‘It’s another lady for you, Dad!” So chimed 10-year-old Matt, having got to the front door before me. On the step stood a curvy woman of about 40, well dressed, with coal-black, shoulder-length hair and a nervous air. Beautiful already, she was outstanding for two very different reasons – I’d never seen her before and she was brandishing what looked like a large lasagne.
“For you,” she said, thrusting the dish at me. She awkwardly hugged and kissed me and there was a long silence before she stepped back. We stared silently into each other’s slightly red-rimmed eyes.
Ten days before, this encounter might have created a whiff of small-town scandal, but not now.
Bad things don’t just happen to other people – they happened to our little family. My beautiful wife of 17 years and brilliant mother to Millie, 14, and Matt, 10, had died a week before. From nowhere, the slight pain in Helen’s side turned out to be a rare bastard of a cancer that would prove deadly in less than two treatment packed years.
So I was at home with the kids in the eye of the storm; sitting between the worst day ever of having to tell the kids their mum had died and her funeral – the busyness around which didn’t begin to disguise the fact that a sink hole had opened in our wonderfully ordinary lives.
This terrible time was marked by a constant stream of cards, calls and callers at our front door as news of our loss skewered the comfort of the prosperous community in which we live.
People are well intentioned and welcome. I have answered them all with varying degrees of monosyllabic turn-of-phrase and dishevelment (having pyjamas that might be mistaken for lounge-wear helps).
The callers include some of our oldest friends, more recent but close friends and almost-acquaintances. Hats off to them all for overcoming the British reserve and “reaching out” as our less inhibited American cousins might say.
Having plucked up the kindness and courage to come round, people are often struck dumb on the doorstep. My friend Laura, older than me and an expert people-watcher, sheds some light: “It’s a massive statement of their shock, support and love for Helen and you all – don’t expect them to be articulate and don’t judge the encounter by normal social rules – silence, tears and grub are all expressions of concern.”
So I find myself comforting a series of well-wishers, bearing food and love.
I’m reminded of Matt Damon in the film We Bought a Zoo. He’s a widower who is dismissive of such doorstep gifts and lasagne piles up in his fridge before he makes some big decisions to move his life on; fuelled along the way by the luck of having Scarlett Johansson as his head keeper.
I am, by contrast, touched and grateful and eat and eat (and eat). This includes the 25 assorted speciality pies and wine sent by colleagues who have clearly sussed my northern roots.
On the doorstep, I hug and comfort the now tearful dark-haired stranger. “Thank you so much for thinking of us,” I whisper. She sniffs, smiles and after a moment of silence, turns red. I wonder if she has spotted that I am actually wearing PJs. She turns smartly on her pointy heels and with just a whiff of Gucci and gravy, heads towards the smart Mercedes slewed across my drive.
I stare at the weighty lasagne dish, wondering if there is lipstick on my face. “Any idea who that was?” I ask Matt.
“No idea, Dad, but there’s a marble cake in the fridge from this morning,” he replies with the nonchalance of one who has grown up too much in the past few days. And so the pattern emerges and the week goes on. And with the funeral comes a carb rush of calories and a cavalcade of kisses.
Three days later – having vowed that as I now need to live for ever I must look after myself – I peer down at the scales, and see that I’ve put on nearly half a stone. So much for grief making you fade away.
Adam Golightly is a pseudonym
