Hello, my name is Adam and I think I’m guilty of being a self-serving arsehole. Truth can hide in full view. Bad things then happen because no one saw them in time. Some don’t matter, but some, such as my selfishness, really do.
Roll back to the weeks after Helen’s funeral. I’m packing for a trip to the US and Millie isn’t happy. “Do you have to go, Dad? Matt and I miss you so much.” It’s a scene that had played out many times when Helen was alive and was almost comfortingly familiar. So I went, as I always went, with family caring for the kids now that Helen couldn’t.
Always a nervous flyer, I would sit in business class quaffing champagne, fine(ish) dining and keep an eye on the engines. In the US, I would stay in swanky-wanky hotels, indulging myself as self-justified compensation for not being at home (a $25 bottle of bejewelled mineral water in one of Donald Buffoon’s tasteless towers comes to mind).
I am painting this vile picture because, after Helen was diagnosed but was still well, I think I was treating these trips like a mini-holiday from her illness. This nearly cost me the chance to say goodbye. I arrived home on a Friday to hear from her consultant. “We worried that Helen could have died on Wednesday …” This from nowhere, and more hit and miss news than it should have been. I’d nearly failed to be with Millie and Matt on the dreadful journey of understanding and acceptance around their mum’s deathbed.
Now, months after Helen’s peaceful passing with my holding her hand and talking of our love, I am still using the excuse of the facile crap of business imperatives to take time out from my grief and responsibilities. Why I see it now I don’t know, but it is screamingly obvious and I hate myself. Before any kind, sympathetic soul thinks I’ve done nothing really wrong, this is not even the bad bit.
Far worse is the travelling’s effect on the kids now that Helen has gone. When Millie says, “We miss you, Dad”, she is sparing me the full truth of, “We miss you, Dad, but we absolutely hate someone else having to come to look after us because it re-sharpens the pain of losing Mum.”
So every time I make a yellow-bellied retreat under the guise of work, am I dragging the kids backwards to the grief of their mum’s death?
So complete is my sense of self-loathing that it makes the next bit a piece of cake. I’ll never fly anywhere again for work or spend more than a couple of nights away from the children for anyone.
I talk this through with a friend who works in HR, but not for my employer. “You realise you’ll have no job?” she says. “Clients won’t make allowances, and your performance will drop off if you can’t make the meetings.”
She is right, of course. My employers have been so supportive since Helen’s death, but clients will reject a global bloke who fails to fly and doesn’t deliver.
The harsh but brilliant truth is that I really don’t fucking care. Yet more bravado, but I really mean it. Cancer’s masterclass in life’s fragility, my insight into my own selfishness and the kids’ upset, means it feels right because it is right.
Counsellor Ruth looks at me wide-eyed when I tell her. “Adam, your wife’s died, and you’ve bought a house, you are sweating it about your health and are choosing to endanger your job. Just how much more stress do you need?” She sounds calm, but her eyes flash nutty-professor scale. “Are you mad?”
I’m not. The die is cast. Awareness and self-loathing are powerful drivers and a new sense of purpose surges through me. I’ll focus on nurturing the kids to be the people Helen hoped for – no less, in truth, than I promised her as she lay dying.
I wonder what else I may be qualified to do. Maybe I will feel less gung-ho when money is tight, but now I’m happy – this is the next step to our new life. One where grief lives with us, but we as a family will be tight enough to not just endure but thrive. You can’t put that in a PowerPoint.
Adam Golightly is a pseudonym