whether it was the expertise of the surgeon, my mum’s personal history of running and healthy-living, or sheer luck, her condition recovered almost completely with ongoing treatment. Over the next few months and years, she married her new partner, travelled several times, and continued completing runs, including many long-distance races.
My life also continued. Seeing as I was back in Sheffield without a job, it seemed like a good time to take on the Masters that I had been considering. It was also a good time to catch up with old friends. Strangely, my friend Adam seemed to be keeping his distance: not replying to messages or cancelling plans at the last minute. After a few weeks of non-communication, I received another devastating message.
Adam’s girlfriend contacted his close friends. She told us that his condition had been gradually worsening, but that he hadn’t wanted to share this publicly. It had reached the point that he was receiving end-of-live care in hospital and that we should expect the worse. This resulted in the whole group of friends descending back on Sheffield, coming from around the UK and as far away as Germany. All well-intentioned arrivals at the hospital hoping to visit were politely turned away. There wasn’t much else for us to do but wait, which generally took place in one of the ,any pubs we used to frequent.
Adam passed away in 2018 at 29 years old. I’d been friends with him since the start of secondary school, and other friends in the same group had known him since primary or even birth. If not the life and soul of the party, he was the person who’d twist everyones’ arms to get us all there in the first place. He was a confidant, and felt like a best friend to most of us. After the funeral, we all went back to our normal lives, knowing that some of the glue that had held us together was suddenly gone.
A few months later, I woke up in the early morning with a few lines of a poem in my mind. As it turned out, none of those remembered lines made it into the final poem, but they did serve as the thematic basis. As an English teacher, I’ve read poetry fairly regularly, but (like many students and teachers) felt like I wasn’t appreciating it as much as I ought to. I’d never seriously tried writing poetry before, but this was something I couldn’t ignore. Once the first few lines are written, it became a puzzle to work out which words and phrases could fit the rhymes, patterns and themes.
Eventually, this puzzle turned into a kind of elegy for my friend Adam. Each verse deals with a characteristic that I felt defined him in some way. I won’t do the disservices of explaining it in detail, but it shouldn’t surprise the reader to know that he was a fan of sports, history and autumn weather.
Ubi Sunt? Of Danelaw, sainted scribe, and harried towns, And proud cities ringing grooves, and stalwart docks, To gleaming wharf and ancient seat on charted pier, But most in golden boughs and drifting locks. Long suffered team who tilt in roaring park, Or ball tossed fast on quiet country green, To stay, face bouts and overcome the jeers, A fight played out on hazy morning screens. As lacking shrift for sentimental show, Happy more to foment sly and friendly plot, Through mottled pane, and over stilling glass of beer, Delighting in some freshly gleaned upshot. Now, when I walk the trundling route of our old mile, Past barber’s, parks and pubs: our former haunts, I round the corner and (still) half expect you here, Eyes winking as we exchange our well-worn taunts.
As you rapidly discover after the death of someone important to you, life does go on. Part of the tragedy of Adam’s passing was how it came just before we all started turning 30. Many of us were finally letting go of our over-extended youths and accepting our no-longer-avoidable adulthoods.
Things moved quickly with the girlfriend I had left in Australia: she moved out to live with me in Sheffield and in 2019 we were married. Years ago, I had asked Adam to be my best man, but even at the time we knew that was in jest: he was many things, but too retiring for public speaking. His absence was especially felt on that day. It was strange thinking on all the things that he’d miss out on, but still joyful to be able to celebrate with friends and family.
Since we’d first dated, my wife and I always planned to start a family. We both loved living in Sheffield, and through her work, my wife ended up with more friends there than me. Despite that, we made the decision to move to London, largely so my wife could be close to her family during the pregnancy and birth. My mum’s condition after the treatment had been stable for a good while, and it no longer felt quite so urgent to be on hand. I don’t think my mum would ever have been happy about us leaving, but if there was one thing that justified it, it was doing whatever was best for our future child and her future grandchild.
Thankfully, moving to London worked out well. My wife’s family are incredibly supportive, and I managed to start a new job that I was much less likely to have found back in Sheffield. While living in South London, I got another message from Adam’s girlfriend: his ashes would be spread in the Peak District that March and his close friends were invited. In the end, none of us were able to make it: after glancing over a few articles about some peculiar trend called ‘social distancing’, by early March 2020 it was clear that something truly out of the ordinary was happening.
This was the start of Covid-19, lockdowns, Zoom quizzes and the rest. Compared to what many other people went through, we definitely count ourselves lucky. Both my wife and I could work from home; we lived near a good amount of green space; we had the technology and means to stay in touch with are close ones; and her family would bring us home-cooked food (which I picked up from her father, the hand off like a meeting of spies or drug dealers in our building’s car park). I’d definitely take our experience over many others, especially key workers and medical staff.
One of the hardest things about lockdown was not being able to visit my mum. After moving to London, I’d made a rule that I would get up to Sheffield once a month. Despite nor being able to do this, I was comforted since I knew she had a support network around her. She lived with her husband and their dogs, in a house near the countryside. My brother was living in Sheffield, so he was on hand to help out, not to mention her many friends. Since my mum was immunocompromised, the household took the rules seriously. So did we: like anyone who cared about other people and understood the nature of the risk, we knew it was the right choice.
Soon we had another reason to be especially cautious. Among the daily death-tolls and new variants, we were glad to have some happy news to share: my wife was pregnant. I have no idea how it feels to be pregnant, but can imagine that going through it during a global pandemic was no easy task. At least for us, we were quite happy for our world to shrink, spending time at home, cooking meals, going for walks in the park, and watching Tiger King.
Thankfully, the pregnancy was without major hiccups and we had great support from the hospitals we visited. The birth itself was more dramatic than we hoped, but in the end we were both delighted to have our firstborn son with us. Even though he made his appearance slightly earlier than we expected in beginning of July 2021, we were just glad he was healthy and happy.
After the change of lockdown rules in May 2021, I was able to visit Sheffield again. We had been very disappointed to miss Christmas, since celebrating it with my mum, her husband and us ‘kids’ on both sides had become our new tradition. Thankfully, in the summer I could visit again for my mum’s 60th birthday at the end of June.
During this time, her condition had been deteriorating. She’d needed more surgery which lead to complications, and another round of treatment. Optimistically, I held on to the idea that if she could beat the odds once, she might be able to do it again. When I visited in the summer, I could see that her condition was worse, but she always put that down to the surgery complications, or the need to get the right the combination of medications and steroids.
After the birth of our son, my parents and brother came down in turn to visit us. My mum and her husband had enjoyed visiting London: they could see me, her sister and his daughter, all while staying in their camper van in Crystal Palace park. One time, we all took part in a 5k race together. But the last time that my mum came to visit, it was clear that it had become too much for her. The length of the journey, the bustle of London, even just making it up and down stairs. Back in Sheffield, my brother kept me updated over regular phone calls. He had the unenviable task of telling me and other family members to start expecting the worse.
I was at a loss of what to do. My wife suggested that we move up to Sheffield: I was still working from home and she was on maternity leave; we actually could be quite flexible despite having a newborn. At least this way, we could spend as much time with my mum as possible. All this took a few weeks to organise. When we visited my mum’s house again, we could see that her condition had become even worse. I understood then that this would not be like the last time. We spent as much time as we could with my mum and my son, her first grandson, together.
She passed away in the beginning of November 2021.
Back in June 2017, I had just moved back following my mum’s first emergency surgery. There was a general election coming up, so I went out canvasing in the Sheffield Hallam constituency. They say Sheffield is the biggest village in England, and true to form, I bumped into someone I had a connection with. A nurse got talking to me and it turned out that not only did she know my mum, but had been working on the same ward she’d been recovering on.
Later, I was replaying this conversation in my mind, and it almost verbatim became the first verse of my next poem. The only other note being, my mum’s name was quite unusual (Cressida, from Shakespeare), so she could never escape notice or people’s questions about its origins and pronunciation.
First-Name Terms When I was out, knocking on doors, I met the nurse who walked your ward. She said she’d seen the board and thought: That must be her! -- Not seen that name up there before! Unlike the names of august men, Engraved on walls, and signs, and wings, And filed in dutiful reports, To which scribbled margin notes retort: By whom was this work really wrought? Your mother knew (I have no doubt), That names, solemnly passed down, By curs, soon absent, wayward bound, Were of no use to keep around, so! Gave first names as her redoubts. Some hair returned, curled and fey, Like on spring lambs, you would not prey. One day, you said: some green leaves stay, Others curl; fall; turn; then fade. But the tree cannot be cursed nor blamed. How’s she getting on? I knew it were! Small world. You know. I half answer. I see. Hey! Pass my love on to her. I turned and gamely said, of course, But wished she’d never been so sure.
Life does go on, even after an event like that, and especially when you have a new house to move in to and a baby to take care of. There is a strange sense of relief looking back at the last few years. This dramatic stage is over, but now I have to deal with the loss. Writing poetry has played a role in starting to make sense of it all. I never sat down and decided to write either: both times I had a fragment playing on my mind which I had to pin down and build out from. I felt like as if I couldn’t let go of either until I got the whole thing out and wrangled into some kind of order.
As a teacher, I have a better appreciation for what a lot of students and staff go through. Dealing with the death of a parent, friend or any close one is hard. Doing that as a young person during your school years is hard to imagine. It’s a cliché, but we don’t know what other people are going through. For many, it’s comforting to put on a brave face and keep going as normal, even if what you’re feeling inside couldn’t be more different.
Poetry is one of those things people turn to in hard times. I don’t know if Adam spent much time reading poetry, but my mum certainly did. Collections, like the Poetry Pharmacy, were never far out of reach in her home. I think writing these poems helped me, and I hope other people can find some comfort in them. I don’t know if I’ll ever write any others: part of me hopes I never will.
***
One thing you learn about death in the current age is that so much of it is now mediated online through group messages, social media posts and memorial websites. If you’d like to donate to charities related to brain cancer care, you can see the memorial pages of my friend, Adam and my mum, Cressida.
These are some of the poems I’ve been reading over the last couple of years that served as inspiration for my own writing:
- Late Fragment, Raymond Carter
- The Orange, Wendy Cope
- The Chestnut Casts his Flambeaux, AE Housman
- Remember, Christina Rossetti
- As the Team’s Head Brass, Edward Thomas
And some songs:
- Till St. Dymphna Kicks Us Out, Conor Oberst
- I’ll believe in anything, Wold Parade
- Is it enough? Alabaster dePlume
- Sometimes I forget you’ve gone, Dirty Three
LPearceLearning 