I've lost count of how many times over the last year or so I have said "I'm now ready to go back to work". On each and every single one of them, I was wrong. Not lying, not mistaken, just wrong.
I wasn't ready to back to work because what I hadn't realised was that I hadn't stopped working. I had quit my job and only carried on with / picked up a few more freelance assignments. I turned down more than I accepted. But that didn't mean that I'd stopped working.
Whatever I'd imagined life after Orbit to be like, Clive's death meant it was going to be something very different. His dying two weeks before my notice period expired was definitely not part of the plan. As he said himself, the morning he walked into hospital, possibly knowing what I didn't yet, that he wouldn't be walking out again, "it wasn't meant to be like this".
But clearly it was meant to be like this, because this is how it was. Suddenly there wasn't a plan any more.
What there was, however, was a life still to be lived, work still to be done. In the first few months, I had no idea how that was to happen, other than by doing what everyone does in the first stages of mourning, filling up the hours, doing the next thing that needs to be done. Stopping when it gets too hard. Finding people to lean on. Learning to lean on yourself. Learning to give up leaning on anyone or anything and allowing the breaking to occur, then getting up and figuring out the putting back together.
All of us have had to do this to some degree or another. All of us have lost someone or something we care about. I just made it a tiny bit harder by losing and/or giving up all of my anchors at the same time: my job, my soulmate and as a result of that, in time, my home. The entire foundation of my life, cracking and shifting under my feet.
Leaving the job wasn't just about changing organisations it was a conscious decision to give myself time and space to think about the kind of work I wanted to be doing now, enabling a change of direction, at least in part.
Although Clive and I only ever had what I have described as a semi-detached relationship, it was only semi-detached, it was linked, fundamentally entwined, and it had been there for over 35 years. It gave structure to my weeks and to my years. It was the framework of humour that steered us through. It was a pure love, both ways, one that asked for nothing in return, and allowed all manner of mistakes to be forgiven, without the asking. It was our mutual bulwark against the world. And it was gone.
Giving up my home was the easy one. He wanted me to have his, to do what I needed to do, and to live there after he had gone. "That was always the plan." And I wanted to be there, not here.
It might have been the easy one in essence: there was no decision to be made. It was a given that I would do this. But in practice it would take just under 18 months to achieve.
When I left Orbit, when he died, suddenly there wasn't a plan anymore.
What there was, was a funeral to arrange, legals and debts to sort, cats to rehome, an unlived-in flat full of hoarded rubbish and forgotten memories to clear and dispose of, and a bungalow…to be reclaimed. A bungalow and what passed for a garden.
When we talk of a garden being overgrown, we imagine weeds and waist high grass. Instead I had self-sown birches and sycamores taller than the house, bay trees threatening the foundations. The bungalow was a witch's cottage in the woods, except that the woods were barely contained in a suburban garden, you couldn't see the bungalow from the road, and the witch was this ageing hippy, with his beard and long white hair, somewhere between Gandalf and Catweazle, benign but seemingly not quite of this world.
Inside was much the same.
The hall didn't look too bad, if you ignored the redundant microwave oven and the garden shears, the ironing board that was permanently open, mainly to deter the cats from scratching the chiffonier, and the layer of dust and accumulation of cat hair and trailing cables and the picnic box and maps last used sometime last century. The living room was cluttered. Every flat surface was piled with books. Good books. Expensive books. Books that were actually in the process of being read. Boxes littered the floor, opened but not emptied, remnants of a Christmas that he'd made as special for me as he could, pretending to be well, when he was already dying. But clutter was the norm for Clive – he lived like this even when he was well.
I liked this place. I remembered it before…before it became like this…but even though we had some good times here, it hadn't been a truly happy place for a very long time. I wanted to make it one again. I wanted to get rid of the rubbish, and let go of a great deal that was nowhere near rubbish, but that maybe someone else would love more than I did. I wanted to save some things, but I wanted to make it mine.
For some of the time I was also doing other work for other people, writing, developing training, delivering courses, reviewing documents and providing advice, but it is only now, 16 or so months on that I realise that the bungalow had become the day job. Supplier selection. Project management. Contracting. Cleaning. Waste management, recycling and disposal. Team leading. Garden design. Interior design. Legal compliance. Taxes. Budgeting. I&E. Research – who could use what? What should I keep? Learning, learning all of the time.
Trying to keep track of which contractors currently had keys to the place, when there were half a dozen working around each other, and which needed me to be on site while they did what they were there to do. Snagging and call-backs and chase-ups. Deliveries and collections and trying to be considerate of the neighbours.
When people asked me what I did, in that way that means what do you for a living, I didn't know how to answer. I talked about what I had been doing until the world shifted and what I wanted to do when it regained its stability. I couldn't say what I did, right now. I didn't understand that the answer was: this.
Curating the detritus and the treasures of lost lives, deciding what to salvage for research or renewal or home-finding or safekeeping (sake-keeping?). Refurbishing a property, creating a home, designing a base from where to design a life. I still don't know what the job description is for that, but it has been my day job for the last 16 or 17 months. In that time I realise that I have only taken 3 weeks holiday – and had only maybe half a dozen to a dozen other days off. Weekends became meaningless. I got stressed at times, whinged, moaned and complained. I celebrated successes and got excited when a plan came together. Pretty much like being back at work really.
I wasn't ready to go back to work, because I didn't have time, because I hadn't actually stopped.
I will soon though. The project is finally in its end stages and I'm looking forward to wrapping it up and taking time out to think about what I've learned in the process.
I'm looking forward to sitting in my garden and catching my breath.
I'm looking forward to being able to go for a walk without feeling like I should go in a particular direction and carry some stuff over, rather than going empty-handed.
I'm looking forward to using my camera to capture beauty rather than record progress.
I'm looking forward to having a week off, on my own, at home. I'm looking forward to going home.
And then – then maybe I really will be ready to go back to work.