Day off

Yesterday I took a day off. A day off from work, and a day off from grief. It's not possible turn off the thoughts and feelings that keep ebbing back, of course, but it is possible to change the way we act about them. So I took up a friend's (Alex's) offer for a fun day in Geneva, and after my last shift was over we headed off. It's important to pick the right person for this kind of thing and to define a few ground rules. The rules were that we wouldn't talk about work, we wouldn't talk about grief or Moritz or Dylan, and Alex wouldn't worry about what he said to me. We'd just have a day out in Geneva, nothing else. With these ground rules, and with someone I can trust not to talk about the boring parts of work, and most importantly someone who is not trying to make me feel better for their own sake, or out of a sense of politeness, there was a good chance I'd get the space I needed.

A particularly glorious day in Geneva.

This is something I tried many years ago when I was still raw over the shock of losing Dylan. I spent a few weeks travelling between Oxford where I worked, and Crewe, my family home where Dylan died, with both being stressful and emotionally draining. At that time I didn't know what to do. So I turned to a friend in Liverpool to take a day off. Rach offered to listen to me talk about Dylan for as long as I wanted, but in the end I didn't talk about him much at all. We simply walked around Liverpool looking at interesting things and talking about nothing in particular. I think afterwards Rach felt she hadn't done enough when in reality she'd helped me out in a way that nobody else was doing at the time. Grief's exhausting. Just getting used to the idea of never seeing someone walk into the room again takes time and each time you're reminded of this is a bit grating and the only thing leads to acceptance is time. One of the weirdest feelings I had was being simultaneously happy and sad, being able to joke while my heart was still breaking. Having a fun day out can't remove the grief, no matter how hard I try, but it does give some relief.

Being silly with Rach, as usual, providing a much needed break from all the serious at a time when the seriousness was too heavy to handle.

Yesterday, while I avoided talking about Moritz or Dylan, I did think about them from time to time. In the evening we headed back to Alex's for dinner. Preparing dinner with Alex reminded me of my student days when I was at Oxford. There aren't many ways to make me feel more welcome than to ask me over for dinner and to help prepare for food, and that's something I've been missing in recent months. I was already feeling nostalgic immediately before I heard about Moritz's death, so doing something "normal" for once instead of something as an expat or a postdoc was a welcome change. Having had a delightful day out followed by a simple home made meal we finished the day off with some whiskey. Moritz loved whiskey tasting (and often got it wrong when he tried to guess which was which) so this reminded me of when I bumped into him and we sampled some very nice whiskey in Restaurant 1. Being reminded of him in such a pleasant environment was very comforting. After a long time of grieving over the loss of Dylan my memories of him went from painful to wistful, and eventually I was grateful that I had the memories at all. It took about 2-3 years for that to happen with my memories of Dylan, but with Moritz I've at least got the illusion that it's taking a few days. Being able to see things from the happier side of the grieving process has helped a great deal, because that was the most draining part of the process first time around. There's a huge difference between dealing with loss with no end in sight, and dealing with loss with the sense of hope that things will get better. That moment when you get the first memories that make feel a little happier is a watershed. Now I know that I'm going to have the strength to get through the next few weeks between now and Moritz's funeral and come out the other side okay. No matter how much it reminds me of what happened in the aftermath of Dylan's death and no matter how many parallels I can draw between Dylan and Moritz I'll not only be able to get through this, but I might even be able to help some mutual friends too.

Alex: I'm on a boat!

Thanks go to Alex for the day off yesterday, and to Rach for the day off a decade ago. Those two days made a huge difference in the healing process for me. Getting out of the routine of grief and work, and finding the time to just enjoy life for a few hours is what it's all about. Now it's time to get back to work, because life goes on, and that's okay.