I never thought fluorescent knitwear and Southeast London would hold such emotional weight for me, but here we are!
As the festive season quickly approached, I’m sure everyone else was hurtling at breakneck speed towards mince pies, presents and the annual Love, Actually screenings. However, a few people – myself included – felt just a touch more apprehensive as December rocked around once more.
On the 17th of December 2023, my lovely and fabulously camp Uncle Martin passed away after two years of battling a brain tumour. A week before Christmas felt like the most dramatic timing possible, but he was, after all, a professor of the dramatic arts – he knew how to make an impact. Nearly two years on, and I’m more certain than ever that Wham’s Last Christmas will stay bittersweet (George Michael, the emotional jukebox that you are!)
I want to make it clear – I don’t hate Christmas! And contrary to some opinions, I don’t hate fun either. I was watching Nativity and taking aesthetic photos of Christmas lights with the best of them – it’s just everything is different now. Call it getting older, or being more experienced in life’s various little heartbreaks, but something has undeniably changed in me. Everyone I meet now will meet the version of me that’s grieving, but that doesn’t make this version of me any less important. I survived some of the worst years of my life, came out with a fairly dodgy (currently half lasered) tattoo and some hard lessons learnt in therapy, but nonetheless, I’ve made it this far. And Penge still stands, more proof that the world didn’t end, even if it did lose a man who could undeniably rock a pink beanie in any suburban seaside town you threw at him.
Obviously, the grief is year-round. I feel it when I see his old flat, on the way to reconcile with a friend or meet a family member in London, that will always remain his. I feel it when I get a good grade I can’t share, or an interview he can’t help me to prepare for. I feel it when I’m writing for a student newspaper he would have adored – political and engaged to the last. I will never not think of him when I’m reading James Baldwin for class or listening to Sam Fender on the way home.
I am also so angry that I was too young to fully appreciate all the love and support he had for my family when he was well, and I’m even angrier that I can’t tell him that now. Ultimately, his brilliant brain was the thing that took him from us – the morbid irony is not lost on me. The emotional minefield that was the anniversary also manifested in some amusing ways. I would say that crying over a pack of his favourite marzipan in the Aldi Special Buys Isle was a low point, but then I would be remiss not to mention also crying outside Casablanca’s on the first night out of the term. If you saw me, no, you didn’t. There have been many tears, and presumably, there will be many more.
My friends have, as always, been angels. I was terrified that when I started university, people would sense my distinct emotional baggage from a mile off and a polite but firm ‘no thank you!’ would be issued. I am continually surprised that life does, in fact, move on. Just because you lose someone wonderful doesn’t mean that there will never be a wonderful person ever again. While the void left behind never quite closes, the love around it keeps growing, stubborn as ever.
I have met some of my favourite people on earth, each knowing grief in their own ways, similar or otherwise, and I love them even more for it. At the risk of sounding cliché, and although it doesn’t always feel like it, you really are never alone. Grieving is, of course, unique to each person and even more so each loss – nothing I can write will dull that pain. Still, there’s always the bizarre joy of half laughing, half crying over a bottle of Malibu in the flat you never thought you’d make it to, with the friends you never thought you’d be able to make again.
At times, it has been hard not to feel like life has dealt me a terrible hand, but, as with everything, there will always be more joy, more experience and more life to live. Four years ago, my biggest worries were largely to do with whether my A Level final piece was as awful as I thought it was (definitely not my finest work, but that’s by the by). Now, quite frankly, my concerns are ever so slightly more existential. I worry for my family, I worry for my friends, and I worry for me. Yet it’s those very anxieties that keep me going in the end. I am so intensely and painfully grateful to be alive; I will remember it, and the people important to me, every single day. I miss my uncle and his pink knitwear every day – though I’m not quite sure I miss Penge, as despite the memories, it’s still Penge – but as the eternal Joan Didion said, today is all there is. So, I’ll bring my memories with me today and keep muddling along.
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