Week 19 - Laura - laundry

“Get it together Kit,” I coached myself, as I lugged the last basket of his damp clothes to the line at the bottom of the garden. “You didn't cry this much at the funeral!”

Losing Peter was sudden, to say the least. I went through the days after he died in a relatively pleasant Xanax-induced haze. (I’d totally recommend it, in the circumstances.) It’s taken me almost a year to face going through his things though, and despite the fact that he’s been gone for almost twelve months now, somehow this bit seems the most final of all.

I know Peter would want any of his clothes that were up to it to be donated to a charity shop. He hated waste, so it stands to reason. And, to be fair, he was in his own way quite the fashionista. Oxfam will be lucky to get his very last collection - a stylish mix of smart and casual.

To think of the years I griped about our wardrobe. It wasn't half big enough to contain both of our stuff. Trying to find what I was looking for among the outfits wedged into the available hanging space used to drive me demented. Since I've taken out Peter’s stuff I can freely browse through dresses I haven’t seen in years. I haven’t cried so much in years either though.

I have downsized his collection in the past, of course. Mainly by shrinking his cashmere-mix sweaters. In contrast this time, though he’s never going to wear them again, I've never been more careful about taking heed of the care labels on the damned sweaters. Not one of them has changed size or shape, even a little bit.

I used to think I hated laundry. This laundry is a totally different kettle of fish, and one I’m not coping well with at all. This, the actual final load of his washing I’ll ever do, is about a hundred, no, make that a thousand, times worse than any laundry I've ever done before.

It’s a shame the Xanax prescription has long since run out.

Week 10 - Andy - Death

This week, I conducted an experiment - I wrote this weeks' thing when I was just back a night out. I was under the influence, and wanted to see how that impacted on my writing. The below has been edited for grammar, but is as I wrote it in my hotel room in London.

When I think about death, here’s how it goes: I look out the window of the A320 on takeoff. The view is familiar to millions - Grass, runway, wing, engine. As the engine spools up, we start rolling down the runway. The pilot (I can’t see him, but I feel the effects) pushes the throttles all the way forward. The turbofans (Seattle alloy grey) start straining against the airframe. The engine pylons - one on each side - carry the full force of the engines, and drag 138 passengers, their luggage and tea, coffee, heated meals and perfume along the runway.

As we rotate (when the plane leans back on its wheels, the nose pointed towards the sky), one of the pylons starts to shear. Alloys aren’t perfect - thousands of take-offs and landings have taken their toll - an imperfect alignment of microscopic defects are a losing lottery ticket.  There’s a lurch - kicking awake from a half-sleep - and I look out the window. The right (starboard?) engine has sheared loose from the wing. The nacelle is spinning back, over the wing, towards the grass, The fan is slicing through the thin aluminium skin. The wing, now free of both the weight and the thrust of the engine, starts to lift.

I know we’re going to smash into the ground - the same movement as flipping a pancake. No oxygen masks descend, no one looks at the flight attendants. Everyone is riding a rollercoaster, rattling around a barrel roll after a slow climb. There’s a clear instinct to this movement, the wing lifts, we flip over, and out the window, after a brief flash, the overcast sky is suddenly underneath the green grass.

I’m conscious for the entire rotation. I don’t have time to think of my wife, or the problems i’ve left behind. All I can think of is dove grey alloys, clear, well maintained green grass and perfect, bright overcast skies. I have irrelevant thoughts - overcast skies are perfect for photographers; how do they maintain the grass in airports - and then we’re falling.

In imagination, planes crash in slow motion, gracefully stepping out of the sky- picturesque, slow motion fireballs. In reality, you miss a step, trip, and fall down a flight of stairs.  Gravity is a constant - 9.81m/s squared.

Four forces act on an aircraft; lift, gravity, thrust and drag. Wings are designed in such a way as that a certain amount of thrust (enough to overcome drag, and then some) will provide enough lift to overcome gravity. Once the mechanics of thrust (engines) and lift (wings) are taken out of this mathematical equation, the result shifts towards drag and gravity.

At the apex of the loop, 95 metres above the ground, the Airbus A320 has lost all lift.

Seen from a distance, the colours are complimentary - silvery gray skies, green fuselage, mist coloured wings, and emerald grass -  an orange bloom of flame, and black smoke, after the impact.

I’m gone. I don’t see the Sky news reports, the terrible phone calls, and the frantic drives to airports and hospitals.

I saw an upside-down wing strike the ground, and felt the man next to me grab my arm. I heard screaming, and wasn’t sure if it was me.

I was alive for longer than I thought - I felt the crash, then it was darker than I thought it would be, for longer than I thought.

Week 10 - Laura - Death

“She’s not going to be happy with me,” I think, as I wait for Mary to pick up the phone.

I met Mary, oh, it must have been six years ago now, at a GIY meeting, but she quickly became more than just a fellow hobbyist and we've been thick as thieves ever since. I tell her pretty much everything, and though I promised to tell her if anything like this happened again, I'm not looking forward to this call.

“I've killed another one,” I blurt out, as soon as she picks up with her usual sing-song “Hello, Mary speaking” greeting.

“Oh Nuala,” she says, but I press on before she can continue. If I don’t tell her all the details straight away the shame will stop me going on.

“I left my precious baby alone when I went away for that conference this week,” I explain quickly. “I really couldn't miss the conference,” I add, pointlessly trying to build some sort of defence for myself.

“I thought I’d left her enough of everything to make it through the week, but boy was I wrong," I rush on. "You remember how I killed her older sister last year by smothering her? Well since then I've maybe been trying to balance those tendencies by really holding back with the basics like food and water. I just didn't want to overwhelm her. I thought she’d been looking peaky of late, but I never for a second imagined that she’d die!

“When I came back late last night I went to see her straight away, but I knew immediately it was too late - there was no saving her.”

“Oh Nuala, we've been over this a million times,” Mary says, and I can tell she’s annoyed even though she’s trying not to sound it. “Orchids are really particular. I can’t stand by and let you kill any more of the beauties; perhaps from now on you might just accept you and orchids are not compatible and stick to spider plants and peace lilies instead.”

Week 8 - Laura - Recipe

Sara tasted Huguenot Torte for the first time on our honeymoon, in a fancy restaurant on a former slave plantation in South Carolina. She declared herself in love, before quickly qualifying the declaration by explaining that falling in love with food was an entirely different thing and wouldn’t affect her love for me at all.

I still remember the number of bookshops we had to trawl through before we eventually found a cookbook with the recipe in a marketplace the day before we left.

I can’t think of Huguenot Torte without thinking of Sara. She couldn’t wait to try her hand at making it as soon as we got home, and after that first successful trial it became a Kirwan family favourite. ‘Huge No Tart’ Beth used to call it when she was a little girl, trying to twist her tongue around strange words. But like father like daughter, she always welcomed the dessert with the same wildly enthusiastic ‘yes please’ that I did.

The ten weeks since Sara died is the longest I’ve gone without Huguenot Torte in 23 years. There’s been no place for its sweet stickiness, even if I knew how to make it. I’ve been falling from the awful emptiness of one day without Sara to the next, living - no, just not dying- on a mixture of Cornflakes and Domino’s.

It’s been 66 days since I’ve seen Beth. Like me, she’s been wrestling grief alone. She went back to college the day after the funeral. She tells me during stilted conversations on the phone that the end of semester is a busy time, but assignments and exams never stopped her coming home for the odd dinner before.

She’s coming by tonight. She says it’s just a quick stop to pick up some textbooks, but enough of the fog has lifted for me to know I have to do something to stop losing her too.

Being more au fait with football than food, I’m not sure my attempt at dessert has been very good. I’m not even sure what I’m trying to do. Sara would know whether unsalted butter was strictly necessary, or whether cheating with the regular kind was ok. My translation of what a quarter cup of all-purpose flour is was a rough guess at best. I’ve no idea what a two quart baking dish looks like, and I know I added some tears that the recipe didn’t call for into the vanilla extract.

The sound of the back door opening jolts me from my reverie and suddenly Beth is in the kitchen. Looking straight past me, she sees my attempt at Huguenot Torte sitting on the hob.

‘Oh Dad, it never looked like that when Mum made it,” she whispers tearfully, allowing herself to fall into my desperate hug.

As my tears fall into Beth’s hair I know that I’ve lost Huguenot Torte and Sara forever. But I think I’ve just found my little girl again.