It’s Valentine’s Day, and today I treated my house to a full cleaning of the windows and gutters. A nice guy with a broad Black Country accent came round with all kinds of paraphernalia and worked for two solid hours. The house is lighter now, both from the outside but also increasingly from the inside. A few weeks ago, we found mice in the kitchen, and the need to do a deep clean meant I was also inspired to get serious about decluttering. My dad spent many hours emptying my kitchen so he could deep clean every surface inside and out, bless him, and we’ve taken that impetus to look through my overstuffed house and think: what can we let go of? What is preventing the light from getting in, figuratively and literally?
So today, I filled two bin bags with rubbish and two big boxes with old toys and games to donate. I also went through a huge box of photos that had been Kieran’s, getting rid of old frames, putting aside nice photos to keep, and throwing away duplicates. There’s a huge box too of cards that Kieran kept – he was far more sentimental than me, bless him, and never threw away anything a loved one sent him. If you sent him a postcard or a birthday card, there’s a very good chance it’s in that box. That I didn’t sort through, or even open. It’s good to be aware of one’s limits.
It feels appropriate to do these things on Valentine’s Day, which is a day associated so heavily with a commercialised vision of romantic love. It’s a day of accumulating red-and-pink clutter, and perhaps for many people for pretending that things are fine and good when really, their relationship could do with a good dusting. The last time I had a Valentine from Kieran was in 2020. He was still alive in 2021, but he wasn’t living at home on Valentine’s Day – it fell in the strange three-and-a-half week period that he lived away from home, because he said he was in love with someone else.
There’s another of those truths I’ve lived with for a long time, but which I haven’t written about publicly. A lot of that was about protecting Kieran’s reputation. But one of the damaging things about suicide bereavement is the culture of secrecy around it. Kieran behaved very strangely and sometimes very badly in the last months of his life. A good deal of that was due to very serious mental illness. But I do not have to excuse all of it simply because he was unwell. I have spent a lot of the past few years coming to terms with the things that happened in early 2021; some of them have left scars that will always be with me. Last summer, a big wound reopened that I realised I had not taken the time to clean out properly so it could heal. I forgave myself for that, because the trauma of Kieran’s death and all the other things I had to deal with required my attention. But after a while it started to fester, and I spent a few months last year feeling quite unwell because of it. With the caring assistance of my therapist, and the loving help of my friends and family, I did some very hard work to — spring clean my soul, I suppose you could say. And then lay some things to rest. That wound still aches sometimes on cold nights; I suspect that even when I’m 80 it may occasionally twinge. But the scar has healed true.
Four years ago, friends sent me flowers. Three years ago, my in laws made sure my daughter had a card and present to give me. Two years ago I was dating someone and I think people assumed that substituted for older hurts. Today I’ve not heard from anyone about Valentine’s Day – no questions about whether it’s hard, or if I’m alright. This isn’t a complaint. I don’t feel particularly sad about it. Everyone’s life moves forward, and unlike in the early months or even years when every milestone needed to be marked, I let many things go by now with only small pangs. This paragraph isn’t meant to make anyone feel guilty. Rather, it’s for the people who are in my situation but are still raw – where seeing Valentine’s cards in shops can feel like a body blow, where seeing happy couples can make them feel sick with envious grief. I see you, dearhearts. (Kieran used to call me that.) I’m so sorry it hurts. It will get better, but I can’t promise when.
Tonight I have a meeting of my online book club. Some of our members will be absent, celebrating with their partners. Others will come together to enjoy the platonic love we’ve been sharing for nearly five years now, since the desire for community in lockdown propelled me into setting it up. We will talk and laugh and afterwards, I will go to bed alone – but not alone in spirit. I know myself to be beloved. There’s a kind of romance in that.
Rachel E. Moss 