Le Parc de l’Ariana, Geneva, 1 March 2018

WRITTEN ON 7 MARCH 2018

I love snow! Realising, as I slowly wake up, that the usual sounds outside my city-centre apartment are muffled, and opening the blinds to see the metal bars on my balcony decorated with perfectly-placed layers of gleaming, thick, soft, white, powdery fluff, fills me with joy and excitement! Even the renowned Swiss public transport system temporarily breaks down in the snow, and what would normally have been an uneventful bus journey up the hill to work turned into a mini-adventure last Thursday morning after a night of heavy snowfall. As I walked through the park that I normally zoom past on the bus, marvelling at the beauty of the snow-covered trees and the simple wonders of nature all around me, enjoying oxygen flowing to my head and the peacefulness resulting from the adjacent road having a fraction of its normal traffic, I felt happy. Such moments of pure happiness have been woefully rare since mid-June 2013 when my family’s precious dog, Freddie, suddenly became ill as I was looking after him, and the feeling of foreboding that that gave me proved to be justified a few weeks later when my Dad learned that he had recurrent malignant melanoma. That was the summer when my life began to fall apart.

This time four years ago, one month after starring as the dame in the Isles of Scilly pantomime, and six weeks after playing the drums with his friends and bandmates in the Steamband alongside the awesome boogie woogie pianist Ben Waters in the Hall for Cornwall, my Dad was waiting for the results of a scan. — This scan would confirm my Mum’s very worst fears, which were that her dream companion of +44 years was deteriorating helplessly before her eyes. If you had told me then that, four years later, my Dad would have been dead for three and a half years and that I would be walking to work one morning feeling happy, hopeful and excited, I would never have believed it. I wouldn’t have wanted to believe it, even if I could! The mere suggestion of such a possibility would have filled me with rage.

As I walked through the park last Thursday morning it occurred to me that, despite all the delight that snow brings, there are in fact many parallels between a snow day and grief… We may get a brief warning that heavy snow is about to fall, but there is absolutely nothing we can do to stop it! We just have to surrender to its sudden, ubiquitous presence in our life. Snow makes things which would normally be straightforward become a challenge and blurs our points of reference. The sources of transport that we’re used to having available to ease our passage through life abruptly stop, yet life is expected to go on — there are appointments to be kept, duties to be fulfilled and an expectation that plans will continue to be made. In the presence of heavy snow traffic fumes, cigarette smoke and pungent rubbish smell much stronger just as, when grieving, you are more aware of what is toxic around you. A local park which is ordinarily a haven is turned, by snow, into a barely recognisable wilderness. The unavailability of transport and barriers that snow forms, along with its coldness, create a sense of vulnerability and isolation and an increased desire for warm physical contact with fellow human beings. The disordered circumstances you find yourself in inspire conversations with acquaintances who you would not previously have imagined opening up to. Your desperate need to focus on all that is good in this trying situation, and to cling onto the inner resources you need to navigate your way through it, repels you from people who threaten what stability remains through their harsh interpretation or dismissiveness of your way of approaching the new, testing conditions that you are trying to deal with. In moments of sadness that threaten to overwhelm you, hearing guileless expressions of joy such as the sound of children excitedly squealing as they throw snowballs, or birds tweeting and flitting around a little wooden birdhouse hanging from the branches of a snowy tree, illustrate the inherent vitality of nature and provide an essential reminder that, despite what you are feeling, life is beautiful. Once you have seen the previously familiar landscape around you rendered unidentifiable by snow, the images from that experience become indelibly marked in your memory and form part of the essence of who you now are, and of how you now view the possibilities of change in the world around you. You cannot go back to how things were before — you are forced to become resourceful and adaptable.

Whilst surrounded by snow in the park I had an idea of what path I would attempt to take through it. The path I followed through others’ vaguely traceable steps did, indeed, lead me through the park and out the other side. However, reaching the exit to the park took much longer than anticipated, evoking feelings of frustration and fear and draining my energy. When I took steps bigger than what feels natural to me I slid backwards, stumbling on snow that was just too dense to be suppressed easily. I’d take another miscalculated stride then slip backwards again, and again, and again. Taking light, firm, baby steps proved to be a far more reliable way of making my way through the snow.

The past four and a half years, counting from the summer when everything first started to fall apart, have felt like an utterly relentless cycle of suffering the well-documented stages of grief of anger, denial, bargaining and depression — not always in that order, and frequently feeling all four of those emotions in one day and, even, interchangeably throughout a day! It was truly a surprise to find myself having reluctant and unfamiliar feelings of ‘acceptance’ whilst enjoying the splendour of the snowy park last Thursday morning. Although these feelings of surprising happiness were unfamiliar, they certainly were not unwelcome; I would very much like to have more of them! Four and a half years is a long time to be sad for — that’s nearly half a decade! My Dad only lived for 66 years, but those years were composed of innumerable moments of delight in the beauty and simplicity of life. I think that sadness and disbelief at the loss of my Dad will always linger and be hard to bear but, in the snowy wonderland of what would otherwise have been an average weekday morning, I realised the true wisdom of striving to foster joy in myself and the value of celebrating it with others. Allowing feelings of happiness to invade my soul helped me to feel closer to my Dad’s soul. I hope this is something I will find the courage to experience more often, thereby showing respect for how my Dad lived his life and a strong desire to enjoy my own even if it is unimaginably different to how it used to be.

‘… Only when we fully realize that the cup of life is not only a cup of sorrow but also a cup of joy will we be able to drink it’. Henri J.M. Nouwen.