The Decision

I gathered my new team together last week to meet for the very first time with the task of agreeing a project vision and mission statement.

The room was filled with highly skilled professionals and I was honoured to be standing amongst them. I outlined the basics of what we have been commissioned to undertake and set them the task of writing a vision statement.

Afraid that I may come across as some kind of ‘David Brent’ character (from the BBC sitcom ‘The Office’), I spent time at the start of the morning nailing my colours to the mast as to why I believed it was essential that we agreed a vision for the project before trying to create any detail.

Years ago, I remember spending an inordinate amount of time in a meeting doing just the same task. As someone who easily gets impatient in the work arena if I ‘can’t see the point of something’, I regarded that ‘visioning’ event as a gargantuan waste of time as I just wanted to crack on with things and get the ‘real’ work done.

I have since learned that many a project succeeds or fails on the quality and understanding of what the outcome should be. A vision should paint the ideal – sometimes that ideal seems unachievable (The vision statement of Oxfam for example is ‘A just world without poverty’) but I am adamant that if we don’t have a vision that is inclusive of hope then it is not worth setting out our stall.

I had set about an hour and a half for the task, and after some initial discussions, I let the group loose to come up with some statements in the hope that we may use these ideas to craft a collective vision statement.

Flipchart paper, coloured markers and post-it notes abound, my newly established group of professionals eagerly complied and began to come up with their ideas…

…after an hour or so, I could see that they were struggling. All of them had spent a long time in discussion and debate.

As time ticked by, I noticed that every sub group had drafted either a formal bullet pointed list or some creative buzzwords in different coloured clouds. Nobody had drafted a sentence let alone a paragraph and I began to feel a little concerned. 

They all had a sense of the important things that should be included in the vision of our project but pointed out that our vision statement could not be a plethora of words that had no sense or synergy to hold them together.

I was surprised just how difficult it was for them to grasp what I had required.

I am so passionate about our project that I stood at the front and waxed lyrically about the kind of message our vision statement should hold. I gave them more examples from other organisations that had crafted succinct paragraphs to paint a picture of what their work was aiming for and then one of them, a very learned colleague said ‘You have such passion for what we are going to do – you already have the vision – why don’t you write the statement and we can just agree to it!’

‘No!’ I replied, ‘This is not about MY vision – it is about OUR vision. It must be something that we create, that we sign up to collectively. We must own it and then strive for it together.’

We broke for coffee. And then like so many great ideas and decisions, our vision was borne away from the layout of the boardroom and on comfortable chairs, over biscuits and caffeine.

On return to the session, we worked on it quickly, creatively and with a firm understanding our vision for the future was fundamental to our moving forward. 

I love working as part of a team. 

As a leader, I lead from the middle as an integral part of my team but I am prepared to be the gatekeeper of our work. I can do this with confidence because I know that our decisions and actions have been planned thoroughly with every member being fully valued. In short, I expect to lead from the front where it is necessary but to be a team member first and foremost is central to my leadership philosophy.

In my first year of my new normal, work has been my salvation. I cannot say that when I returned last November, I had a spring in my step but recently, my professional life holds more interest and motivation than ever before. I am wholly surprised at this given the last 12 months but I am exceptionally grateful for it.

However, life this year has presented many more challenges when I return home.

On a personal level, I have had to adjust to losing a team member. The one with whom I consulted about so many different things on a daily basis and on aspects of life that I needed support with. 

Away from the office and the boardroom there was a far more important project taking place – LIFE.

In a team of two, that loss is utterly catastrophic. It doesn’t matter how f***ing awesome your vision statement is for the project that is life because it is aborted immediately.  And as failures go, I can tell you that this one sucks big time. 

I could blame myself of course. After all, if I had chosen to be in a team of one, a happy singleton with only myself to consider then I wouldn’t have found myself in this position. Plenty of people are single right? Plenty of people are successfully living their dreams without someone by their side and they do not have to consult, plan or negotiate anything with anyone very much let alone a significant other. Many of these people report that they are happy with this way of life – ‘why complicate things?’ they say.

And who am I to argue with them? I believe them or at least I believe a few of them – the few that I know really well and who all have very valid and individual reasons for their choice.

There –in lies the rub. It is their choice. I do not relate to that kind of choice but I don’t need to understand it – in fact, it is none of my business. 

I did not choose this way of life. My vision was not to live my life alone. 

I chose to be in a team of two. We sketched out plans for our life with an understanding that many challenges would appear along the way. We faced each hurdle as it presented itself and had team meetings accordingly. And like all good teams, we discussed, we debated and we didn’t always see eye to eye on every issue. 

In our team of two, we had twice the confidence. Can you imagine that? Having a confidence level to deal with life to the tune of 200%? 

It meant that we were able to do so much more. I was more productive at work because I had a powerhouse at home that enabled me to run thoughts and ideas over a glass of wine. 

There is so much I miss about being with Bebe. The daily debrief which we used to call the ‘story of the day!’ was always something I looked forward too. Over the years, our stories of the day took on many different themes. We would share our frustrations, our experiences, our thoughts on the news or a particular event. 

As a team of two, we were happy, optimistic and upbeat – even when life threw up difficult times, we found it possible to be pragmatic and even humorous.  Yep, there was a lot of humour.

I was the class clown and he was court jester. Our home was always full of laughter and nonsense and chasing each other and doing daft voices. 

The ‘in’ jokes.

And the jokes that probably weren’t that funny – but he made me think that they were.

We had started a toyshop from scratch after Bebe had been made redundant. I continued to work my full-time job while he ran the business. The story of the day was always a highlight when we caught up with each other every evening and I loved hearing stories about his customers and their idiosyncrasies.

On our first day opening, a customer came in and asked ‘will you be getting any toys in for Christmas?’

Errr..  We had a shop that was stacked to the rafters with toys. We were unsure which bit of the term TOY SHOP she was struggling with! The clue was in the title really. It made us laugh and we referred to it often, even years later.

When my team became ONE, I struggled. The struggle is now well documented in my nods to tears, pain, snot and anxiety, but the thing I found most difficult was that I had no-one to bounce any ideas off.

I had nobody to check my decisions – not that I needed every decision to be checked in our relationship but I knew that I didn’t have to make decisions completely alone. The quandary of whether to accept voluntary redundancy, the dilemma of which jobs to apply for – the wondering of whether to sell or rent out my house when we moved to Wales…

…all of these were discussed with each other. Of course it was necessary for the both of us that I made the right decisions because the outcome would have an impact on our situations.

In my new normal, I am having to make decisions alone.

I have plenty of wonderful people that I can voice my ideas to but they rightly point out after letting me express my thoughts that ‘ultimately, it is only you that can decide’.

And they are right. It is only me that can decide. I have to do what is right for me.

I certainly have to do what is right for me when it comes to major decisions – for example, I wonder whether it is right for me to stay here in this house. It is where we lived together and it is where Bebe died. Nobody can make that decision for me, I must do it for myself.

As the first year of widowhood is drawing to a close, there are lots of decisions I still have yet to make. Most of the year has rendered me powerless (or so I thought) but actually, I have realised that not making a decision is a decision in itself!

I am learning to have faith in my own ability to decide the BIG things in life myself. Without him here, I have already made the choice to go back to work, to engage in some of life again, to take a promotion and to set boundaries between myself and others who are not as helpful as I may have hoped.

And most of all, I know that it is absolutely okay not to make a decision at all. Some decisions can wait a while longer.

Some may wait a lifetime. 

When I am ready, I will know.

And what about my personal vision statement?  I am working on it. With Biscuits and caffeine.

And hope.

For Bebe: I know now that there are many choices and decisions that only I, alone can make. I valued your input on so many things and I really miss not being able to run things by you.

However, as the first year without you is coming to an end – I realise that I can still apply all of the questions, logic and sometimes just raw instinct that we always used – that is still at my disposal and I must use it!

And most importantly, when doubts creep in and I find myself pondering – I say to myself ‘The best decision I ever made was to accept a date with you!’ and that reminds me that I am perfectly capable of making excellent choices.

The Widow's Feast

I was an early reader, thanks to my sister who is 6 years my senior. I was the ever present guinea pig in her role play as teacher which resulted in me being able to decode quite a lot of words before I even started formal schooling at the age of 5.

I was utterly fascinated by the alphabet and the endless possibilities of stringing letters together to create words. Somehow, reading and in turn writing, came very naturally to me and I was totally enthused at the prospect of discovering such an amazing way to communicate.

Writing, reading and even handwriting were fun for me, as I realised these skills were quite literally the key to opening up a world that had been previously inaccessible. 

I remember my mother once telling me that the day I had learned to read, was the day that her life moved into another dimension of parenting. ‘Once you could read’ she said ‘I knew that my attempts to keep anything from you were diminished’. 

No longer could she spell things aloud to my stepfather or other adults because within moments I had worked out the critical secrets she had intended to keep from me. From spelling out ‘p.r.e.s.e.n.t’ in relation to a birthday to quietly spelling out that little ‘e.a.r.s’ were listening, her game was well and truly over.

Nanna on the other hand, was more difficult to work out.

She had grown up in the East End of London and commonly spoke in cockney rhyming slang (referring to my skills on the old Joanna). But more weirdly, as the wife of a butcher she would revert to the lesser known language known as butchers slang – which broadly meant that she would entwine normal words said backwards – a habit adopted by traders to mask the gist of the conversation from outsiders.

I was fascinated by Nanna’s conversations – particularly when I heard her talking to my stepfather. She always referred to money as ‘Yenom’ and called a leg of lamb ‘gel of bee-mal’. I first heard the term ‘yob’ from Nanna and felt a bit insulted – ‘are you still hanging around with that yob?’ she would say… only later, I clocked that she was referring quite endearingly to the ‘boy’ from the next village.

Indeed, I blame Nanna for the scorning I received at a trip to the beach one day, when I spotted a word on the café window that had been loving scribed by a finger in the condensation of its warm interior. 

‘KCUF!’ I exclaimed to my mother (who had become proud of my reading skills).

‘It doesn’t say that Elizabeth’ She replied.

‘So it must say ****’ I announced joyfully. It was the first time I had ever sworn. And the last time in my mother’s presence.

By the age of eight or so, there were very few words that I couldn’t at least make a good attempt at reading or spelling – and Nanna, along with Mother had to think very carefully about what they said or spelled out in my presence. With an ever increasing wealth of knowledge about words and language, my life had opened up as I had this wonderful skill that could connect me with the world on a grand scale.

As I ponder my love of words – of reading and of writing, it has dawned on me just how much they have contributed to shaping my life in all manner of ways. I composed a love letter to my first crush in 1979. It took all of my nine year old courage to scribe the inner feelings of my heart on a piece of pink sugar paper.

I gave it to the ‘yob’ who was a couple of years older than me and then ran away in fear that he might not feel the same way about me. I recall vividly, even now, how he stood on the steps of the portakabin-come-classroom and ripped it up in front of all of his friends as they teased him about his little admirer. I stood in the playground, hidden amongst the other kids to witness the shredding of my feelings. I was heartbroken.

I later found out that he couldn’t read.

Ironic really, that I had managed to write what was ostensibly a declaration that I thought he was the kindest, most gorgeous boy I had ever met yet to this day, he will never know what that letter had said.

Rule number one: Know your audience.

I have beautiful handwritten diaries from the age of 13 to 21. All of my secrets, hopes and dreams are packed into those notebooks and they chart my journey from teenager to adult with all of the angst, passion and opinion that shines through that passage of time.

Over the last twenty years or so, I have seldom looked back on those thoughts but when I have come across them during a clear out or house move, I have spent hours immersed in the pain and the passions of the past.

I returned briefly to writing a diary in my early thirties as a result of my abandoned schedule but it seems, as I reflect, that mostly my etchings and scribbles over time, have mostly been borne from either love or a crisis. 

So talking of a crisis…

I hadn’t left the house since the day we tied the knot. I also had not eaten. 

When my friend arrived an hour after the undertaker had departed with my husband, I was in a state of complete numbness and disbelief. She walked through to my kitchen and placed a bag of shopping onto the worktop.

‘Supplies’ she said.

A large bottle of vodka, a 2 litre bottle of coke, a bag of ice, 20 Marlboro lights and a packet of tortilla chips...

The widow’s feast.

I woke up on the morning of July 4^th last year with my head pounding. In the hours that followed Bebe’s departure, I drank a copious amount of vodka followed by a bottle of champagne.

The champagne was a wedding gift from just 12 days earlier and I didn’t crack it open in a symbolic way – unless you count wanting to drink enough to pass out and never wake up as such. 

For a moment, or more than a moment, I thought I was in some kind of vodka induced nightmare. 

Had I really witnessed the last breath of my husband? Had I really handed over his favourite ‘Clockwork Orange’ T-shirt for the District Nurse to dress him in?

He couldn’t be gone. He just couldn’t be gone – not forever?

I switched on my laptop and logged into Facebook. Over 100 notifications signalled that this was not a terrible nightmare. Glued to the screen, I read each comment and kept on scrolling down...

R.I.P.

Hugs xxx

So very sorry xx

He was a gentleman.

He was a true friend.

My thoughts and prayers are with you x

You know where I am if you need me…

…The list went on and on and on. 

I thought this was someone else they must be talking about. I had read these kinds of threads before and have left comments of condolence myself. 

It is simply impossible to put into words the true horror that consumed me as I slowly began to process that these words were not meant for someone else – they were about Bebe. And about me.

For someone who has often been described as eloquent, I had nothing to give. Sat in our bedroom, filled with his clothes and belongings I was utterly muted. Those damn open plan IKEA wardrobes were staring back at me with my darling’s clothes hung dutifully on the rails and his beautifully folded T-shirts on the open shelving.

His glasses and his watch on the bedside cabinet.

Where the **** do I start? How on earth can I carry on? What in heaven’s name am I supposed to do now?

I couldn’t write. I clicked to return some kind of comment but I just couldn’t write. I clicked the like button on every kind sentiment – it seemed wrong to ‘like’ RIP but for the first time in my life, I had writer’s block and I went into autopilot mode with the ‘thumbs up’ button in the absence of an ability to respond with words. 

I sent my friend away. She couldn’t deal with my pain. I couldn’t deal with it so I felt that it was easier if I was left to my own devices.

Life unfolds. Even when your world has ended and time is stood still – there is plentiful evidence to the contrary.

The post still arrived every day and it didn’t take long before literally a hundred or so cards with the kindest and warmest of words dropped through the letter box. Some people took the time to craft well thought out handwritten letters which at first I could not concentrate on reading. 

My house was filled with flowers. Two or three times a day for the first week of so, I would receive a delivery – some from as far afield as America and Australia.

I had text messages and emails from friends and family. And I noticed with stark poignancy that Bebe’s phone lay silent after weeks of constant messages.

I still could not write. I did not have the words to respond. I feared I would never be able to communicate again using the written word.

One day, in my muted, silent world – I received a letter to confirm that my membership to a charitable organisation (WAY – Widowed and Young) had been activated. I was desperate for support and I noticed that there was a Facebook page for members. 

I reached out.

I introduced myself on a new thread. It was relatively easy because I wasn’t responding – I was simply writing a few words about my loss and dipping my toes into a new kind of normality I guess. Within minutes, I had the most compassionate and supportive replies – and for the first time since Bebe had died, I felt that I could communicate again through the medium of writing. And I could read and interact with lucidity and concentration. 

At first I was unsure about sharing my innermost thoughts but I realised very quickly that this was a safe, secure and supportive space to park even the darkest of ideas. It is true that you should not judge a person until you have walked a mile in their shoes and well; some of these people had walked much further yet there was no judgement of me – only compassion.

I get it. If you haven’t suffered the loss of someone you love so dearly then you can only do so much to help. I am sincerely grateful for everyone that reached out to me despite them not really being able to empathise. 

In my new normal, I am finding a balance these days of being able to communicate again with a wider range of people, family and friends.

 

My writer’s block melted some 6 months ago and as I approach the first year without Bebe, I am able to take on new projects at work, interact with my new friends as part of a support network and am back to full banter on the pages of Facebook and other forms of social networking.

I no longer have to write my emails in the ‘round robin’ fashion which I have always despised and am able to respond honestly yet mostly upbeat in the optimistic, witty way that I feared once may never return.

I am reading again. I am reading for enjoyment and not putting all of my energies into absorbing theories and ideas about grief. I am always open to learning more about life after loss but I don’t pursue it in the desperate state of mind that I did nearly 12 months ago.

And finally of course, I am writing my blog. Those of you who are following my ramblings will know that I began my journey from survival to revival right here …    http://thefuschiatree.blogspot.co.uk/2015/01/the-fuschia-tree.html

In those early days on the support forums, I was told to take each day as it comes. Minute by minute, hour by hour if necessary.

Nana would say ‘Would you Adam and Eve it?’

Time has passed. I am making progress.

For Bebe: I worried that if my pain lessened and I started to feel a sense of peace that it may be a sign that I either did not love you enough or that I am still in denial that you are gone. But I know that these are both ridiculous thoughts that do nothing but hijack my efforts to live the kind of life that I deserve or a life that you would be proud of. So instead, even when I am struggling to hang on as the rollercoaster dips – I recognise that even the roughest of rides will end up on the level once again. 

For Nana: You lived so many years without Grandpa – I wish I could have understood how brave and strong you were and listened more respectfully when you wanted to talk about him. I get it now.