Adam Golightly - Being Adam Golightly: One mans bumpy voyage to the other side of grief

Being Adam Golightly

One mans bumpy voyage to
the other side of grief

For Helen you know how much.

Somewhere on the other side of this wide night and the distance between us, I am thinking of you.

Carol Ann Duffy

I f Adam Golightly had never been born things would be brilliant. It would mean a totally different upbringing for my children Millie (aged 14) and Matt (aged 10) because their mother Helen, my soul mate of 26 years, wife for 17 of them, would not have died of fucking cancer in her 40s.

By different I mean remarkably ordinary and yet splendidly happy, with Helen very much alive at the centre of our little world.

However, Helen did die and her death begat Adam Golightly, my pseudonym for my weekly Widower of the Parish column in The Guardian.

Id never written like this before. Conceived in the darkness of my grief, Adam became pallbearer, confidant, cheerleader, psychoanalyst, pimp and pathfinder for the rebuild of our little family.

Creating Adam was in many ways a desperate act as I looked for anything which might help me deal with overwhelming grief, leaving me strong enough to support the kids. It seems selfish but I had little consideration of any consequences, good or bad, for the stakeholders in the sharing of our story. It was just a way to anchor me in the present when all I really wanted was to hide like an animal and lick the wounds of my loss.

The column tracked my journey from the day of Helens death through the pathos, comedy and occasional slapstick of my just-about-coping without her. I featured the childrens changing lives, the high and lows of domestic chaos, professional meltdown then reconstruction and the surprise of my emotional hunger and raging libido.

Once Id started writing, the words flew out of me with an ease and honesty which, though personally painful, Id begun to hope would somehow help nameless others who tripped over Adams journey in the paper or online.

I had little feedback at first, until a Twitter account was attached. Suddenly some of the scale and diversity of peoples immersion in my story became movingly apparent and I am so grateful for their trust and support.

Then the final column published Adams e-mail address and I became the recipient of thousands of other peoples support and stories of their own loss. I heard from poor souls with life-limiting illnesses, usually fucking cancer, and from scared, articulate and lovely people whose partners have deadly illnesses and see in Adam some hope of a life beyond the worst happening. Further outside the shadows of illness have been regular Guardian readers whove laughed, cried and occasionally sniggered at Adams antics, or people with other adversities, not health related, but who still see in him a cheerleader for a positive future when everything seems hopeless.

Finally and very surprisingly there were those who had not experienced any adversity but lived with a nagging doubt that their lives should be happier. By reading Widower of the Parish, they found in Adam Golightly a life coach although death coach might be closer, given my new-found experience of the membrane-thin fragility of life.

This book is so much more than the sum of the columns and I hope you will be able to take out of it whatever you need bereavement guidebook, checklist for the midlife crisis you never allowed yourself but always wanted, life-coaching notes or just maybe a chance to shout hero, villain, arsehole, brave-heart at the page while hoping its the sort of thing that doesnt happen to you.

More than anything Being Adam Golightly is about living, not dying. Its a celebration of the life we are creating in Helens long shadow. I love the world as never before and in this book I throw my arms around it and squeeze, until it squeaks.

If I seem, through Adam, to cope sometimes just a bit too well or laugh too much Ill point you to the words of the awesome Albert Schweitzer:

The willow which bends to the tempest, often escapes better than the oak which resists it; and so in great calamities, it sometimes happens that light and frivolous spirits recover their elasticity and presence of mind sooner than those of a loftier character.

Adam x

I ts another lady for you, Dad!

So chimes my young son Matt, having easily reached the front door before me. On our step stands a woman of about 40, well dressed, with coal-black, shoulder-length hair, flashing dark eyes and a nervous air. Beautiful already, she was outstanding for two very different reasons Id never seen her before in my life and she was brandishing what looked like a very large dish full to brimming with lasagna.

Theres an awkward pause as I look into her eyes, hoping for any spark of recognition to deliver up dialogue and lift the weighty silence between us. Nothing. We continue staring at one other and I notice a slight tremor in her arms, bending under the burden of cast-iron cookware.

Im better with cars than names or faces, so flick a glance at her shiny blue, newish Mercedes slewn across my drive but dont recognise it either. However, the momentary unshackling of our locked eyes liberates speech

Dark Stranger:For you.

Simultaneously, she thrusts the dish hard at me. As I take it, her now-free arms encircle my shoulders in a long, surprisingly strong hug before she kisses me hard on the cheek and steps deftly back.

The silence recommences and we stare once again into each others red-rimmed eyes. The tableau has not altered, other than that the dish has changed hands and, as I discover later, theres a ruby-red lipstick-embossed pucker on my unshaven cheek.

Ten days earlier, this encounter might have had a whiff of small-town scandal, but not now.

Bad things dont just happen to other people they happened to our little family. Helen, my beautiful wife and brilliant mother to Millie and Matt, had died a week earlier. From nowhere, the slight pain in her side had turned out to be not gallstones but a rare bastard form of fucking cancer that would prove deadly in less than two treatment-packed years.

So I was at home with the kids in the eye of the storm; sitting between the worst day ever of having to tell them their mum had died and her funeral the busyness around which didnt begin to disguise the fact that a sink hole had opened in our wonderfully ordinary lives.

This terrible time was punctuated by a constant stream of cards, calls and callers on our doorstep as news of our loss skewered the complacency of the comfortable community in which we had lived for more than 10 fabulous years.

People are well intentioned; I try to be welcoming, answering them all with varying degrees of monosyllabic turns-of-phrase and unkempt appearance pyjamas that might be mistaken for leisurewear helping to soften the impact of my dishevelment.

Callers include some of our oldest friends, more recent but close friends and almost-acquaintances. Hats off to them all for overcoming British reserve and reaching out as our less inhibited American cousins might say.

Still, having plucked up the kindness and courage to come round, people are often struck dumb on the doorstep. Im churlish in my grief and feel a little put out by the constant and uncomfortable intrusions and share this fact with my friend Laura. Older than me and a people watcher with an HR background, she sheds some light and shoots from her hip.

Me:Have I become some sort of freak show? People turn up, shut up and stare or hand something over and scarper