#my nan had a stroke around that time and as a person who works mainly with critical stroke patients it hit hard

[the-ace-with-spades]

(another unfinished post i found on the way to glasgow - that was the longest train ride in my life - I'm sorry in advance)

When Ice finally passes away, at the age of 73, in his sleep, Bradley moves Mav into their house the same day.

He gets the call in the morning, while trying to simultaneously cook Jake's breakfast and try to make their daughter put on a rain jacket. It's not Mav, but someone from the hospital. Jake doesn't know this — Bradley's face twitches only for a second and then he's back to the nagging, relaxing tone and telling their daughter it's raining and it won't stop. Jake only finds out when he comes back home from the school drop-off and Mav is already there on their couch. Jake doesn't even get the full explanation until that night, just a quick, "Ice passed away overnight."

There's only their three youngest living with them at the time — their 18-year-old daughter who attends UC San Diego, and their 15-year-old son who is still in high school, and their 7-year-old daughter — so Mav takes one of the vacant bedrooms.

The first few nights, Bradley sleeps in the same bed with him. Neither of them looks like they get much sleep. They don't really eat, either, just drink coffee and nibble on the crackers.

The kids start coming back home, and their oldest helps Jake arrange most of the things for the funeral, at least for the first few days. Mav is... numb, not really there, and Jake understands — he would, too, if he woke up one day and his husband died in his sleep next to him. Bradley is silent, mostly, the way he usually rambles to fill out the silence, the way he hums, the way he sings at any given time when there are no words spoken, it's all gone and Jake doesn't know how to fill out the silence either, how to ask, how to make it better without asking.

Bradley doesn't cry, or at least not the way he knows Mav does — he can see Mav's red eyes every morning — but there's something empty in his gaze, in the way his eyes follow Mav and in the way he melts whenever Mav is around, always close, always brushing against him. Mav spaces out a lot, doesn't talk much, doesn't—well, doesn't do much. Every time he tries to help with something, paperwork, the funeral arrangements, the hospital bills, even just sorting out the kids' school leave or Jake's own work leave, he fumbles a bit, not really able to focus on anything for long, and it's like his mind is completely scrambled. Jake doesn't know how to help him — doesn't know if they even can.

The kids, well, did not take it well, as expected. The oldest two try to be brave and help Jake with everything, keep the house going, but their youngest daughter doesn't really understand why her pops isn't back, the middle kids don't understand why now — Ice was in remission, in good health, would go hiking with them once a month, play with them in the backyard, talking about plans for the future with them, nothing that would tell them to expect their pops passing away. Mav and Ice had taken care of all of them for years, while Jake and Bradley were still deployable, and helping out as much as they could. Ice was a huge part of their lives, since the very beginning.

Bradley is certainly not doing any better but one couldn't be able to tell if they didn't know him well enough. He's always been more for packing his feelings into a tight neat box, compartmentalizing until there is too much and it all overflows in some explosive way. His focus is mostly on Mav and the kids, trusting Jake to take care of anything he can't.

Jake can't even ask him how he's doing until the night before the funeral.

Mav tells Bradley he wants to be alone that night and Bradley lands in their bedroom.

He acts normal — checks the kids are in bed, checks on Mav, prepares stuff for breakfast in the morning, has a shower. Only when he sits down in their bed, their dress blues, cleaned and pressed sitting on the hangers hooked up on their wardrobe, right in front of him—only then he freezes, a blank stare still on the uniforms.

Jake sits down next to him on the bed. "Talk to me, Bradley."

"I knew it was going to happen at some point, I just," "I just thought we would have a few more years."

Bradley sleeps curled up on his chest — he sleeps the whole night, soundlessly, and Jake is almost settled.

Almost. Mav is a couple doors down, alone.

Ice's been—had been retired many years now, but he had been high enough in the ranks that the Navy still insists on making a military funeral. Jake tried to take away as much of the flashy bullshit as possible, but there are still things leftover — the sailors with the flag, the flyover. But there's no one who wasn't close with the family at the ceremony, there's no speeches, and no one tries to hand either Mav or Bradley a flag.

The wake has an even smaller amount of people, all packed in their house — Mav hasn't been at his own house since — and thanks to Slider, mostly, and his 'the bastard wouldn't want us to mope around', it's less sad and quiet.

Mav eats two slices of cake, which is the most Jake's seen him eat since, and even laughs at some stories about Ice people are exchanging.

Ice had a good life. A big family. A big happy family that loved him.

But life goes on without him. Jake goes back to work first, then the kids have to go back to school, then Bradley has to back to work. After a couple of days alone at their house, Mav starts bringing up moving back to his own house.

He's not really doing great. He's still quiet, still spaces out more often than not, still forgets himself sometimes, still freezes whenever he tries to say something and the we he uses is one person short. He's—lifeless, for a lack of better word, and seems like he's noticing it now that Bradley isn't with him most of the waking hours.

"That is our home," Mav tells them. "I can't abandon it forever, I'd be abandoning him, too, if I—"

Jake—Jake gets it. He doesn't like it, but he gets it.

Bradley's been fielding off any suggestions of Mav moving out but he's pretty sure that soon Mav is going to pack his stuff and up and leave without asking for permission.

"If he wants to move back home, we can't exactly hold him here. against his will."

"Jake," Bradley says. "I feel like—if we let Mav go back there alone, he's going to die of a broken heart and I won't have either of them anymore."

"Sweetheart—"

"I know it's selfish," he interrupts, "but I can't lose him, too. Not now."

Jake can't make Mav stay with them — so he finds the best solution he can and instead, they all move in with Mav. Hell with it, he's going to try to get everyone to live their lives to the end. They'd done it before, Mav, Ice, Bradley, Jake and their two kids under one roof, when their oldest two were their only two kids.

The two of them and two of their youngest; two of their kids move into their house so they don't have to sell it.

Mav lives on. They try to occupy his mind by throwing their youngest at him — ask him to take her to school, pick her up from school, take her to her gymnastics class, do her homework with her, teach her how to play piano. The other kids pick up on it, too, and their high schoolers would wrap Mav into doing math workbooks with them, or ask him to drive them to their friends' house, and the kids that have moved out ask Mav to go to lunch together or call him to ask him things about car and house repairs that don't exist.

Mav gets brighter every day. Never as bright as before, but no longer so numb.

Their daughter ends up never moving out and so do they.

They all get older but Mav holds up pretty well. He does break his hip when trying to wash the windows, had a limp and terrible back ache ever since, had to stop driving because he can't see shit, had to stop piloting even sooner, and his memory is also shit, but Jake is pretty sure his cholesterol is lower than his own and he has better blood pressure than Bradley. Bradley and Mav are the ones cooking after all, Jake is the one eating all the tasty but not healthiest food, and Mav's life revolves around spoiling his cute great-grandkids and Bradley's is filled with the constant stress of managing Navy's top flying school.

For his ninetieth birthday, Mav flies a fighter jet as a passenger, the oldest person to ever do that — his youngest granddaughter is the one to take him up in the air, a junior grade lieutenant herself. They have a birthday party held at their house, Mav falls asleep in the armchair, Bradley makes fun of him and promptly falls asleep on the couch, too. Jake loves them both so much and still kind of can't believe he has this — house full of grown-up kids and grandkids of his own, his graying husband of over thirty years, his father-in-law coming to an age he wanted to see his mother at.

They're cleaning up, their two daughters who still don't have kids and didn't need to go home helping, and Mav tells them he's going to get some fresh air on their veranda. "I've got a terrible headache," is all he says.

Half an hour passes, they've packed all the clean and dirty dishes, and Bradley huffs to himself. "He fell asleep on the bench again, didn't he," and goes outside.

Bradley shouts for him in less than a minute. The ambulance is there in eight. Within the half-hour and a CT scan in the hospital, the neurologist tells them Mav is too far gone to survive the day. Within six hours, every single person from their family has come to say goodbye. When they pass the seven hours mark, Jake stands up from the plastic chair behind Bradley — he's not about to tell Bradley he should rest, but he's been holding Mav's hand since the minute they admitted Mav to the ward and hasn't eaten or drunk anything all day. He tells him he'll go grab them a coffee and bagels and gets a little nod and a smile.

Jake comes back twenty minutes later and Bradley doesn't even look up from where he's gripping Mav's hand.

"Can you get the nurse for me?"

#this isn't really about Ice's death or Mav's death #but more about getting old in a family #sorry in advance #dunno if this made sense #idk felt some way when i wrote it #my nan had a stroke around that time and as a person who works mainly with critical stroke patients it hit hard #i didn't get into detail here but stroke patient at the end of their lives are very emotional sight for relatives #icemav #hangster #angst #pete maverick mitchell #tom iceman kazansky #bradley rooster bradshaw #jake hangman seresin #tgm #charlie writes #op

[yvaquietdays]

People’s Faces

I’m standing in the refrigerated aisle in the Co-op, between the ready to heat steak pies and the cheese, grated and whole. I don’t hold eye contact with a single person while I’m in there, and it’s only on paying at the self service that I’m staring back at myself on a screen above the other screen, and a word flashes; RECORDING. No, I think, please don’t record this. Not me buying cheese and basil (I made pesto). Record me writing, mixing, reading, applying for jobs, even record me writhing in agony last night as the fist of my period pain twisted in and out, and me, literally begging myself for mercy, straddling a spare duvet, two cushions, a hot water bottle and my childhood bear, J rubbing my back and helpless to my suffering. Record that. Record my life.

*

Lockdown happened. Speaking generally, the isolation suited us. I’m an introvert at heart, so I really cherished being alone with the trees and open horizons (we were at my parents when lockdown was enforced). I wrote in my own time, we recorded and tracked the next EP in our own time, I picked wild garlic leaves and de-weeded the garden, all in this window of time we’d been gifted. I read dozens of books, and will read dozens more. I was furloughed, I was looked after, I felt happy, healthy (even when my back went and I fell on the floor like a sack of shite and had to be lowered into the bath like a malnourished whale).

Then I lost my job. I knew it was coming, of course. The coffee shop had to close for a number of reasons, but mainly due to the pandemic and the fact they just couldn’t make it work. So many people have lost so much in this time. The solution isn’t simple.  I thought to myself, rather in the style of ITV’s Vera, Look, pet, you’re good at the coffee job thing. But you’re also really capable at loads of other stuff too, you don’t have to limit yourself. Try something new! This is a door. Open it. So I’ve been applying for jobs in publishers, editorial assistants jobs, working with books, copyright, anything where I can write or read or just be around words for a living. So far, it’s going okay, but I’m optimistic. There must be someone out there that’s quite taken with my wilfully positive CV, even if I am wholly unqualified...

But then some other stuff happened and I became really negative and scared, worried about my future again, worried about the world we were coming to know and normalise. The indecision, the lethargy, the restlessness, the not-knowing-when-to-start, the heavy sighs. Even my skin was showing signs that inside, I was panicking, because:

I don’t know how my life is going to look going forward, and that frightens me.

All of my live work was cancelled, all the groundwork I’d been building up on. The portfolio of work, the earnings that were growing and might have supported me enough after a few years so that I could think about getting a mortgage or having a babaganoush (baba, kiddo, sprog, littl’un, baby).  Gone. When people lament that “2020 was the year that never happened,” I think, yeah, but I’m still losing all my eggs. 

I’m luckier than most. When I really sit and focus on what I have, if my life were a barbecue, I really am the juicy sausage on the grill drizzled in honey and bathing in fat. I have a lot to be thankful for, and that calms me. Even if I am being cooked alive. 

Weird analogy. 

I think a lot of you will empathise with this, because it’s not just the work, or the coffee job, or time that was robbed from me, from all of us, but communication and interaction. Nobody can see my face, nobody can see me smile, and I feel desperate for recognition. I want my old life back. I want the motivation, the optimism, the touring, the being able to shake hands and hug without guilt, and the excitement for making plans with friends, the where shall we go next and being able to answer the question, “When are you guys going to get married, then?” The realisation that I won’t be going back to my life before, has hit me, right between the steak pies and the cheese aisle. Knowing that the year we had planned never happened and not even knowing if we can plan the next has filled me with dread. Because what is life when every small thing we cherish and take for granted every day is removed? When excitement is a luxury, not a common occurrence? Even the jobs we thought we hated, turned out to be the lifeblood behind our choices and decisions. The people that wound us up, the people that smiled at us, the people that knew our names and asked how we were. They were all in one way or another keeping us going, moving us on, passing us forward. 

‘It's hard, we got our heads down and our hackles up Our backs against the wall, I can feel your heart racing...’

It’s not all bad. Writing this down I know that I’m getting caught in that cycle of negative thinking, and I’m freed from it a little. Thank you for bearing with me, and apologies if I’ve made you sad. But people need people. When I feel like I’m losing, I think about the very important people around me, even those who reached out to me during my grief who I hadn’t heard from in years who’d heard of my Nan’s recent passing. I think of their faces and our laughter and memories, and I think, I am lucky. I have a lot to cherish.  So if you’re where I’m at, if you’re worried and scared and sad that you lost something or someone this year, think about those people’s faces. The people who bolster you, hold you up. The folks that remind you that nothing else matters when you have love. When you have a hand to hold, a dog to stroke, and if you’re more of a loner type, a hill to climb, a sea to swim, a stiff breeze to hold yourself against.  We’ll get through it all together.

‘...None of this was written in stone The current's fast but the river moves slow And I can feel things changing Even when I'm weak and I'm breaking I stand weeping at the train station 'Cause I can see your faces I love people's faces.” - People’s Faces by Kae Tempest

x

#anxiety #globalanxiety #pandemic anxiety #covid19 #pandemic #mentalhealth #mentalhealthawareness #anxietyanddepression #depression #kaetempest #peoplesfaces #jobloss #grief