My hammer slips, its wild arc skimming the window, with its beautiful painted songbird, which a century earlier took someone days to create. It was the closest of shaves as I continue hacking putty from the stained-glass panel we are restoring.
It’s nearly a very bad day at the office, but nonetheless for me another spent in paradise. I am a few months into working as the world’s oldest stained-glass trainee; the “lad” to expert craftsman’s Tony’s time-served talent, despite him being only six years older than me.
Doing this fits the man I now am, and maybe the man I could have been. Building a window laid out on the bench, the many flat-sided horseshoe nails used to hold the lead in place turn it under my gaze into a fakir’s bed. This connects to a memory of my mum, whose face smiles down at me from a faded newspaper clipping: “Jayne slashes mink and never turns a hair”. A master furrier long before it became a hot topic, Mum could expertly remodel a mink coat, the disassembled pieces laid before her held in place by a multitude of shiny steel pins, my 10-year-old self pointing, “It looks like a bed of nails, Mum, can I try to lie on it?” Fortunately, the answer was always no, but the memory hotlinks me to a happy period in my past so reassuring me in the present.
Mum hadn’t worked for 10 years when my dad died suddenly, but a week later took her talent successfully back into their business. Armed with her skill and her widow’s pension, she provided perfectly for her three sons through and beyond childhood.
Whether it’s her influence or my grandad being a stonemason, I feel a real affinity for this work. I’m getting better and will build a business around this new passion, helped along the way by my own Widowed Parent’s Allowance (WPA), which will be paid until the kids leave school.
Financially, there was a big hit when Helen died – not only did we lose her salary but also my loss of a career of PowerPoint and power-play. I had to stop and stay present to settle the kids. As a sole parent, I’ve refocused my life around Millie and Matt and am unlikely to go back.
Helen’s legacy is a lifetime of love for her; the kids, of course, and this rebuild of my life with a portfolio career that includes stained glass. Her death, my need to be less busy, and a new sense of life’s fragility have meant that I have seized the chance to try something new; a window opened only by the financial support of life insurance and the WPA. Writing on the anniversary of her death, it’s a legacy of which I’m certain she would approve, not least because her National Insurance contributions helped to fund it.
The WPA doesn’t feed us, but once my savings have gone, it will be a welcome regular income to build around. They helped my mum and they are helping me and will definitely be paid until Matt leaves education many years from now. They are a hard-wired financial certainty for the kids amid much change.
I am lucky to get it. From 5 April, the newly bereaved, if they are married with kids, will receive the new bereavement support payments for just 18 months. Surviving married parents with young children will be hit hardest and, unbelievably and unlike other benefits, unmarried but cohabiting parents get bugger all.
I’m angry for them because it is a scumbag trick by the government. All these people, who paid their National Insurance contributions, who will not draw a pension or use the NHS in old age – if they die early, their kids will get nothing after just 18 months. Worse still, the people these changes will hit hardest, and who ought to be complaining most loudly about it, don’t know it yet because their husbands or wives are still alive, probably with no thought of death.
“It could be you” has never been more true or more deadly. Hammer the message home by protesting against the cuts now and nail them.
Adam Golightly is a pseudonym
