Lately, January

words from where I am right now

It is no longer 2023. A fact that still surprises me - I missed New Year at a soul level.

For those that don’t follow my presence on Instagram, my Dad passed away on January 4th and I wrote about that here.

There are phone calls we get that shatter us or, in the words of Baz Luhrmann - the kind that blindsides you at 4 p.m. on some idle Tuesday. Mine was an idle Thursday, the shortest day of the year. A call that told me I was needed at my childhood home urgently. There was a knowing, as we signed a purple Do Not Resuscitate form that, the prognosis we’d been given of at least two to five years was an over estimation. I’m still not OK with this.

On that day, the sky was full of rainbow clouds I’d never seen before. I wanted to see them as hope, but knew they were something poignantly other than that. I sent a photo to my Dad. The next day, as I returned to Manchester to frantically pack, I received the last text message he was able to write to me.

Lovely clouds. All clouds are beautiful. Love you very much too. Feel a bit better today. XXXX

The following two weeks are not yet for unpacking. They were spent deep under the ocean, slowed down time and a sinking of all I that I knew. I’ve clung onto the wreckage of grief and loss before. And I think, with that comes a readiness to surrender to what cannot be hurried.

So here I am. We are in the sad admin phase. Sadmin. Funeral planning, eulogy constructing, piece by piece cancelling a social identify and opening sympathy cards. So so many cards. My Dad, Trevor Davenport was not an ordinary man. He was a magician with a camera and known internationally for his knowledge of nature photography, plants and insects (notably, moths and butterflies).

To take a walk with him was to see the living world in full technicolor, all birdsongs known, no details missed. He gifted me with a lot of this knowledge, I can tell you all the constellations we can see with the naked eye, amongst many other things. But now I don’t get to share that with him. I don’t get to do anything with him at all.

And yet. At 47 I have lived a life so far with many chapters of grief. I’ve spend recent years seeking all I can find to better understand both living with loss and honouring what we so deeply miss. Supporting others to tend to their grief is what I do. Sitting on the other side of the table again doesn’t feel great but I do speak the language. I’m grateful for this. This is going to hurt. This is also going to heal - and healing isn’t something we get to rush.

To this end, I am taking time out of client work until mid February.

I’ll be both surviving and assimilating the funeral before waving a temporary goodbye to UK winter from a plane window. I will be writing and breathing life back into The Antidote. At some point I might even write an Instagram post if the wind blows in the right direction.

Thank you for being here. The tenderness I have had from you, the community I am lucky to have, will never be forgotten.

Laters, H x