I cried at Strictly last Saturday night, I knew it was going to happen the week before when one of the couples played a clip of the song they were going to dance to and I was hit by emotion.
I hadn’t heard the song for years.
I said to a friend about it and he assumed I had cried to the bit about Bobby and his dance being in honour of his Mum as he did too.
I’m going to pause here and highlight that two men in their fifties were a) talking about Strictly and b) opening admitting that they cried when there was an emotional bit.
It’s the last day of Movember today and the focus this month has been on the mental health side of things and encouraging men to talk about their health and particularly their feelings. I’m really proud that I have a group of friends I can be me around and talk freely with without fear of judgement. We can also have banter and take the p!ss too which means we have balance in our relationships. This needs to be the norm not the exception.
Back to Strictly, it was Leyton and Nikita’s dance to “It’s oh so quiet” by Bjork.
Through my late teens and twenties I had at least two Christmas dinners, one with my parents and one with my Mate and his family which always ended with a bit of a party and our other friends popping round for a drinking session.
The highlight was always his Mum, my second Mum, Barbara singing about a pink and blue tooth brush and then the Bjork song with full ssshhh! choreography. It was always so much fun in the way life is when you’re young and restless.
Barbara was always so full of life and love and the song brought all of that back to me. I cried because of those memories and I missed her and those times, it was a happy grief.
Grief is something that affects us all in very different ways, it can be constant, it can be sporadic, it might be triggered by a song, smell, a wagging tail.
Each time it hits us it can have a different outward response, a tear, a breakdown, a smile or a giggle.
I think so many people struggle with grief because we’re led to believe it needs to be a private thing or hidden away. That hasn’t worked with men’s mental health and I don’t think it is with grief.
We are all finite, that isn’t changing anytime soon.
The more open we can be about death and how we feel about missing those we have lost, the better we can understand and help each other.
Life goes on regardless and there isn’t a time frame to feeling better or grief-free. I don’t think we ever truly get over the loss of those we love, we just improve our coping mechanisms over time.
If you need to cry, cry. I you need to talk, talk. And do so without fear of judgement, if somebody is judging for missing somebody you loved; that’s their issue not yours.
Darren “sometimes I had three dinners” Checkley
