Grief is Pants

When I was 16, I asked if Santa could get me some nice pants. I didn’t mean really fancy pants, but I equally didn’t mean pink polka dot cotton pants. Santa got me the latter; a pack of four of them from M&S. Along with a pink polka dot pair, I got some stripy bright orange ones, ones with blue and pink stars and a lime green pair with orange trim (the least offensive). Upon opening, I realised I maybe should have been a bit more specific. If I had younger sisters, I might have thought there had been a mix up. This had happened very occasionally throughout the years when, as I began to unwrap a present, Mum would exclaim ‘ooops I think Santa meant this to be for Tom’. A comment like this would normally be cause for concern (how could Mum know what Santa had wrapped?), but due to expert diligence on Mum’s part for the rest of the Christmas preparations, it didn’t arouse suspicion.

oPENING OUR PRESENTS FROM SANTA (AGED 2 AND A HALF)

Here – as a side note - I have to highlight how Mum really was an expert in the Santa department. She went to extreme lengths to ensure the magic of Christmas and our belief in Santa lasted as long as it could. The wrapping paper used to wrap our stocking presents was never the same as the paper used for our ‘under the tree’ presents. In fact, there would be absolutely no trace that the wrapping paper ever existed outside of the stocking in the first place. It would be an obscure pattern on a roll Mum found in a random gift shop, rather than the much cheaper alternative in Sainsburys that we were likely to spot during the weekly food shop. Our presents would also never be delivered to the ends of our bed until Mum and Dad were absolutely sure we were asleep (which meant they were often very bleary eyed and tired the next morning). As Christmas time came around, Mum was on high alert for any mentions of ‘stocking fillers’ (be it within conversation or in the magazine section of a newspaper). She used a special kind of voice when referencing Santa in front of friends and family which I would later come to understand as her ‘don’t listen to my words listen to the tone of my voice’ voice (a parental classic). My belief in Santa was so well protected, it meant I was one of the last of my friends to find out (aged 9, while having a nit check in the bath).  

So anyway, these pants were for 7-year olds, and they had ended up in my stocking. I’m not sure what Mum was thinking.  The next year, to overcompensate, Santa gave me some Rosie Huntington-Whiteley red, lacey fancy pants. Two pairs of them and a matching bra.

cHRISTMAS WITH TOM (and a baby william not in the picture)

8 years on, I still have these red pants. Both are ripped, and ragged, but both stay permanently in my drawer.  They are the pants I wear when I’m overdue a clothes wash. They are great lazy day pants. Perfect period pants. Soon they will end up as crotchless pants (a far cry from their pink polka dot ancestors). But there in my drawer they will stay. If I was Marie Kondo-ing my clothes I could find a number of reasons why they bring me joy (or at least reasons why these red pants have taken on a deeper meaning than Rosie Huntington-Whiteley could have ever anticipated).

At their simplest, these pants remind me of Mum’s tendency to always ‘upsize’ on trousers. Whenever I was buying a pair of pyjama bottoms or comfy trousers, Mum would get me to imagine tossing and turning in bed at night. She’d re-enact a leg wriggle to remind me of the need to make sure they weren’t too tight, and that the crotch wouldn’t ride up. I recently treated myself to some linen pjs, and every time I wriggle around in them, getting comfy at night I think of my Mum. It’s quite a gentle and simple reminder of her ongoing presence in my life, and I am grateful for it.

When Mum first died, suddenly everything she had ever said or done took on a new layer of importance. A fleeting comment made a few days previously, now counted as one of the last things she had ever said to me. A seemingly mundane action was now a final memory. Without warning, my dose of Mum was up. I had my total amount of Mum memories, and it was up to me to remember them all. I had a feeling similar to that which accompanies an unexpected, out of the blue, mock exam that your teachers set you at school. There is the panic that you hadn’t had any warning to remember all the important bits. I saw my memories of Mum in a jam jar, filled to the brim, that in time would deplete. 

the pants in question looking pretty with some dried flowers

My immediate solution to this was to revise my most easily accessible memories of her. I’d replay small, mundane moments of Mum coming into the kitchen, or sitting down to eat dinner with us… as if careful, intricately remembered in motion memories were the epitome not forgetting someone. However, I then worried these more prominent memories (mostly related to the two years Mum was ill) would override the smaller, sweeter memories. I would rack my brain for new ones. But then it was a bit like when someone asks for your three favourite songs, or a book you really recommend, and you can’t for the life of you think of anything. I’d feel like I had lost all my memories, so I’d go back to replaying the main few in my head again. A cyclical memory dance that wasn’t very productive. It distilled Mum into her ‘Top 10’ memories, rather than as someone with 46 years of life and nuanced experience.

My red pants provide me the chance to attribute them a memory, put them in a drawer (literally) and then years later come back and find it still intact. Like a shop you might find in Diagon alley, where you bottle up a memory into a jar and it sparkles purple and shimmers around the glass. My pants are the muggle version of this. A Mum memory stored in cotton from India and with an M&S label.

The pants also symbolise having had a Mum. A Mum who did Mum things like buy me pants. As much as Dad does an incredible job as a sole parent, there are a few things that he just can’t do (like pant buying in M&S).  

Matching jumpers from a market in FRANCE - MAY 2016

A few months after Mum died, we were going to a family wedding and I wasn’t sure what to wear. I asked if Dad would help contribute toward a new dress; something I was sure Mum would have considered because she was the go-to for requests like that. I had never had to ask Dad. 

When Dad told me this was something I should maybe buy myself, he probably couldn’t understand why I burst into tears and found that so hard to accept. From the outside, it must have looked like I was being an ungrateful, spoilt child. This was also only a few months after Mum had died, so I couldn’t recognise the currents of grief that ran through this reaction. I couldn’t articulate myself and felt guilty for this expression of emotion. I wasn’t an ungrateful child so why was I acting like one?

Now I can appreciate that it wasn’t about the dress at all, it was what is represented. When Dad said it was maybe something I should buy myself, I couldn’t then ask Mum. I couldn’t actually ever ask her again.

It might sound trivial, but that was a part of my Mum experience, and something I miss on a superficial level. I miss being bought presents I didn’t ask for from Mum at Christmas. I miss going shopping together and choosing new work outfits for her. I miss going for massages on our birthday or sneaking to the local Japanese restaurant when we didn’t have the energy to cook lunch (and telling the boys we were just going for coffee). I miss the unexpected Mum treats.  Dad helps with the big stuff (like setting us up with pensions…) and Mum did the smaller treat stuff. I think this is an interesting part of grief; there is sadness for a whole range of things that are both deep and seemingly trivial, but part of the Mum package.  I miss chatting to Mum, confiding in her, hearing her advice, and also being bought things like pants (even if they are with pink polka dots).

muM AND DAD TEAM

This also taps a little into the dynamic that is lost when losing a parent. Mum and Dad were a team, and where Mum was stricter about some things (like bedtimes), Dad was stricter about other things (like food waste, and shoes not cluttering the hallway). Suddenly, it felt a bit off kilter when one person that has normally been there to balance the other is gone. Dad was always Dad with Mum. I didn’t know it then, but as well as grieving for Mum, I was grieving the Mum and Dad team.

As time has passed, I have come to understand that remembering Mum, and feeling close to her, doesn’t literally equate to having a jam jar filled to the brim with memories. It is much more nuanced than this (and doesn’t rely on revision of any kind). 

One of my ways of remembering Mum is by wearing my red pants. If it is not the pants, it is the coffee and croissant moment. Sometimes it is spraying her perfume on before an important meeting. Other times it is rubbing my top lip with my index finger when I am thinking (a Mum quirk). I suppose what I am saying is that my closeness, and memory of Mum comes in lots of different shapes. Some pant sized; others not so pant sized. But they are always there, ready to connect me with Mum and bring her into my present.  Forgetting her isn’t even an option, so there was no need to worry in the first place.  

(And also - grief really is pants)