CONSIDER 21 years and what passes in that time while asking yourself if December is the cruellest month?
Obviously it depends on your perspective – if you had your house bombed in June that would provide some stiff competition.
It’s just that whatever month it might have occurred in December seems to bring to mind everything bad that has ever happened to anyone or anything you ever loved.
Perhaps it’s the relentless feelgood factor television, the commercials showing what appear to be perfect families, all nicely dressed in winter woollies, opening presents neatly wrapped and placed under the tree, which sits, perhaps ill-advisedly (no, I'm not going to make a festive Elf and Safety joke), next to a roaring fire (that would seem cruel as you warm your hands on a one-bar fire).
No-one dies here. Not like in real life.
My gran died 43 years ago on December 13, partly due to attempting to read a Christmas card I had handed over while visiting her in hospital, my sweet cat Belle on December 19 last year and my father (pictured to the right of me) on December 29 – my brother’s birthday – 21 years ago.
My first 21 years on the planet consisted of primary and secondary schools, learning to read and write, play sport, passing and failing exams, going off to do a degree, preparing to enter the world of work and all that comes during the process of growing up. Those years lasted so long.
A gap of 16 years – not because nothing happened then, but because that’s the expanse of time between my 21st birthday (a meal at Steeton Hall and a main present of a stereo) and my dad dying in hospital. They came and went with rapidity.
The 21 years since then have absolutely flown by. Is that because when a parent dies you grow up, accept that you are next in line to go and move into a different phase of your life? Is it simple mathematics, fractions and percentages of your time on earth? Were all those people who told you time goes faster when you get older correct?
In that time there’s been a move from Exeter to Bolton, two cats, both of who have now gone, another move to a different life in Rotherham – none of this would have happened if my dad was still here.
I would never have edited a newspaper. I would have just carried on with what I was doing, getting through one day at a time, because that’s how I approached life.
I had to change though. For other people if not myself.
My dad enjoyed giving advice. Sometimes it wasn't great - "next time just hit him, he won't try it again" being one example - but other times it was, even if he didn't know it.
The one I have carried with me since he died is "always catch with soft hands". He was referring exclusively to cricket, but it works elsewhere. Hard hands drop things or kill them, opportunities bounce off and fall into the dirt.
Soft hands, fingers slightly apart to allow whatever you are catching to breathe without dropping or suffocating it, that’s the answer. It doesn’t matter whether it’s a bird, a mouse, a butterfly, an opportunity or a memory.
The late Shane MacGowan said he reached out and captured arias. Plucked them softly from the air as they floated along. I believe him. How else would you write tunes and words of such beauty? Not with hard hands. You just couldn't.
He was born on Christmas Day and I found out about his death on December 1 last year. December; like those of my grandma, my father, my cat.
Yes, December can be the cruellest of months, or maybe it's just that you don’t feel the pain as much in January.