Comfortably Numb – Coping with Grief, Dealing with Guilt, and Tolerating Wealthy Whiners

On the morning of Wednesday 6th March 2024, I was driving to work when "Comfortably Numb" came on the radio. It’s a very vivid memory as I recall it was how I was feeling at that time. Every day for the past few months I just felt numb, so much so that it became my weird, almost comforting, default feeling. When both your parents are in a hospital or care home with Alzheimer’s you know “good news” isn’t coming, and you’re on the precipice of receiving bad news. Until then, I remained in this omnipresent state of numbness, praying that call would never come.

Sadly, it came eleven days previously, at work, on the day my mum passed away. So I figured returning to work now would be “safe” as lighting doesn’t strike twice as they say. 

Of course, in hindsight, I shouldn’t have been in work on this particular day. We were trying to arrange my mum’s funeral while my dad was lying in a hospital bed, completely oblivious to my mum’s passing. I shouldn’t have been 100 miles away, in work, I should have been spending more time with my dad. Yet by this point I’d exceeded my “holiday” allowance and I had rent and other bills to pay. I’d fallen so far behind with everything I knew there could be no respite going forward.

"It's just money," they say. Try telling that to the people who want it.

I feel a great sense of guilt that I didn’t have any savings to cover my essential bills while my parents languished in hospital. I feel guilt that I couldn’t be there more over the previous months… but I know it’s a misguided sense of guilt that I will learn to accept one day. 

Life is not kind. It can be a bit of a dick at times, but we make of it what we can. There’s no escaping the fact that even in our darkest moments, life rolls on, and we’re expected to keep up. Occasionally the universe might throw you a rope, but if there’s nobody holding the other end or it’s not attached to anything it’s pretty useless and meaningless. 

I’d only been in work for a few minutes when I was told some bigwig [one of my dad’s favourite words] from the upper echelons of management was visiting our store the next day. To be honest I completely zoned out as I had more important things to deal with than neatly folded fleeces or prices being on red tickets instead of green tickets. In the everyday world of retail these things may be important, but in the grand scheme of things they’re really not. 

I certainly couldn’t deal with any privileged middle class whiners haggling over the price of a dry robe, or two-home Tina and three-holidays-a-year Phillip whinging about the price of a carrier bag. For the record, I don’t have anything against the middle class, or people being able to afford two holidays a year. Please take three or four holidays if you can, but please appreciate your privilege – and don’t be a tight ass. One of the local shops sell men’s SHIRTS for over £100 a pop. Yet they sell because people round here have money – and lots of it. 

As a working class man who works seven days a week, drives an old car, and never takes a holiday, even I appreciate how privileged I am. I live on the Suffolk coast, I can afford to eat meals (even if most of them are Tesco yellow label) and I’m reasonably healthy – albeit a tad stressed. Okay, my dog is nuts, but I love her.

I digress.

Surprisingly, a “good news” telephone call came that morning, informing me that I’d got the job I’d applied for before my mum passed away. So at least I now had an extra job when I moved back to Essex to be closer to my dad.

Of course this was swiftly followed by my “bad news” call just minutes later as the universe doesn’t like to give me peace of mind for too long. Dad’s health had declined quite badly, so I immediately returned to Essex. 

He passed away five days later.

Grief is a strange beast and you have well-meaning people telling you to “move on” or “let them rest” but the truth is that nobody should tell you how to grieve because we’re all so different you have to do what works best for you. What works best for me is writing – and also remembering them. Whether that's going through old photos or reading diaries, it all helps.

I don’t really prescribe to this notion of “closure” but we do need to find ways to move forward, while learning to live with the omnipresent pain. If looking back helps, then look back. If remembering anniversaries helps, then remember anniversaries. If writing about it helps, then write about it. If talking helps… well, you get the gist.

There may be a cut-off point for giving your condolences on a death (people are unlikely to say “Sorry to hear that” if you say they passed five years ago) but there’s no cut-off point for grief. It stays with you for the rest of your days, but you have to adapt to living with it in a way that doesn’t hinder your daily life.

As for “letting them rest” it’s not like my parents are getting alarm calls or notifications every time I write or talk about them. 

Not only is every grief process very different, but how your loved one(s) passed away also impacts how you grieve. Alzheimer’s is very different and very cruel as you have to process the grief when their mind passes and again when their body passes. So losing both parents to Alzheimer’s is likely to leave scars that will never completely heal.

So please don’t tell me how to grieve, or what I “should” do to “let them rest”.

If it's simply a case of you not wanting to see me post occasional memories of my parents, then please, unfriend or unfollow me. Thank you. Although I think I've probably already shaken off all the sociopaths and people who don't like dog photos.

However, if you are going through the grieving process and you personally need to talk about it then just know that I’m here to listen. I may not have any advice and nothing I say will really help, but sometimes you just need someone to LISTEN without judgement. 

There's no Grief Top Trumps as people who grieve when they lose a pet are still grieving, it's just a different type of grief. Some people have a better relationship with their animal family members than their human family members, so it's incomparable.

I talk to my pooch about life, the universe and everything. It helps, although to be honest she rarely listens. I mean, who cares if I’m on the brink of a meltdown if there’s a pigeon on the conservatory roof?