Trigger warnings: Frank discussion of death, details of processing death and a narrative of personal grieving.
This blog post is mainly for myself, but figured I might as well share it with you. I've put together a little collage of words, cut up and pasted back together as best I can make sense of them to process at least some of my recent bereavement which, because of the Covid-19 pandemic, became a step into the unknown. A humble and embarrassed nod in the direction of Kurt Vonnegut, whose Timequake novel this is influenced by.
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Grief is an exploding clock. It no longer puts one tick in front of the next tock. From a single pinhole camera, suddenly the whole of time is seen. Tangible: elastic and tubular and coming in and out at bamboozling angels. It reverses and then forces forward at huge velocity. It grows thin as drought only to spurt and gush again. It connects one moment to another through collisions causing flashbangs. It threads through a million parallel universes between the great expanses of "what ifs" and "what weres".
Grief makes a reluctant time traveller of us.
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On the wall are money spiders erratically scurrying over the brick. I've not seen money spiders for years.
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This is my aim: I'm going to try my best to describe the abstraction of my grief during a stage in human history when time - that oft used compress on bereavement - stopped being reliable.
It's an impossibility, I know.
It's like asking you to taste what I tasted in a dream I had last night.
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Grief is all the pain you're feeling. It's the thousand yards in a stare. It's a writhing on an otherwise mundane day. It’s the soundtrack of a mix tape made by your teenage angst self. It’s really happening.
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Grief is the sense of loss that just keeps being lost further.
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No one wants to see you grieving, the same as one wants to listen to you talk about your dream. It's because no one can put themselves in the place of either. No one is going to read 4000 words about your grief. That's just the reality.
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Grief is the coping mechanism. Embrace it like a lover on the central station of a bridge.
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I was there with my father after his mother died. Her light body hardly making an impression on the hospital mattress, her skin thin as petals. My abiding memory is how gently my father ran his fingers through her white hair. I was there in the chapel of rest with my father when my mother's mother died. Her cheekbones given a powdering of rouge. My father, again, placed a hand on her head. I was there at the funeral home with my father and my mother in her coffin. I remember her arm's broken skin unhealed. For the third occasion, I saw my father's hand lovingly caressing hair. Now I see my own hand soothing my father's cold, wisp hair. I do it because I think he was showing me what he wanted all along.
He’s the first person I’ve touched outside my household for 3 weeks and will be for another 9.
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There is absolute stillness in the room, except for a clock's second hand and my pulsing, beating, rhythms.
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I'm outside. I'm crying out. Doubled up, wide eyed at my shoes, in ancestral howls. The pain of being someone's child ripped out of me.
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My grandfathers died before I was born. My mother walked round a winter morning corner and found her father dead in the driver's seat. I don't know where my other grandfather died. My father would often say he wished he knew more about his father's youth. Time just went on using up the chances between them. I'm named after one of my grandfathers.
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I'm running to help my father. I know it's a performative dance lit by the late spring evening.
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Impotently thrashing my feelings outside, alone, I recall how my mother said finding her father in the car had changed her. I wish, wide eyed at my shoes, Superman would hear my voice and turn the Planet backwards.
That's it. No more times.
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It's Easter Sunday, 2020. I don't know if you remember what the wildest throes of the Covid-19 pandemic in the UK were like?
People were terrified of becoming ill. The daily deaths cresting on the wave that weekend. Stay At Home. Protect The NHS. Save Lives. The country in effective shutdown. Keep your distance. Wash your hands. One hour of outdoor sanctioned exercise per day.
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If you die during April 2020 everyone will want to know if it was the virus.
"Not of the virus" on tombstones dated April 2020.
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I'm looking through my father's wardrobe, the sun washing sadness off my face. I find a newspaper he decided to keep dated 9 April 2020 and the letter we all got from the Prime Minister "levelling" that this month is going to be tough.
Suits he wore to church. His shirts all matched with ties on hangers. He always kept shoes polished. Vowing myself to secrecy with myself, what he will be buried in. There's a lot of things I'm keeping secrets with myself. My mind is running with decisions that, given it's only been 18 hours, might seem crass if I even spoke to myself out loud.
My grief is running on experience and learning as it goes.
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A funeral in April 2020 is something no one has any point of reference for. The unreal magical of resetting an entire human way of life over a month is bewildering.
Restricted number of mourners is the main thing everyone knows about.
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Funeral processions are mapped out for people to pay respects, blankly observe or sob tears on the pavement or hold dogs in the streets as the hearse goes by like some sort of fever imagery from the steaming reed riverbanks of 'Nam. It's steampunk.
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My employer has placed me on the Furlough . A word seemingly beamed down from the future - it simply didn't exist until everyone had heard it simultaneously. I explain what it means to my father through the window out in the warm air.
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I'm looking at my father through the window out in the chill air. There is absolute stillness in the room, except for a clock's second hand.
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The paramedic assures me behind his mask, "Could be much worse". "You don't want to be in a hospital these days". He shares my grandfather's name. He assures me my father died "without knowing anything about it". "He would have had no warning at all" he adds as an assurance. "The way we all want to go", he continues to assure me.
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I'm outside. My father is smiling, walking towards me. I'm waving, smiling, telling him to keep his distance because I need to keep him safe. I might be infected. Please, just for a week or so. Maybe take the backstreets. Good idea. I don't have it in me to arrange a Zoom funeral.
Zoom funerals. No one blinks at the term. They'd sound so futuristic to a boy back in the year 2000.
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The paramedic satisfied himself the house is clean of symptoms of the virus before walks through the door. He makes an effort to keep space between me and him and we sort of barn dance.
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Furlough has been saviour in the circumstance. The lockdown has acted as a much appreciated shield. It's been easier to hide away.
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I no longer bother winding my watch now I'm on furlough. The walls of a week have fallen to the sound of trumpets of Revelations. Only dates matter, there is no point in naming the days. The potential is the same.
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Don't fetishize the date. Don't turn a day into anything other than any other day. The potential is the same.
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I've still not eaten my Easter egg and it's June.
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The driver of the private ambulance phones. They have a few pick-ups on the way before they get here. They've never been as busy. More like a taxi service and it's just turned closing time, don't you know. They arrive 3 hours later.
They explain anything on my father's body will be incinerated at the morgue as part of new pandemic procedures. They can remove anything now from the body and leave it behind.
I ask them to leave his watch on the sideboard.
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The minister is in the house. I ask him to bless my father before the private ambulance arrives and leaves the house. We should have enough time.
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I point to the thermometer. My father checked his temperature every morning. I don't know if you remember, but a fever was something to note back then. He told me it always showed green. I point to the woollen gloves on the chair. He always washed his hands in any case. The scarf behind the door. He used that as a face covering. He was very sensible. He read a lot about the precautions and we spoke about it. I tried to keep him safe.
He left that thermometer out for me in the garden yesterday for my approval. He was so keen to tell me how well he felt; how safe he'd been all week. I knew he was hinting he wanted my blessing for leaving the house. I just gave a throwaway remark to dismiss it.
The paramedic says I've answered his question and walks into the room.
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"What do you mean, 'something special'?"
"I'm not going to tell you, but it's something I need to go do. Look at the thermometer. Isn't it a good one?"
"Yeah."
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That thermometer laid to rest by his watch on the sideboard.
That stupid, little, flimsy thermometer gives me a feeling when I see it, I can't tell you, my god. It takes me back to a conversation I had with my father. But I can't bear to move it from what would have been in his reach, if he'd still be sat on the chair.
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Grief, frail as burnt paper, crumbles into dried flakes and, falling, blinds my eyes and chokes my voice as it buries me.
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Some people have lived and died and Notre Dame Cathedral has always been there. I think about this a lot more than I should. My father-in-law lived a life with that fact. I was there holding his hand when he died in the hospice and Notre Dame Cathedral was in the world too.
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Every time I open the door of the house to check for letters the more I see it again as my family home. It is less my father's home and less further, my parent's. I have to see it that way - to will it to rewrite over my mind’s eye’s scene rein-acted by the characters of me, my father and the paramedic with my grandfather’s name, while I take the role of the audience as the theatre run unfolds night after night. Bravo! Throw the bouquets!
My dog comes in with me and sometimes picks up a scent. I'll watch him chase a memory across the floor and out of existence. His confused body language makes me very sad.
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Grief is a vibration so delicate, like a shiver when a ghost walks in a garden. It can quickly turn to a tremble. A tremble can shake down all the cathedrals in the world.
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Utility companies, banks and insurances are easy to deal with during a pandemic. Bereavement units with direct dial numbers into team member's kitchens, complaining of slow home wi-fi. No need for death certificates. I believe you. Everyone is dying these days. No questions asked. Apart from one.
"Was it coronavirus?" the lady on the phone asks straight away, "Sorry, I shouldn't really ask". Death is not a personal question if it's a graph on the daily news.
I only have to listen once to hold music. It sounds like a Walkman with a distressed tape of the latest Taylor Swift held to the receiver. It's warbling and tinny. It makes me smile to think the girl is cheering herself up with happy songs.
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After my mother died, father and I talked. My father showed me where the files were to administer his affairs and when his work was done, I told him I didn't know him as well as I wanted.
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Today I've not seen my father walk up the street or down it with his newspaper. I'm uneasy although rationalise he's taking the backstreets to avoid contagious people. I'll ask him if he wants me to get his newspaper when I collect his shopping list later.
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Remember: what is said in grief can come across as hurtful. Let it go.
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They say that I will know the real person behind his smile, his tip of the hat and "howdy-do-de!".
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They say my father missed going out when the pandemic hit bad. He was so very active, they say. Amazing energy. So happy. They say stopping his active life is what they, personally, believe killed him.
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A neighbour says: "Will they not just burn it?"
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The funeral home was not doing their Silver of Gold standard funeral package in the early summer of 2020. It's the supply and demand economic model by which we are dictated in this modern age. In other words, it's the "Medieval Plague" funeral package or take a hike.
Cremations with Covid-19 on the death certificate.
Burials with cemetery plot deeds only.
No embalming.
Bodies wrapped in a shroud and no personal items.
No votive offerings for the ferryboatman allowed.
Flowers are scarce but not as scarce as coffins.
If choosing wedding guests is difficult, selecting 6 mourners is a particular cruelty. With so few mourners and no service to mumble the old rugged cross at, I choose a memorial card - the size of an old cigarette player's card - to hand out with a poem printed on the back my father had copied out in long hand and left between a couple of banking files.
I've developed a good relationship with the funeral director. She lets me add one thing into the coffin. It's my father's retirement tie.
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I won't miss my chance to be return my neighbour's regards when the opportunity arises. Everyone loses someone, but only some are considered witches.
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The period towards the funeral is oddly barren of activities. Nothing to do but check in on if the coffin has arrived.
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The morning of the funeral was mercifully bright. The coffin arrived in the nick of time.
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We are distanced at the graveside and I'm never more apart from my father while he's reunited with my mother.
The minister reads a comforting internment verse from his iPad. What year is this?
The funeral director explains I cannot hold the tension of a rope when the coffin is lowered. He promises to give me the rope, limp, after. He does and I run my fingers through its braid.
A gravedigger I vaguely recognise walks up to me.
"Hey!" he says, "How are you?"
I've had better days.
"Great weather though!" He says with a gesture of a man enjoying a carefree day.
"It's ironic because of, you know?" He covers his mouth and nose with a dirty palm.
I guess.
"Well, better get to it! See you around!" He tests the ground.
OK, I'll leave you to it then, to bury my father with that spade you've got there.
The birds are singing in far off trees.
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My mother had a palpable fear of being buried alive. I was sworn by her to make sure she was dead when the moment came, by whatever death's hand chose to deal her. I promised I would look for a sign.
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My mother was the card dealer in her death.
When her mother died I heard my mother's primal yell, but I couldn't understand. Perhaps no longer being a child was too painful.
The hospital fed her with a tube in her arm.
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The doctor phones. There's a backlog on autopsies. They are basically stacking them up. No expected cause of death means there is no need to find one if I'm happy not knowing. Let's just agree it was an life changing event. No fancy Latin term to get the tongue round. Tempus Fugit.
The Registry phones. There's delays on printing death certificates. The department is relying on wi-fi. I phonetically spell out names and double check on dates from the documents. Mother's occupation. Father's, father's. Place of birth registration. And the cause of death - that one is easy: Time. It's all very important for those amateur genealogists.
The lawyer phones. There's no processing in the court system right now. The law firm office is locked shut. I scan, photograph and mail documents in electronic bundles at their request. I am asked if I can videocall - how very sci-fi 1990's retro.
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Here's some straightforward advice: Start a Filofax planner. You can take it with you, sit with it somewhere comfortable, pass it to someone.
Make daily to-do lists in it and use the monthly planner. If you get a contact number, write it beside the other contact numbers. Add a note if need be: why you need the number. Write down what you need to talk to someone about then, when you do: who you talked to, when you talked to them and what the outcome was. If there is any action to follow up, then write it down with a date and add it to the planner.
Write down thoughts and ideas about the funeral service, about plans you have, advice given.
Separate out actions into their own folders and put post-it notes on letters.
And only do things when you have the energy for them. If that's just one thing, fine - you want to do three things in a day - fine. Stay up when you're not tired, lie in bed when you are tired. reward yourself often. It’s okay if you’re at capacity and cannot fully engage with others. Greif is your time to look after yourself and keep your levels up during a bereavement.
Talk to people who support you. Sometimes talking about anything at all is too hard, so write. Communication comes and goes but let people help you and ask for help especially at points when you feel you can't.
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People are phoning me who I don't know. They are saying they are visiting the graveside. They tell me they are grieving for my father too. They want me to know they will visit regularly to keep it tidy and place things in his memory. I say I'm grateful.
I'm not grateful. Another's dedication always makes me vomit out my own.
My mother is there too. This is where I have grieved for her for ten years, placed my flowers and prayers. Where my father tended the grave with love every Monday.
My father knew I'd tend the grave for them both. The idea that the place would not be just for me to visit hadn't crossed my mind.
Well, if they want it, they are welcome to it, I crabbily mutter under my breath.
I know, eventually things settle and I'll be on my knees in with winter roses.
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Here is the truth: Friends do whatever they are able to. The physical closeness and intimacy of just being with them is missing but they give me all they can and ask nothing in return. They are treasure at the bottom of the dark, crushing sea.
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I'm constantly verbally fencing. A parry of tone there, a riposte here. My words are flashing, trying to keep light on my toes and not be pierced in the heart.
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Time and death part ways with a science equation. Information the dead hold about the world will turn sepia and wilt by tomorrow's change of the season.
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Because the roadworks are left by the wayside, because shops remain boarded up, the small talk to pass the time is still strangely relevant as the weeks roll by. But I can sense the drift now.
Eventually my father's small talk and news change matter and dissipate, and my changes be less known to him. I'll be left with his bleached-boned words and he will be left with how I always seemed to him.
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I find the list three quarters written in the kitchen. Pen still across the paper. My father ate an orange every day and, naturally, they were top of the list and circled. As if I'd forget. I was doing his shopping as part of the self-isolation we are all practicing. I throw it in the bin to not turn it into nostalgia.
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Going through my father's paperwork today. Estate letters and records, just as he said where they would be, along with a contents page he's written so I don't miss anything. I keep finding, interfiled, handwritten notes on scrap paper. Poems exulting life and positive sayings and affirming religious scripture. And photos. Happy faces, loving fun and enjoying activities from last year, from a generation ago, again, interfiled with documents and note books.
I can't separate my father from what I am doing. He reminds me with each opening of a file, offering words of support. It's wonderful. I can't disassociate any routine, administrative task from the presence of my father. It's exhausting.
There's a box which holds every birth, marriage and death certificate of the family. Newspaper clippings of obituaries. Funeral service booklets. A card wishing my father a happy birthday from his mother. Education certificates and letters of successful job applications. A postcard. A half-begun family history he's started. Deeds to two cemetery burial plots, elaborately designed that only legal documents from 100 years ago can be. A foolscap page on which my father has written his early biography with a black pen.
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I write best when I uncouple the cogs and springs and just burn the oil instead. I need to believe I'm composing a fugue masterpiece under great toil as an attempt to take the shape of a soul. I can't let the impetus be lost. I have to keep feeling this way.
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I open the top bedside drawer and find an envelope addressed to me with an instruction to be only opened after my father's death. It's a letter dated a few years back. He couldn't have known I'd be reading during a pandemic.
"It's hard now but I'm telling you with everything I have here: I lived a contented life and was grateful for it" written in peacock blue from a series of late nights in his bed.
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His work is done.
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I read on some social media meme you can't spell emotion without motion. Emotions move on.
How can you tell something is moving when there is nothing marking it's passage?
My grief in this sickened world is a ship without a sail on a tide-less ocean without ever seeing land mass, the stars at night spinning, not orbiting. One long day of dark and light.
If somebody told me it's only been two days and another that it's been two centuries, I wouldn't know who to believe.
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I'm OK with drinking more than I usually do. People tell me to make sure I enjoy a glass of wine at the end of the day. Hey! Teacher! Leave those kids alone! But I'm acutely aware a side of my family had addictions to alcohol as I pour each glass.
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I needed to tell people of the death. Usually a priority before a funeral date. During the late spring of 2020 it became drawn out. No one can come to the funeral so what's the rush? It was a labour. Everyone was at home, no one was able to walk in and tell the news to a community. I was relying on my father's old contacts notebook.
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Here's some good advice: keep a clear set of contacts - numbers and addresses and even what these people mean to you.
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Weeks later I discover a box within a box of tinsel. In it is a Christmas card list. It's like if the Rosetta Stone was also Holy Grail shaped. I write letters and enclose a memorial card.
In 3 to 4 days I receive phone calls from shocked voices. Suddenly I'm back on the day of my father's death. I see it all before me. Softened details sharpening up on the whet stone from each telephone ring.
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The strain wares me out. The house plants I'm watering are dying one by one.
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One uncle I had was an alcoholic. There was one occasion I talked him out of committing suicide. "You're a good man" he said on the phone "I won't kill myself today, ciao!" which was surprisingly continental of him.
Years later I heard he had died. I don't know how he was found or if anyone placed hands on his head. He was given a pauper's funeral, so I'm told.
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The minister immediately spoke about a service for my father, when such gatherings are permissible in the great beyond: the future when things are back to normal. The delay until we can all meet under a church roof will be a good thing: people, me, we will be in a better frame of mind for a life's celebration.
I'm not so sure. It feels the need for it is changing into an anxious shadow. Like it is looming at the third stoke of midnight. What will people expect from it, from me and how I present myself so far after the funeral?
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People want to attend a traditional funeral. Those established cues are vital to allow everyone to establish their expectations about how they are going to approach parts of the day.
Tell people at the start of a funeral that there's a role-playing aspect and see how comfortable they sit.
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I realise I am perched on the final branch. The culmination of my parent's growing this family tree. It's a strange and profound feeling to be standing on the bow when the cradle has fallen. I think the tree would be rowan.
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How do people come up with someone's biography for a funeral? I don't know anything about my father's youth. I wish I'd asked. I think I'll write a poem for the eulogy. Play music from the White Lunar album. Shhh! Keep it secret.
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"I've spoken to many of you and you've told me what my father meant to you. You've made these little talks over and over again so much easier because it's been lovely to hear everyone saying the same things over and over again as a credit to the sunbeam he was to you all. I saw the same of him too.
So it's tricky to think of something you don't already know. But here's my try. My father's home was perfumed with poetry and decorated in photographs.
Poetry written, given, found and hard fought. Everything came accompanied with a poem or poetic saying left beside it, like domestic little gods people would offer prayers to in Ancient Rome, my father would assign these words of love, hope and compassion as well as spirit and peace from everything using fridge magnets to bookmarks to just leaving in drawers and on surfaces. He reminded himself about the lives he came into contact with through so many photographs of those still present or sadly gone. Photographs in pockets, wallets, binders, in frames on walls, on shelves, on tables.
My father was constantly surrounded with people he loved and lived with words he was inspired by and, thanks to you all having known him, he encouraged others to reach their potential and enjoy the miracle of being alive. And well, if you can do that, this is my definition of a life well lived.
As a little tribute to him, I've tried to write a poem I hope he will like [insert poem here]."
Or something like that as a start. It's a rough draft.
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I used the government department "tell us once" online system. Two weeks later I receive government forms, which I complete. Two weeks later I receive final confirmation of the changes I made. Two weeks later I receive refund cheques. Two weeks later I receive letters of instructions on how fill in the forms and where I might be entitled to refunds to the estate. Two weeks later I receive letters of condolence from government departments thanking me for informing them using the "tell us once" system and that the system will soon instruct me on what to do.
In the Spring of 2020 I do declare I've witnessed waterfalls bouncing of rapids back up the cliff face.
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I'm better at letting the tension go if an item on the to-do list is postponed. It's ok if it waits.
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I am unable, yet, to talk about the funeral of my godson. And that's OK.
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You have to let the guilt go. Who are you holding it for? It died with the person. It's how it is.
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The earliest memory I have is probably of the yellow bird, my father and me all lit under a late spring evening sky.
It was a clockwork, mechanical contraption. Yellow tin body. Multi-coloured rainbow cellophane wings. It made an awful racket when wound up and the wings would flap. I liked it when it was still.
I remember my father youthful and full of years to burn, at the park just behind the new estate built for the modern commuter. He wound the bird up and threw it, it's wings flapping maniacally and tin body clicking like a second hand.
I stood in rapture of wonder and terror: would my toy fly across the park, right over the fences of the houses and out of my life to nest some other place? Why would someone make such a toy? Something that flies away? Who would create something to leave you? Who would wind it then? I remember that feeling.
Of course it couldn't fly very well at all. The thin cellophane wings couldn't hold its body no matter how fast they flapped. It didn't go very far at all.
Nonetheless, I felt so much of a child's grief then. I didn't want it to leave. I didn't want my father to let it go.
My father let me run and pick it up from the spring-dew turf with my plump toddler limbs changing into those of a boy. He said that it was not a very effective flyer. It would never fly far. He let me carry it home and it never left the little shed with the oh-so modern lawn mower again.
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I run my fingers through my hair which has grown shaggy in the 14 weeks. Time has aged me but I look ready for my school class photograph.
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It's midsummer. Suddenly the nights are growing. The gears are beginning to move. The cultural restrictions are easing and accelerating.
I'm anxious my coping mechanisms in my Land That Time Forgot will be out of date against the rush of modernism. I'm coming out of it a different person than who entered. I'm irrevocably altered in this landscape I recognise.
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I had an old, old dream last night. It was a steamy, sticky night in my dream, and in my room. I picked some ice cubes. They were frozen water but had the consistency of Jolly Ranchers when I crunched them.
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Saturday 20 June 2020
Monday 20 April 2020
A beautiful truth
My dear friend, Barbara @tellthee, sent me these pages. I think they are the most beautiful truth I've ever read. It speaks to me a truth about death, about being changed by grief.
I want to share them and pin them on my wall.
I want to share them and pin them on my wall.
Tuesday 31 March 2020
Short weird story: Working from home
I've written this short weird genre story from the top of my head. It's fairly unedited. It's based on my experiences of March 2020.
If this was a b-movie the director would be going for Escape from New York meets The Thing meets Twelve Monkeys. It would begin with splicing stock and news clips together to set the scene. Picture it:
An everyday crowded Chinese inner city street, pedestrians going about their lives wearing face masks of varying patterns and colours. A doctor saying “This is a new strain of virus, highly infectious and we have no known therapy for it”. Workers all over the world entering offices and factories. A news reporter saying “The virus, has shut down many provinces in an attempt to halt the spread”. Footage of funerals. A map of the world with red increasing circles as the virus moves. A glitch induced clip of the US President saying “One day it’s like a miracle, it will disappear”. Stock footage of people in China coughing. Images of hospitals at night. A shot of queues at international airports. A doctor saying “we must stop the hospitals from being overwhelmed”. Japanese students in masks posing giving peace signs. Old footage of looting. Older footage of Police in riot gear fighting shirtless students. A doctor saying “the virus is passed by contact. Please limit contact. Please wash your hands”. South Korean officials. A graph going up. Stock footage of stock exchanges collapses superimposed on a graph going down. Grainy footage of Olympic sprinters. Doctors and scientists saying “social distancing”. An image of two people standing between a silhouetted wingspan of a condor. An angled shot of the British Prime Minister saying “I was at a hospital the other night where I think a few there were actually virus patients and I shook hands with everybody, you’ll be pleased to know, and I continue to shake hands.” Then immediately to the British Prime Minister, face bulbous in a webcam, informing us that he has contracted the virus. Cut to Italian army trucks loading up coffins, a Spanish woman inconsolable at a newscaster, numbers running quicker tallies. A montage of people running to food shops and packing their vehicles with toilet paper. An image of the Pope praying in an empty St Peters. Medical scientists in a lab. Newspaper headlines written about whether 40,000 new respirators in the US will be enough. A papier-mâché of the word “Lockdown”. The US President glitching “Now, this is just my hunch, but based on a lot of conversations with a lot of people that do this, because a lot of people will have this and it is very mild... So if, you know, we have thousands or hundreds of thousands of people that get better, just by, you know, sitting around and even going to work, some of them go to work,”. The Chinese police dragging a man from his bed. More coffins. Packed housing in India. Germany. Mexico. Russia. “Paris is in lockdown”. More medics exhausted. More empty streets from around the world, lavishly shot using drones. A British spokesman talking about “herd immunity” a scientist saying 250,000 people would die with that strategy. “Do not go out”. “Stay at home”. “Schools, bars and shops are all closed until further notice”. “One hour of exercise outdoors only” “Do not see friends” “If you are over 70 or have underlying health issues, you must stay in quarantine for at least 12 weeks” “The only religious gathering will be family funerals”. Graphs of rainbow colours showing bell curves. Children’s drawings of rainbows being stuck to windows. Candles in windows. Police with tasers tentatively surrounding a slovenly dressed man and his shopping bag. Stock footage of people enjoying walking in a park. A busy beach of sunbathers. A coffin being floated down a Venetian canal. Black and white footage of escaping prisoners. Joggers. Sexual content. A sped up stock footage of a sports field overgrowing and crumbling. A shot of an Italian mayor in medical gloves and facemask imploring from the screen “Why are you inviting hairdressers into your homes? Who is going to see your hairstyles? Don’t you realise the coffin lid will be closed?” A sped up shot of a conference centre being transformed into a field hospital. Empty shelves in a supermarket. A doctor pleading with people to stay at home. Joggers again. More empty streets save for wildlife. A poster of the United States having the most confirmed cases of the virus in the world. A flickering image of a US citizen proudly holding a gun. The US president saying on a glitch switch, “It’s going to disappear”. The Scottish First Minister: “Work from home if you can.”
All set to J.S. Bach, naturally.
[At this point the film would go black and then in white, crisp font: In a not too distant past and a not far off future. Because this is a b-movie, there is limited budget. It needs to downscale. It would probably have an unreliable narrator to replace expensive things like a script and actors and sets. The narrator would cast the hook in 3 sentences.]
The last day in the office seems a long time ago. It’s going to be countless more before a day like it again. Memories have become coy.
Just another 2 weeks, just another 2 weeks, they keep saying. Not even a month and populations gladly gave up freedoms and thirst for government sanctioned instruction to adhere to. When they can go out and for how long and where. What the rule of law means now. Mobile phones to be charged and in your pocket (for information reception and not tracking purposes at all). How quickly is altered what people thought was civil power. CEOs and inner city jobs have been dropped and shelf stackers hailed. Money is just a computer. Prisoner sentences ending early. Doctors and nurses are pleading for equipment. Yesterday a medical kink shop has donated their outfits to their local hospital. That’s not to say there will be carry-on style nurses with micro uniforms and stockings and doctors with large thermometers. It turns out the medical fetish community take their kink very seriously and it uses medical-grade shit. Life comes at you fast.
[This is a much more of a B minus movie. It needs to narrow its story further. The main character needs to be an “everyman”, someone seeing what’s happening but is unable to do anything much about it. Someone the audience can relate to. An Average Joe office worker, in an average office, doing average things. That’s when we can subject the character to the pain of life]
13 days, but it took only 1 for the fabric of what was my normality to be torn like wet paper. For several weeks it had been work as usual at my desk. Coffee, some action of whatever it is I do for whatever reason, a quick check of the news sites, more coffee, a quick check on my social media, look at the clock. Oh, and remember to wash your hands. Washing hands was almost as important as whatever it is I do at the desk. Wash your hands: 20 seconds, just like you were about to begin open heart surgery and not just pick up a computer mouse.
The Company said everything was in… hand. Follow the government advice. Wash your hands to the tune of Happy Birthday, sung twice.
It took for the sixth case of the virus for the Company to provide hand sanitisers. That and the stories of panic buying of them in supermarkets leading to shortages. They put large pump bottles of them in the staff washrooms. Next to the soap dispensers. Management were so prepared they were giving us a choice at the sink. We could now sing Happy Birthday as a round. None were provided where there was nothing before. It was OK. It just meant more walking along corridors and opening more doors to get to them. But then less time sitting at your desk is the new wellbeing thing Human Resources are promoting this year. Get up, stretch your legs once in a while.
The skin on my hands started to dry out and resemble scales. I bought moisturiser.
It’s not as if you couldn’t see which way the wind was blowing. And the virus was well in the breeze. China had it first and was in lockdown. The perfect setting for a post-modern sci-fi it was the poster boy for an aesthetically pleasing apocalypse. Italy was next. More a Pirelli pin-up for the Old World dealing again with a plague. The old lady does mourning like no other. We didn’t need a seer to tell us our fortune. It had been the talk of the office for three weeks.
The Company was completely ill-equipped, nonetheless. I suppose it’s unsurprising. Companies are challenged about their skills for budget management, but less on putting staff at risk just to touch a photocopier.
The Company resolved to divide responsibility. Each department manager for their own in planning for the oncoming virus. The office worked on as normal. As it has always done. As it will always do. Only with that walk to wash hands every forty-five minutes or so. No problems if you wash your hands.
[So the movie sets the scene and suggests things are under control. But in the best of these stories, the tension is slowly screwed as we introduce complacency]
Numbers of cases were rising out there. You could almost hear each pebble drop into the bowl. The water level rising. Each journey to and from the office began to feel like the odds of keeping our heads above the surface were reducing. People began walking into work. Public transport? Petri dishes on wheels, more like. Talk in the office was now focussing more on learning about the virus, ways of contagion and those with gasps for air from desks given strong suspicion that they might be our murderer.
The Company moved to shut down talk: keep washing your hands. It has weathered the banking crisis of ‘08, a fire or two and even pandemics in its history. We will prevail in the flood. The company is unsinkable. Then, as if to demonstrate calmness incarnate about those news reports - management took a 3 day holiday. Planning for a catastrophic workflow event can wait. Enjoy a bit air. Soak up the Ds.
We didn’t know it, but 4 days later was pre-diluvian day. Not that it was all that normal in the office. Numbers were now counting faster than K.I.T.T.’s digital speedometer.
Government was beginning to suggest working from home was the best advice. Certainly stop close personal contact. Some in the office were now wearing face coverings. They looked like snorkelers. Not me. Whatever we made or sent or recorded (what was it we actually did?) in the office was very much secondary to discussing what management was doing to mitigate any situation arising from the virus spread. Our faith needed their response being agile. Management had been silent as the Davey Jones’ locker so far. Click, click, click of the keyboards. Eyes around the office was out a spaghetti western.
A suggestion was made to management. Categorise. Who can work from home? Who cannot?
Then: Who has declared underlying health issues? Who has vulnerable people to care for? Who has school age children? Who cannot walk to work? Venn diagram these with key services to begin to see where the resource pressure points will be in certain scenarios. We should print off key information, we should spend time making sure we understand who can be relied on for what. We need to start preparing equipment and our customers. We need to know what we can do as work at home.
Yes. A meeting, there will be a company meeting. Something will be written up. Honestly, don’t worry. Any developments will be likely 2 weeks away. Plenty of time. Plenty of hand sanitiser. If you want reassurance, fill this in. It’ll be crucial information when we have time for planning contingencies:
Do you have the internet at home?
Do you have device to access the internet at home?
Can you access the office email website at home?
Can you access the office website at home?
Can you access other websites at home?
[Next must be the hubris denouement]
One day later. An email notification flashed like a shark attack. We didn’t know it had already nicked an artery. A mortal wound.
Someone in the office has tested positive for the virus. The rot was setting in.
We sat waiting for an announcement. Someone phoned management. After a while, they walked in.
“There is nothing to add. What do you expect from us? There is no way we could have anticipated this. We will have to arrange a meeting for later in the week. Carry on as normal, but with more breaks for washing of hands.”
Wasn’t this always an inevitable situation to consider? Were you not reading the mainstream news? Picking up the pulse on social media? Were you not supposed to be preparing in the past weeks so you could just initiate an “Action C” or D for today?
Management looked on vacantly. Shuffled. They looked into the middle distance. They looked for land and found only more of the same. Life comes at you fast.
What happens if you break the glass and you just get bloodied knuckles?
[If this was a b-movie it would have to pay homage to with some wink towards the audience to an actual response by a very important person to a very bad thing]
This was management’s George W Bush reading a children’s book on 11 September moment. With no plan, no skillset for this and nothing else to hand other than equipment screen wipes, the management team contemplatively cleaned the photocopier. For about until the end of days.
As the morning sun dawned on the situation, whatever we did, well, it hadn’t been getting done. There was no plan, no instructions and no action. The sinking feeling turned mutinous.
Management came out their induced paralysis just before the end of the day, announcing responsibility would now be devolved further. Individuals could now decide to return to the office tomorrow or not. Those judgements to be based on our own circumstances and preparations made for home working. The management was no longer in a position to make those decisions for us.
I packed a bag of things on my desk, leaving a chocolate bar behind by mistake.
I’ve not been back in the office since.
[Act 3]
What happened didn’t seem too significant. A tiny little decision in the grand scheme. Working from home. The risk would be resolved by the Company, the virus would sweep past by nature. However, working from home became normalised throughout the world. And those least prepared found themselves on a deserted island.
At the time, the Company were taken by surprise when most of the office decided to work from home. They offered incentives to come back. Keep the snorkels on. The rooms and corridors would be cleaned morning and night. The company was determined to see it through. None of it made a difference with events wailing out a siren from the top of the Empire State Building.
Those few that did go back into the depths were not hailed as heroes, or have been since been martyred. The Company continued to broadcast proudly business was carrying on as usual. They assured customers of going above and beyond for them despite fewer staff, not because of them keeping things turning.
Knowing office colleagues were risking infection to keep the company doing what it did (seriously, it did something) made me guilty. I could go in if I wanted to help. I just believed it was unwise to. I didn’t want to be mistaken for waving when it was drowning.
Working from home was good, too. There were initial snagging issues. Just having the internet turned out not to be enough of a tick for home working. That tech audit could have applied to a basic smart phone. Just because you have a device to access the internet doesn’t lead on to it being suitable. Not everyone had the software at home. Programmes were incompatible. Licences had not been bought for others. Office software that coped in-house was found obsolete in-home. The company’s servers were being tested to their capacity and often failed, crackled and cracked.
But I adjusted effectively to my new environment.
I had something I could do. Something offline. It wasn’t a priority task or a new collaborative project that management seemed to now feel this was the ideal opportunity for. It was simple, repetitive work. I didn’t need to be hooked up. I found the government isolation rules suited the task. And me, for that matter. I don’t have a webcam so I couldn’t fish-eye my face and unkempt hair into meetings. Couldn’t join in on the “after-work socials”. No interruptions. No person asking if I have an opinion. No phones ringing. For the first time I was in, effectively, a private office and it was a joy.
I don’t think of myself in “isolation” or “lockdown. I prefer to think of it as perfect seclusion. Solitude of the Mariana Hollow. I can look out the window at the fishes swimming by.
In the end, even the Company had to adjust their message. The building would be sealed watertight. The taps turned off. Of course the Company and management still get in touch. They’ve started a strange “service” of getting the office junior to snail mail printouts of the Company twitter account. Keeps her off the streets, I suppose. I also get a weird email everyday like a postcard and telling me everyone is well and what the weather is like out a window of some board member or another. I guess they quickly forgot what they do too. I’ve set up a rule in my email to send them straight to “trash”.
[Then the final b-movie classic twist, that makes no real logical sense if you think about it]
Wash your Hands. Duck and Cover. Don’t Panic and Carry On. Stay at Home and Save Lives. Restrict Movements.
It’s tough. You make mistakes. Things become so everyday you begin to forget by virtue of habit. Did I wash my hands? Did I duck and cover? Is this fresh water? Is this what I do?
I miss physical contact. Warm and tacky. I miss perfume. And I miss tasting skin. These are the things which tend to stay in your dreams.
At first people walked and jogged around their own neighbourhoods. It was a strange phenomenon: all of a sudden people were out exercising for that one sanctioned hour. They must use that time for serious movement. It was as if the world was not trying to kill us, but offer up a glorious chance to get fit. Some could be explained away by the closed gyms. Old people were told they were the most vulnerable to the virus but suddenly out in box fresh New Balance. All sorts of people on the street, walking, running and cycling. Go Out, It’s Good For You. I can’t recall, but I’m not sure that was the slogan.
When the streets became too dangerous, the zombie movie characters started to shoal out to exercise in the closed down retail parks on the edge of the residential estates. The streets have gotten a lot quieter for one reason or another.
When people heard of the decisions being made and for what reasons, the enthusiasm for the medics dispersed as droplets into the vastness so that it is indictable. The counting has stopped. Once numbers just mean numbers, I guess there’s no point. Call the emergency lines and listen to recorded laughter. Everything melts away in the end.
I keep up at my work at home. Seven hours. One hour for lunch. Regular. I’ve kept all the emails to remind me to keep working. A lot have stopped coming some time ago. In fact I’m not sure what are recent or not. It’s hard to keep remembering what the date is. It’s all good, though, I don’t need emails to do my work. In fact I don’t need much of the old office at all. Not the old desk, seeing weeds outside, the office clock I used to glance at every 3 minutes.
It’s hard to tell the days, let alone the time. The radio loops the emergency message, when you can tune into it. Always a gameshow on the screen. A couple trying to win an exotic holiday. Must have been filmed before the virus changed things. I know what question the host will ask next. I barely watch that for 3 hours a day now. Between weighing myself, and trying to remember… I’ve got not much time for any more of what was used to be a waste of time.
All those deaths – I should have bought a burial plot years ago. I work, I worry I’m getting ill, (what are the symptoms?) I weight myself, I eat when food is delivered, I to go bed when the old night drops in. Then I lay there: did I go around twice today for my sanctioned exercise? I look out of the glass. More fish.
The city, rough as barnacles. Although it is still possible to catch glimpses that could be corn puff coral, if you know where to go.
Rain comes in great bubbles. I look at the bubbles for the ideas inside them. The reason we are told to stay at home, of course, is because if there is no food coming that day because the supply line has failed again and we starve to death, or get ill, then we will not be dying out there, gasping for air. We will be ready-made entombed in our odd shaped pyramids.
Well there’s all this and waiting for when my owners next sprinkle food flakes to float down to my ruinous castle, hoping most of the flakes don’t settle to close the figure in the deep sea diving suit propped against the clear curve. I don’t like going right to the pane’s edge. It’s awful close to being out there, out in the open air.
It’s just how working from home is.
If this was a b-movie the director would be going for Escape from New York meets The Thing meets Twelve Monkeys. It would begin with splicing stock and news clips together to set the scene. Picture it:
An everyday crowded Chinese inner city street, pedestrians going about their lives wearing face masks of varying patterns and colours. A doctor saying “This is a new strain of virus, highly infectious and we have no known therapy for it”. Workers all over the world entering offices and factories. A news reporter saying “The virus, has shut down many provinces in an attempt to halt the spread”. Footage of funerals. A map of the world with red increasing circles as the virus moves. A glitch induced clip of the US President saying “One day it’s like a miracle, it will disappear”. Stock footage of people in China coughing. Images of hospitals at night. A shot of queues at international airports. A doctor saying “we must stop the hospitals from being overwhelmed”. Japanese students in masks posing giving peace signs. Old footage of looting. Older footage of Police in riot gear fighting shirtless students. A doctor saying “the virus is passed by contact. Please limit contact. Please wash your hands”. South Korean officials. A graph going up. Stock footage of stock exchanges collapses superimposed on a graph going down. Grainy footage of Olympic sprinters. Doctors and scientists saying “social distancing”. An image of two people standing between a silhouetted wingspan of a condor. An angled shot of the British Prime Minister saying “I was at a hospital the other night where I think a few there were actually virus patients and I shook hands with everybody, you’ll be pleased to know, and I continue to shake hands.” Then immediately to the British Prime Minister, face bulbous in a webcam, informing us that he has contracted the virus. Cut to Italian army trucks loading up coffins, a Spanish woman inconsolable at a newscaster, numbers running quicker tallies. A montage of people running to food shops and packing their vehicles with toilet paper. An image of the Pope praying in an empty St Peters. Medical scientists in a lab. Newspaper headlines written about whether 40,000 new respirators in the US will be enough. A papier-mâché of the word “Lockdown”. The US President glitching “Now, this is just my hunch, but based on a lot of conversations with a lot of people that do this, because a lot of people will have this and it is very mild... So if, you know, we have thousands or hundreds of thousands of people that get better, just by, you know, sitting around and even going to work, some of them go to work,”. The Chinese police dragging a man from his bed. More coffins. Packed housing in India. Germany. Mexico. Russia. “Paris is in lockdown”. More medics exhausted. More empty streets from around the world, lavishly shot using drones. A British spokesman talking about “herd immunity” a scientist saying 250,000 people would die with that strategy. “Do not go out”. “Stay at home”. “Schools, bars and shops are all closed until further notice”. “One hour of exercise outdoors only” “Do not see friends” “If you are over 70 or have underlying health issues, you must stay in quarantine for at least 12 weeks” “The only religious gathering will be family funerals”. Graphs of rainbow colours showing bell curves. Children’s drawings of rainbows being stuck to windows. Candles in windows. Police with tasers tentatively surrounding a slovenly dressed man and his shopping bag. Stock footage of people enjoying walking in a park. A busy beach of sunbathers. A coffin being floated down a Venetian canal. Black and white footage of escaping prisoners. Joggers. Sexual content. A sped up stock footage of a sports field overgrowing and crumbling. A shot of an Italian mayor in medical gloves and facemask imploring from the screen “Why are you inviting hairdressers into your homes? Who is going to see your hairstyles? Don’t you realise the coffin lid will be closed?” A sped up shot of a conference centre being transformed into a field hospital. Empty shelves in a supermarket. A doctor pleading with people to stay at home. Joggers again. More empty streets save for wildlife. A poster of the United States having the most confirmed cases of the virus in the world. A flickering image of a US citizen proudly holding a gun. The US president saying on a glitch switch, “It’s going to disappear”. The Scottish First Minister: “Work from home if you can.”
All set to J.S. Bach, naturally.
[At this point the film would go black and then in white, crisp font: In a not too distant past and a not far off future. Because this is a b-movie, there is limited budget. It needs to downscale. It would probably have an unreliable narrator to replace expensive things like a script and actors and sets. The narrator would cast the hook in 3 sentences.]
The last day in the office seems a long time ago. It’s going to be countless more before a day like it again. Memories have become coy.
Just another 2 weeks, just another 2 weeks, they keep saying. Not even a month and populations gladly gave up freedoms and thirst for government sanctioned instruction to adhere to. When they can go out and for how long and where. What the rule of law means now. Mobile phones to be charged and in your pocket (for information reception and not tracking purposes at all). How quickly is altered what people thought was civil power. CEOs and inner city jobs have been dropped and shelf stackers hailed. Money is just a computer. Prisoner sentences ending early. Doctors and nurses are pleading for equipment. Yesterday a medical kink shop has donated their outfits to their local hospital. That’s not to say there will be carry-on style nurses with micro uniforms and stockings and doctors with large thermometers. It turns out the medical fetish community take their kink very seriously and it uses medical-grade shit. Life comes at you fast.
[This is a much more of a B minus movie. It needs to narrow its story further. The main character needs to be an “everyman”, someone seeing what’s happening but is unable to do anything much about it. Someone the audience can relate to. An Average Joe office worker, in an average office, doing average things. That’s when we can subject the character to the pain of life]
13 days, but it took only 1 for the fabric of what was my normality to be torn like wet paper. For several weeks it had been work as usual at my desk. Coffee, some action of whatever it is I do for whatever reason, a quick check of the news sites, more coffee, a quick check on my social media, look at the clock. Oh, and remember to wash your hands. Washing hands was almost as important as whatever it is I do at the desk. Wash your hands: 20 seconds, just like you were about to begin open heart surgery and not just pick up a computer mouse.
The Company said everything was in… hand. Follow the government advice. Wash your hands to the tune of Happy Birthday, sung twice.
It took for the sixth case of the virus for the Company to provide hand sanitisers. That and the stories of panic buying of them in supermarkets leading to shortages. They put large pump bottles of them in the staff washrooms. Next to the soap dispensers. Management were so prepared they were giving us a choice at the sink. We could now sing Happy Birthday as a round. None were provided where there was nothing before. It was OK. It just meant more walking along corridors and opening more doors to get to them. But then less time sitting at your desk is the new wellbeing thing Human Resources are promoting this year. Get up, stretch your legs once in a while.
The skin on my hands started to dry out and resemble scales. I bought moisturiser.
It’s not as if you couldn’t see which way the wind was blowing. And the virus was well in the breeze. China had it first and was in lockdown. The perfect setting for a post-modern sci-fi it was the poster boy for an aesthetically pleasing apocalypse. Italy was next. More a Pirelli pin-up for the Old World dealing again with a plague. The old lady does mourning like no other. We didn’t need a seer to tell us our fortune. It had been the talk of the office for three weeks.
The Company was completely ill-equipped, nonetheless. I suppose it’s unsurprising. Companies are challenged about their skills for budget management, but less on putting staff at risk just to touch a photocopier.
The Company resolved to divide responsibility. Each department manager for their own in planning for the oncoming virus. The office worked on as normal. As it has always done. As it will always do. Only with that walk to wash hands every forty-five minutes or so. No problems if you wash your hands.
[So the movie sets the scene and suggests things are under control. But in the best of these stories, the tension is slowly screwed as we introduce complacency]
Numbers of cases were rising out there. You could almost hear each pebble drop into the bowl. The water level rising. Each journey to and from the office began to feel like the odds of keeping our heads above the surface were reducing. People began walking into work. Public transport? Petri dishes on wheels, more like. Talk in the office was now focussing more on learning about the virus, ways of contagion and those with gasps for air from desks given strong suspicion that they might be our murderer.
The Company moved to shut down talk: keep washing your hands. It has weathered the banking crisis of ‘08, a fire or two and even pandemics in its history. We will prevail in the flood. The company is unsinkable. Then, as if to demonstrate calmness incarnate about those news reports - management took a 3 day holiday. Planning for a catastrophic workflow event can wait. Enjoy a bit air. Soak up the Ds.
We didn’t know it, but 4 days later was pre-diluvian day. Not that it was all that normal in the office. Numbers were now counting faster than K.I.T.T.’s digital speedometer.
Government was beginning to suggest working from home was the best advice. Certainly stop close personal contact. Some in the office were now wearing face coverings. They looked like snorkelers. Not me. Whatever we made or sent or recorded (what was it we actually did?) in the office was very much secondary to discussing what management was doing to mitigate any situation arising from the virus spread. Our faith needed their response being agile. Management had been silent as the Davey Jones’ locker so far. Click, click, click of the keyboards. Eyes around the office was out a spaghetti western.
A suggestion was made to management. Categorise. Who can work from home? Who cannot?
Then: Who has declared underlying health issues? Who has vulnerable people to care for? Who has school age children? Who cannot walk to work? Venn diagram these with key services to begin to see where the resource pressure points will be in certain scenarios. We should print off key information, we should spend time making sure we understand who can be relied on for what. We need to start preparing equipment and our customers. We need to know what we can do as work at home.
Yes. A meeting, there will be a company meeting. Something will be written up. Honestly, don’t worry. Any developments will be likely 2 weeks away. Plenty of time. Plenty of hand sanitiser. If you want reassurance, fill this in. It’ll be crucial information when we have time for planning contingencies:
Do you have the internet at home?
Do you have device to access the internet at home?
Can you access the office email website at home?
Can you access the office website at home?
Can you access other websites at home?
[Next must be the hubris denouement]
One day later. An email notification flashed like a shark attack. We didn’t know it had already nicked an artery. A mortal wound.
Someone in the office has tested positive for the virus. The rot was setting in.
We sat waiting for an announcement. Someone phoned management. After a while, they walked in.
“There is nothing to add. What do you expect from us? There is no way we could have anticipated this. We will have to arrange a meeting for later in the week. Carry on as normal, but with more breaks for washing of hands.”
Wasn’t this always an inevitable situation to consider? Were you not reading the mainstream news? Picking up the pulse on social media? Were you not supposed to be preparing in the past weeks so you could just initiate an “Action C” or D for today?
Management looked on vacantly. Shuffled. They looked into the middle distance. They looked for land and found only more of the same. Life comes at you fast.
What happens if you break the glass and you just get bloodied knuckles?
[If this was a b-movie it would have to pay homage to with some wink towards the audience to an actual response by a very important person to a very bad thing]
This was management’s George W Bush reading a children’s book on 11 September moment. With no plan, no skillset for this and nothing else to hand other than equipment screen wipes, the management team contemplatively cleaned the photocopier. For about until the end of days.
As the morning sun dawned on the situation, whatever we did, well, it hadn’t been getting done. There was no plan, no instructions and no action. The sinking feeling turned mutinous.
Management came out their induced paralysis just before the end of the day, announcing responsibility would now be devolved further. Individuals could now decide to return to the office tomorrow or not. Those judgements to be based on our own circumstances and preparations made for home working. The management was no longer in a position to make those decisions for us.
I packed a bag of things on my desk, leaving a chocolate bar behind by mistake.
I’ve not been back in the office since.
[Act 3]
What happened didn’t seem too significant. A tiny little decision in the grand scheme. Working from home. The risk would be resolved by the Company, the virus would sweep past by nature. However, working from home became normalised throughout the world. And those least prepared found themselves on a deserted island.
At the time, the Company were taken by surprise when most of the office decided to work from home. They offered incentives to come back. Keep the snorkels on. The rooms and corridors would be cleaned morning and night. The company was determined to see it through. None of it made a difference with events wailing out a siren from the top of the Empire State Building.
Those few that did go back into the depths were not hailed as heroes, or have been since been martyred. The Company continued to broadcast proudly business was carrying on as usual. They assured customers of going above and beyond for them despite fewer staff, not because of them keeping things turning.
Knowing office colleagues were risking infection to keep the company doing what it did (seriously, it did something) made me guilty. I could go in if I wanted to help. I just believed it was unwise to. I didn’t want to be mistaken for waving when it was drowning.
Working from home was good, too. There were initial snagging issues. Just having the internet turned out not to be enough of a tick for home working. That tech audit could have applied to a basic smart phone. Just because you have a device to access the internet doesn’t lead on to it being suitable. Not everyone had the software at home. Programmes were incompatible. Licences had not been bought for others. Office software that coped in-house was found obsolete in-home. The company’s servers were being tested to their capacity and often failed, crackled and cracked.
But I adjusted effectively to my new environment.
I had something I could do. Something offline. It wasn’t a priority task or a new collaborative project that management seemed to now feel this was the ideal opportunity for. It was simple, repetitive work. I didn’t need to be hooked up. I found the government isolation rules suited the task. And me, for that matter. I don’t have a webcam so I couldn’t fish-eye my face and unkempt hair into meetings. Couldn’t join in on the “after-work socials”. No interruptions. No person asking if I have an opinion. No phones ringing. For the first time I was in, effectively, a private office and it was a joy.
I don’t think of myself in “isolation” or “lockdown. I prefer to think of it as perfect seclusion. Solitude of the Mariana Hollow. I can look out the window at the fishes swimming by.
In the end, even the Company had to adjust their message. The building would be sealed watertight. The taps turned off. Of course the Company and management still get in touch. They’ve started a strange “service” of getting the office junior to snail mail printouts of the Company twitter account. Keeps her off the streets, I suppose. I also get a weird email everyday like a postcard and telling me everyone is well and what the weather is like out a window of some board member or another. I guess they quickly forgot what they do too. I’ve set up a rule in my email to send them straight to “trash”.
[Then the final b-movie classic twist, that makes no real logical sense if you think about it]
Wash your Hands. Duck and Cover. Don’t Panic and Carry On. Stay at Home and Save Lives. Restrict Movements.
It’s tough. You make mistakes. Things become so everyday you begin to forget by virtue of habit. Did I wash my hands? Did I duck and cover? Is this fresh water? Is this what I do?
I miss physical contact. Warm and tacky. I miss perfume. And I miss tasting skin. These are the things which tend to stay in your dreams.
At first people walked and jogged around their own neighbourhoods. It was a strange phenomenon: all of a sudden people were out exercising for that one sanctioned hour. They must use that time for serious movement. It was as if the world was not trying to kill us, but offer up a glorious chance to get fit. Some could be explained away by the closed gyms. Old people were told they were the most vulnerable to the virus but suddenly out in box fresh New Balance. All sorts of people on the street, walking, running and cycling. Go Out, It’s Good For You. I can’t recall, but I’m not sure that was the slogan.
When the streets became too dangerous, the zombie movie characters started to shoal out to exercise in the closed down retail parks on the edge of the residential estates. The streets have gotten a lot quieter for one reason or another.
When people heard of the decisions being made and for what reasons, the enthusiasm for the medics dispersed as droplets into the vastness so that it is indictable. The counting has stopped. Once numbers just mean numbers, I guess there’s no point. Call the emergency lines and listen to recorded laughter. Everything melts away in the end.
I keep up at my work at home. Seven hours. One hour for lunch. Regular. I’ve kept all the emails to remind me to keep working. A lot have stopped coming some time ago. In fact I’m not sure what are recent or not. It’s hard to keep remembering what the date is. It’s all good, though, I don’t need emails to do my work. In fact I don’t need much of the old office at all. Not the old desk, seeing weeds outside, the office clock I used to glance at every 3 minutes.
It’s hard to tell the days, let alone the time. The radio loops the emergency message, when you can tune into it. Always a gameshow on the screen. A couple trying to win an exotic holiday. Must have been filmed before the virus changed things. I know what question the host will ask next. I barely watch that for 3 hours a day now. Between weighing myself, and trying to remember… I’ve got not much time for any more of what was used to be a waste of time.
All those deaths – I should have bought a burial plot years ago. I work, I worry I’m getting ill, (what are the symptoms?) I weight myself, I eat when food is delivered, I to go bed when the old night drops in. Then I lay there: did I go around twice today for my sanctioned exercise? I look out of the glass. More fish.
The city, rough as barnacles. Although it is still possible to catch glimpses that could be corn puff coral, if you know where to go.
Rain comes in great bubbles. I look at the bubbles for the ideas inside them. The reason we are told to stay at home, of course, is because if there is no food coming that day because the supply line has failed again and we starve to death, or get ill, then we will not be dying out there, gasping for air. We will be ready-made entombed in our odd shaped pyramids.
Well there’s all this and waiting for when my owners next sprinkle food flakes to float down to my ruinous castle, hoping most of the flakes don’t settle to close the figure in the deep sea diving suit propped against the clear curve. I don’t like going right to the pane’s edge. It’s awful close to being out there, out in the open air.
It’s just how working from home is.
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