It’s time to pretend that the world isn’t totally shit by returning to work, and I’m worried. Since Helen’s funeral, I’ve been digging out a routine for Millie and Matt from the rubble of a domestic happiness all but flattened by their mother’s death. It’s not my employers who are the problem – they have been great. Nor is it because I think everyone will be watching me – very few colleagues know that she is dead. From Helen’s bedside, I’d lobbied human resources for the news of her death to be kept quiet.
Ivan, who works in HR, got the plot quickly. “We’ll tell only the senior team to explain your absence. There will be no general awareness of your situation. You do realise, though, that this means people will be insensitive to the rawness of it all for you. You’ll need a thick skin,” he added. Fair warning, but a rhino hide seems a reasonable trade-off for being spared the awkwardness of “I’m so sorry …” exchanges and to avoid seeing the fear in people’s eyes that I might blub like a baby.
Yet I fear disaster, despite reports that the routine of work provides stability for the bereaved. This includes Facebook executive Sheryl Sandberg, who returned to work 10 days after her husband’s unexpected death. I respect so much of what she has written but, God, she must love her job. For me, I sense there’s been a recalibration in what I give a toss about, which does not include some of the pain, politics and arse-covering required to succeed in my media-related industry. It might be easier were I a doctor, where the scale of importance of saving lives would meet my narrower definition of what now matters.
There were signs, even from the morning of Helen’s death, that the tectonic plates of my worldview had shifted. It was 7am and I was en route back from the hospital to be home when Millie and Matt woke. I’d be waiting to tell them the dreadful news and, in doing so, lower but hopefully not bring crashing down the curtain of their childhood.
Emotionally and physically exhausted after a long night in Helen’s room, I needed to bolster myself. Seeing a coffee shop open as I entered town, I’d pulled over for refreshment.
Parked outside the bank, I’d sprawled across the car’s back seat, the privacy glass of the rear windows making me invisible to the world.
An Audi sports car pulled up and, leaving his engine running and door open, a suited figure of about 35 got out and put his card into the nearest cashpoint. Minutes passed and, despite it being 7am so a bit early for a meltdown, he started swearing angrily. The machine had only eaten his card, but he was behaving like Gordon Ramsay served with a rotten oyster, but without the blessing of the overdubbed beeps.
I felt a gush of burning anger that he should behave that way for so small an inconvenience, given what I was facing, and in a mad departure from the middle-class book of law-abiding etiquette, I wanted to jump in and steal his car. That would really have given him something to swear about, as I found out how well that big engine got the rubber on the road.
The moment passed, he drove off and I was still fit to be a member of civilised middle-class society. Fate, however, had not finished with me. From around the corner came a much older man, furtive and conspicuous; a present-day version of George Cole’s Flash Harry from St Trinian’s, peering up and down the empty road. He stopped before the cashpoint only four feet from my hidden vantage. Seeing no one about, he started to remove something from the cashpoint. I’m stunned. It’s a sting in which the potty-mouthed Audi man’s cashcard had been cloned. That would really give him something to swear about.
The previous day, I would have been photographing this scene, calling the police or even wading in, but that day – and maybe for ever – I did not budge.
What this means for work I’m not yet sure, but it’s likely to be trickier than I imagined – my lens on the world has shifted from compliance (with an occasional wildcard moment) to something more intolerant of my time being overloaded with inconsequential pap.
If only I’d pleased my mum and become a surgeon.
Adam Golightly is a pseudonym