Looking Back and Making Memories

For the past couple of weeks, I have been in contact with a close friend whose grandfather is passing away and has recently moved into a hospice. It’s the first time she has experienced anything like this so I’m checking to see that she’s ok. We have been exchanging regular texts, but it was one in particular that she sent that got me thinking.

"I don’t know how people deal with death, it’s bizarre to think that life just continues on”

I was incredibly close to my grandad and loved him dearly. I spent a week with him during the last two summers before he died. He was a huge influence on my life and his presence is still felt whenever I get together with my brothers, both in our humour and in the way we look at the world. When I cried at his funeral, it was the first time I cried in public.

In 2004 I bought an old MGB and I still have it to this day. My dad saw it for the first time when he visited at Christmas that year. “I bet that goes doesn’t it?” he said, as he walked past it on the way to his car to drive off. “Yeah it’s not bad” I replied, “I’ll bring it up one day.” Before I knew it though Easter had arrived and then it was May. I knew I had to organise a weekend to go up and see him, if only I could get around to organising a time. Then, on the Tuesday morning after the May bank holiday, the phone rang. It was my older brother and I was still in bed when I answered. “I’ve had a call from M, the old man died last night.” He said to take some time and to call him back. I ended the call. “What’s the matter?” said my girlfriend at the time. “My Dad’s dead” I replied, my bottom lip trembling and my eyes filling with tears.

I took some time off work, before going back 4 days later. On the first day back, I was due to attend a meeting in Birmingham of all places – as if I wasn’t depressed enough. As I sat at the conference table, my mind was anywhere but in the meeting. I didn’t want to be there. I couldn’t think of anything but Dad. What made it worse was that just about everyone looked at me and gave me a sympathetic “hope you’re ok” nod. All this did though was to make the golf ball sized lump in my throat swell to that of a tennis ball. I could feel my eyes, hot and damp ‘Stop it, stop it, stop it’ I thought to myself, ‘Hold it together, please don’t cry here, not in front of everyone’. I managed to get through the meeting and I caught the train back to London with a colleague. I was hoping to God that he wouldn’t ask me how I was. I didn’t want to talk about my Dad. The lump in my throat was still there and I was amazed that I’d been able to hold it as long as I had. “So mate, do you want to hear about the fit Aussie bird that I shagged on Saturday?” It was the first time I’d smiled all week. “YES!” I shouted with relief “tell me everything!!”

I went into pragmatic mode as I organised the funeral. This was itself an entertainment with it’s own comedy value. My parents were divorced and he’d been living up in the Midlands, and so we weren’t entirely sure where to bury him. He spent some happy childhood years with an Aunt in Derbyshire during the war and she had passed away only a couple of years previously. Should we bury him with her, in the same grave? Was that something he’d have wanted? I spoke to the local vicar who said, “You need to speak with Dave the gravedigger”. The next day I received a call “Hi, it’s Dave the gravedigger.” He sounded for all the world, like an east end builder looking for someone to haggle with over the price of a loft conversion. “Yeah, you can get him in there” he said, before following up with “depends how legal you want to be though.” Apparently, the necessary depth between the top of the coffin and the ground would be one inch too short. In the end, we brought him back down to Hertfordshire and he is now buried in a churchyard close to the family.

There are things I regret – conversations I wish we’d had, journeys to see him that I didn’t take and goodbyes that I wished I had been able to make – but didn’t have the chance, as he went so suddenly. But there were three things that helped me through it all. Firstly, there was the practicality of organising the funeral. Finding somewhere for him to be buried, organising flowers, deciding what sort of wood we wanted for the coffin etc – you just didn’t have time to get sad. Secondly, was the support of a loving family and my former partner. Any time I had a ‘moment’, she’d give me a hug and I’d be fine. Thirdly, I’d talk to my Dad. I thought of the things that I’d wanted to say to him and then I said them. I’d imagine that he was standing next to me – in the car park whilst I was buying a ticket, in the supermarket as I was finding a trolley, or in the petrol station as I was filling up. I’d talk to him and say what I wanted to say. Looking back on it, I must have resembled the sort of nutter that you avoid on the tube, but it helped. It still does and I talk to him at his graveside when I visit the churchyard. In some ways I talk to him more now than I did when he was here – at least I always win the argument now.

It’s this that I want to say to my friend. I would give anything to have just 5 minutes with Dad and Grandad – to tell them I loved them and to be able to say all the things that I wanted to say. And I want to remind her – to remind myself for that matter, that whilst the people we love are still with us, that we are still making memories and not just looking back on them.

The Gym Class

Right, you’re up to date now on the fact that I go to the gym. I’m at the stage where I’ve been going for a few years and I really quite enjoy it. I mean it’s still been a slog and can take a monumental effort at times to get motivated, but I’m much trimmer than I used to be and, well.. yes, I’m in reasonably good shape now. The turning point for me was a few years ago and happened when I started to notice a change, which others then noticed too.

I remember walking past the mirror after showering one morning, when I caught a glimpse of a rib that I hadn’t seen before – I was elated. After what seemed like weeks of slogging my guts out, lifting weights and running on the treadmill, I was finally able to see that the hard work was starting to pay off. It was about at the same time when a work colleague said “You’re looking trim, have you been working out?” ‘YES, YES!!! Fucking yes, I have and I’m so glad you noticed!!’ I thought, as I nodded and confirmed “Yeah, a little bit”.

Anyway, I was on my way to a gym session last week when I bumped into a couple of friends who had just finished a workout and were leaving. “Hey, are you coming to do the strongman session with us next week? Come on, it’s a great workout” The strongman class is a session where a personal trainer takes a group through a number of different circuits. It’s slightly different to a regular circuit training session, using very different weights on individual stations and is designed to be that much harder. I didn’t really want to go, but they applied peer pressure and I couldn’t really think of a good reason not to. So out of ideas and seemingly cornered, I agreed to go to the next session.

On the night of the class in question, I arrive just in time, if not slightly early for once. First, the warm up. I stretch my legs, in anticipation of being sent on a run. “Right, we’ll start on the bag” says the trainer. “Oh, right” I say, scouring the floor for gloves to use on the big punch bag on the ground in front of me. “Oh, you’re not going to be punching it, you’re going to be catching it and passing it on.” ‘Oh God’ “Here” he says, catching me slightly unawares, as he tosses the dense 4 ft tall bag up in the air in my direction.

Now here I have an embarrassing confession – I can’t catch. I’m a total butter fingers and it’s the reason I tried, and failed, to avoid playing rugby and cricket at school. Surely it’s always far easier to avoid a sport you’re not very good at. Better that, than to put oneself through the humiliation of dropping the rugby ball just yards from the try line every time, whilst listening to the despairing groans of your team mates.

Well this isn’t a try line, it’s a gym. I’m now in my thirties and my teammates are the other guys in the class. The pressure I’m putting myself under though is just as intense, as almost in slow motion, the bag rotates through the air, getting closer and closer. It feels like it is heading straight for my face, as I take a step back and bend my knees slightly in anticipation.

If I drop this then I will I will hear derision from the others in the class and in an instant, I will be transported back to the rugby field in 1989. ‘Catch it, catch it, don’t fuck it up, you’ve GOT to catch this!’ I open my arms, ready to envelope the bag as it comes into contact. I’ve no idea how heavy this thing is, when suddenly it slams into my chest. ‘Arms, use your arms, clasp it!’ My right arm wraps around it, but it seems to slip from my left. The angle of my right arm won’t hold it on its own, and I feel my grip loosening. It’s going to fall, I’m going to drop it and what I feared most is about to happen. ‘No, don’t drop it you muppet!’ I lift my left knee as a counter to my right arm, which gives just enough balance for me to wrap my left arm around it again. My grip is now firm, as I realise that I have caught it and I breathe a sigh of relief.

“Nice one” says the instructor, ”Now throw it over your head to the guy behind you and go to the back of the line, ready for the next catch.”

‘Oh God, here we go again...’

When To Join The Gym

I was walking out of my local sports centre the other day, following a workout. I was feeling pretty good about myself. I had managed to get out of bed and be in the gym before 10am and had spent an hour running, lifting weights and stretching – not bad for a Saturday morning. As I walked towards the front door, I noticed the latest poster on a notice board, intended to attract new members. It had the name of the gym, with the words “Where The Fit People Are” in big red letters. ‘Yup’ I thought, as if I was the person they had in mind when thinking up the strap line, ‘That’s me’ and with that I held my stomach in until I was out of the front door.

I haven’t always been a member of a gym though. A few years ago it was a very different affair. Up until I was 24 years old, I could pretty much eat anything I wanted and not put on an ounce. I’d eat chicken pies and chips and desserts in the staff canteen daily, together with Mars Bars and Twix and crisps and so on and so forth, and I wouldn’t think twice about it – I didn’t need to. I was stick thin and I didn’t see any reason to imagine that that might change.

Within what seemed like a heartbeat though, I seemed to reach my late Twenties and then early Thirties and I noticed a sagging at the top of my neck. I first saw it when getting a haircut one day. I was wearing a roll neck sweater and noticed that I seemed to have two chins. I told myself that it was the sweater that gave the impression of looking slightly chunky rather than me actually being slightly chunky.

I thought I looked fine as I saw myself in the mirror every morning. But that’s the problem with looking at yourself daily – you don’t notice change. Even when I moved to a different belt notch, I didn’t give it much thought. Surely I was just filling out – the natural process that everyone goes through as a part of getting older, wasn’t I..?

Not everyone thought so. I dismissed jibes from friends as part and parcel of matey banter and general ribbing and didn’t really take any of it to heart, carrying on in blissful ignorance. I wasn’t fat exactly, but I was bigger than I used to be. And as I saw it, the last thing I wanted, or needed for that matter was gym membership and I avoided it as all cost. It took someone else to make me aware though. When it came to giving me a message, there was only one person who could shock me into seeing things differently.

Let me first say that my Mum is the sweetest, loveliest and best person I know. She doesn’t have a bad bone in her body or a mean word to say about anyone. She loves meeting people and everyone who meets her, loves her. Amazing though her loveliness is however, it can also lull you into a false sense of security, and when a pertinent comment comes, the effect can be like a playground football shattering a classroom window.

I was visiting home one weekend when I made the mistake of walking downstairs to make tea in the morning with my shirt off. “Are you going to get dressed today?” asked Mum, watching me as I stirred my tea. “Yeah, of course” I said, “I’m just making a cup of tea and then I’ll go upstairs and put on a shirt” “Oh good, only...” she reached across, smiled and cupped one of my very modest moobs “...if you want to borrow one of my bras – second drawer on the left in my room.”

My gob smacked - the following day I joined the gym.