Month: March 2025

You will be ok

Happy Birthday.

Right now, it doesn’t feel like your birthday. You’re living in the middle of a global pandemic. Your husband was taken by ambulance after a panic 999 call in the early hours of this morning. Your 10-year-old daughter asked you if her daddy was going to be ok and you honestly couldn’t tell her yes. Because he has fallen prey to this pandemic which isn’t selective with its victims. You’re trying to juggle 1,001 things right now and don’t know which way is up. You’re going through a vast array of emotions.

But. It is still your birthday. You need to cling to that. Later today your daughter is going to save your birthday for you. She is going to make you open your cards and presents. She is going to put 39 candles in your cake. She is going to do a video call with members of your family to get them to sing Happy Birthday to you. And don’t forget. This morning you fried an egg for the first time in your life and cooked a bacon and egg sandwich because it’s your birthday. That sandwich represented hope, and you need to remember that. Because hope is everything. It is the one thing that is going to get you through what lies ahead.

The next three weeks are going to be some of the most challenging and difficult weeks of your life. The rollercoaster you’re now on is going to be a heck of a ride. But the theme of a rollercoaster is going to play a huge part in your life. Keep it in mind. You’re going to be reliant on phone calls for updates about your husband. You’re only going to be able to see him via Skype calls. You’re going to have some of the most heartbreaking conversations with your daughter. You’re going to face impossible decisions. I simply can’t pretend any of this is going to be easy. It’s not. But. You’re also going to smile during the next three weeks. Tomorrow Jason Donovan is going to be on Gary Barlow’s Crooner Sessions. He’ll start following you on Twitter. You’re going to be the recipient of so much kindness from so many people. You’ll feel overwhelmed by it all.

And then. On 19th April, your entire life as you know it will be over. You won’t start using the term on this day, but you’ll become a 39-year-old widow. Your husband will die without you by his side and with the amazing NHS staff holding his hand. You and your daughter will be watching a film when you get the call to say this has happened, but you’ll never be able to agree on which film it was. Shock, quite probably. You’ll very quickly go into survival mode. You’ll think about everyone else because it’s too painful to actually think about what this means for you. The pain is merely too great for you to process. You can’t. And you won’t be able to for a very long time.

You’ll physically and metaphorically need picking up. You’ll struggle to get up off the sofa. You’ll fall apart on the kitchen floor when you realise you’ve got food in the cupboard you won’t eat. You’ll shed more tears than you physically thought possibly. You’ll plan a funeral in a pandemic and be asked questions about it that you simply have no answer to. You’ll struggle with the concept of how to return to work, be a mother and juggle your life. You won’t really think about what you as Emma will need. As an individual and person in her own right. You’ve never been an adult on your own. Who even are you without him? Again, you’ll hide from this because you don’t have the answer.

Your mental health is going to suffer in a way you’d have never thought possible. You’re going to find yourself hitting rock bottom on more than one occasion. Sadly, this isn’t the only shock bereavement you’re going to face. I can’t bear to tell you the other person you’re going to lose, mainly because I’m still trying to make sense of it. There is genuinely no logic as to who lives and who dies. But when that day does come, take advantage of the people who are now able to hold you. Who can wrap you in their arms, make you feel safe and just let you cry. You’re going to understand just how important physical contact is in grief. It’s not something you’re going to be able to receive when your husband first dies. Or for a number of months. The world isn’t allowing it. But when you can get those hugs again, soak them up. They are going to help you. More than you realise.

The trauma you’re experiencing today and over the next few weeks isn’t going to be something you can keep buried forever. You’re going to spend a huge amount of time in therapy. And while I don’t want to scare you, this isn’t going to be in the first year or so. You’ll have some later this year, then in 2022 which will last for just over a year and then you’ll start having EMDR towards the end of 2024 going into 2025. The latter will scare you when you first make the call and are told you need it. You’ll feel you’re a failure. You’ll feel you’re letting people down. You won’t tell many people. You’ll have spent just over four years with everyone telling you how brave and strong you’re. That you’re an inspiration. To admit you still need help will feel alien. But, let me promise you this now. That bout of therapy is going to completely change things for you. It is going to help you process so very much. Not just to do with the trauma of losing your husband, but parts of your life you’ve just learnt to live with and accepted as being your life. You’ll start to feel like a different person. Your mindset will shift. It’s going to take a lot of getting used to, but my goodness Emma, it’s going to be beyond worth it.

This all sounds very doom and gloom doesn’t it? If you’re still reading at this point, I imagine there is a sense of trepidation. Wondering whether you’re ever going to really laugh, smile or be happy again. Hand on my heart, you will. You’ll feel guilty to begin with, because how you can possibly enjoy life given what’s happened? You’re going to have amazing opportunities that are only afforded to you because of what’s happened. That will make you feel guilty. New people are going to come into your life. People who are currently part of your life will no longer be so. Or if they are, it will be on a different footing. Please don’t worry about this. Life and your experiences will change you. But you have to survive this however you can. For you. For your daughter. Don’t be afraid to trust your gut instinct. Do you.

Because you’re pretty phenomenal. It’s going to take you just under five years to reach this conclusion, but without question you are. Those people that call you brave and strong? They’re right. You are. You won’t ever accept that you’re brave, after all, you haven’t chosen this life have you? But my word are you strong. You’ve had to be. You’ve shown so much strength. You’ll get out of bed every single day. You’ll continue to show up. Even on those days when you don’t want to.

But more than that. You’re going to achieve a heck of a lot in his memory and that will help others. For a long time, you’re going to tell people that you’re just doing what anyone would do in this situation. But not everyone would. Because not everyone is you. You’re going to install a Memorial Bench so that your husband can continue to be a part of your daughter’s birthday traditions. You’re going to sort out renovations on the house and finally get it finished. You’re going to come up with initiatives that will see you raise over £15,000 for various charities (and that’s only up to March 2025). You’re going to launch a blog called Life is a rollercoaster (told you not to forget about a rollercoaster, didn’t I?) It will go on to win an award in 2023. You’re going to write a book and start investigating the best way to get this published. You’re going to appear on various podcasts, TV programmes, in magazines and newspapers. You’re going to become an Ambassador for the charity Widowed and Young.

Yet the biggest achievement from your perspective won’t be any of this. It is going to be the moment you look at photos and see the twinkle and sparkle in your eyes again. It will take years to return. But it does return. Some might call them giddy eyes. More than ever, your eyes are going to be the window to your soul. And until you’re you again, they are going to show your pain. You will look at photos over the next couple of years and think you’re looking better. You are in a way. But it will only be as you approach your fifth birthday since your world fell apart, that you’ll be able to see just how much the grief and pain affected you physically. Not just mentally. Grief and pain will change you. But you’re going to learn to walk alongside them. In a way, they’re going to become your friends. Because they’re a constant reminder of the love you had. The love you still have.

And while I don’t want to give too many spoilers, mainly because you won’t believe some of them anyway, I do want to give you a little sneak peek into some of the other things that are going to come your way over the next five years. You’re going to have so much fun and laughter with a variety of people. You’re going to meet incredible people through the charity Widowed and Young. You’re going to watch your daughter receive coaching from Jac Yarrow (yes, that guy you saw play Joseph last year). You’re going to get a marriage proposal from Jason Donovan. You’re going to travel across the country to meet a random woman off Twitter because of that Aussie who is going to become one of the best people in your life. You’re going to be adopted by a Northern family. You’re going to get your middle out with a two-piece outfit, on more than one occasion. You’re going to go viral on social media. You’re going to get a dog. You’re going to take your daughter on holidays overseas. You’re going to fluke a free business class upgrade the first time you take her abroad. You’re going to brave driving abroad and find that you quite like it, even if you’re given a scary American muscle car. You’re going to grow your hair and go blonde. You’re going to change your role and teams at work.

I know being told this about your future sounds completely and utterly unthinkable right now. But please believe me when I say you did everything you could in this unimaginable situation you’ve found yourself in over the last week or so. There is nothing more you could have done or that would have changed the outcome. I know right now you can only really focus on today. And maybe even only the next hour. Anything beyond that and especially the future is unfathomable. That’s ok. Just focus on that for now. It’s the right thing to do. Stay in your pyjamas. Eat cake and brownies for breakfast. Just do what you need to do each day. For you. For your daughter. She ultimately is going to save you. She’s incredible. She’s the reason you’ll fight as hard as you do. Without her, it would have been very easy for you to give up. But she needs you. She loves you. And while you’re going to clash and have exceptionally tough times, the bond and relationship that you’re going to have is going to be unbreakable. Team Charlesworth is about to become pretty formidable.

As I sit here and think about the fact the world is still turning, that you’re lucky enough to be celebrating another birthday and you’re privileged to be growing older, I’ve realised something.

Pretty phenomenal? Scrap that.

Emma Charlesworth you are phenomenal.

Simple as that. I’m so exceptionally proud of you. I didn’t know you had it in you to be able to survive this on 30th March 2020. I didn’t have the self-belief. You’re going to watch a film in February 2025 that contains the line “it’s not enough to survive, you’ve got to live.” And that’s what you’re going to do over the next five years Emma. You’re going to live again. Not just survive, you’re going to live. You’re going to thrive. Against all the odds. Against the most unimaginable backdrop.

These words are the best present I can give you today. The reassurance, knowledge and encouragement that you need. That I wish someone could have given me on this day five years ago.

Emma Charlesworth, you will be ok. I promise. Focus on these four words. Please.

You. Will. Be. Ok.

Forever and no time at all

Various images depicting the pandemic in the UK

Cast your mind back to this date five years ago. Can you remember what you were doing? Probably not. It’s a pretty insignificant date really. 9 March 2020. It means so little to so many people. I can’t really remember what I was doing other than knowing I’d have been at work. I went back and looked at my work calendar as I started writing this. I started out in one office, travelled to another office to have a lunch with a member of Alumni network and a colleague and then worked from a different office for the rest of the afternoon. No doubt I then went home, did some bits with my daughter, had dinner with my husband and probably did some chores. Before I got up and did it all again the following day (with the exception of the lunch).

Except. I do remember one of the topics of conversation over that lunch. I remember talking about a conversation I’d had with my husband two days previously in our local supermarket regarding buying some chocolate. “I really fancy some chocolate,” he said, and I merely responded with “Go for it. Pop it in the trolley. If coronavirus doesn’t get us, the asteroid that my colleague told me about will.” This was the topic of that conversation at lunch and a number of conversations with family, friends and colleagues. Coronavirus. Pandemic. COVID-19.

Did any of us really anticipate quite how long we’d be talking about this for when we first started discussing it in early 2020? The impact and devastation that it would cause? The complete and utter changes to our lives as we knew them? I, for one, didn’t. Maybe I was naïve. Maybe I was delusional. Maybe I was just clinging to hope. It definitely wasn’t down to the fact that I wasn’t taking it seriously, it’s just because it felt impossible that the UK was going to be hit hard. I didn’t understand and couldn’t really begin to process and fathom living through a pandemic in my lifetime.

The following week, on 16 March 2020, I was on a call with work on my way home, planning how we were going to organise our team to avoid us all being in the office at the same time, when the then Prime Minister of the UK, Boris Johnson made the announcement that, if people could, they should work from home with immediate effect. I sat on the train, almost dumbfounded. This was really happening. The pandemic was beginning to affect my day-to-day life. It was going to affect my family. I worried about the impact on my daughter and her mental health.

Over the course of that week, it was confirmed that her dance lessons and summer show were to be cancelled and that she would not be going to school as of Friday, 20 March, I couldn’t tell her how long this would last. I had no idea just how serious and horrible it was going to get. And I vividly remember her looking at me with the innocence of a 10-year-old and asking a question that I couldn’t really answer. “Why did this have to happen?”

Were similar conversations going on in my friends’ houses? In my family’s houses? Across the country? Across the world? We weren’t special, I was pretty sure of that. But by the end of that weekend, we did become special in a way. Because on 22 March 2020, my husband started sporting a temperature. He updated his Facebook status with an image of Mickey Flanagan and the words “So……..  I appear to be running a temperature. Have not been out in days but I guess I am now In In. Take care of yourselves and I’ll see you on the other side.”

Reading that back still sends chills down my spines. Whenever people use the phrase “I’ll see you on the other side” my stomach drops. I have to ask them not to. Because little did we know how significant his post would become.

We became special on that day because this was the day when we suspected COVID-19 had entered our house. I didn’t know of anyone else going through this experience. Family. Friends. Colleagues. No-one else was suspecting it was in their house. If we weren’t living with it, I might have struggled to believe that what I was seeing on the news was actually real. Just watching the news reports, seeing the headlines, hearing the numbers of people in hospital, the numbers of people dying and knowing we were living through a pandemic, did, and still does feel surreal.

My daughter asked me why this had to happen. I kept asking myself how this had happened. The UK is an island. How on earth had we allowed this airborne virus to enter our country? To begin spreading like wildfire. Why had more not be done to stop it? How? Why? Two words that would repeat themselves in my mind over and over again. They still do in a way. I’m not a vituperative person by any means, but five years on, I still cannot fathom how and why the UK was allowed to be affected as much as it was. I openly admit I don’t do politics in my writing, but I do have incredibly strong views on what I believe are the answers to these questions. The UK COVID-19 inquiry has shed an awful amount of light on the answers to these questions. None of which should really have come as a surprise to anyone. Even the COVID-19 conspiracy and hoax brigade would be hard pushed to deny the facts that have been presented.

The next week saw my husband steadily deteriorate. It saw me trying to juggle working full time while caring for him, looking after our daughter who was now at home full time and trying to process what the hell was happening in the world. 30 March 2020, my 39th birthday, saw me dial 999 after his deterioration had reached a level that I felt he needed medical intervention. That was the last day my daughter and I ever physically saw him. He walked down the stairs to the waiting ambulance and that was that. Two hours later I learnt he’d been taken to ITU, sedated and ventilated. For two long weeks, the only information I was able to glean from the hospital about his condition was via phone calls.

On 13 April 2020, less than 24 hours after I’d been told to prepare for him to never come home, I had my first Skype call with him. He was unconscious. I don’t know if he could hear me. Over the course of that week my daughter and I did a Skype call with him every single day. And then. On 19 April 2020 I got the call that I was almost expecting. Not prepared for. But expecting. He was going to die. All hope had gone. Just a few hours later we did our final call to say goodbye. A few hours after that, I got the call to say he had died. The pandemic that had seemed so surreal just six weeks previously had now robbed me of my husband and my daughter of her father. Our lives irrevocably changed.

It’s no coincidence that I’m telling this story today. Because today is the 2025 Day of Reflection. The fourth one of these and according to the Marie Curie website, it’s an opportunity to come together to remember those who have lost their lives since the pandemic began and to honour the tireless work and acts of kindness shown during this unprecedented time. In essence, it’s a day to reflect. To think about all those who were lost. But. And forgive me for sounding slightly cynical, just how many people in the UK are aware that this day exists? Of the significance of today’s date this year? How many people will be reflecting? Thinking about the impact of the pandemic?

I say this with the greatest respect, but it is something that I have been thinking about more and more recently. Have we already consigned the COVID-19 pandemic to the history books? Filed it in our memories and moved on? Have we learnt anything from the first pandemic in living memory?

Sadly, I can’t help but feel that the answer to that isn’t an emphatic yes. The political unrest the world is seeing. The cost-of-living crisis. The inability to make decisions quickly and responding to the world at large. The organisations requiring their employees to return to working in an office. Mandating it. Monitoring it. The era of working from home and hybrid working for those who can feels like it’s coming to an end. I see it on my commute. The trains are once again rammed. Sometimes I’m lucky to get a seat either on the way into the office or the way home and I’m an hour’s train journey from London. I see people on the train, the tube or in the office coughing and spluttering. No longer as mindful of the fact they’re spreading germs, or not feeling able to stay at home.

I see some people wearing masks, but these are exceptionally few and far between. I’ll be honest. I no longer wear a mask. But I did pay to have a COVID-19 vaccine last year. The headlines about the new strain were making me uncomfortable. Colleagues and friends knew of people who had been very ill with it. I can’t afford to be ill. And certainly not with this virus. The one and only time I did have it, I was fortunate not to be overly ill, but looking at my daughter and telling her that we needed to change our plans because I’d contracted the same virus that had killed her father wasn’t the easiest thing I’ve had to do. And believe me, there’s been a multitude of things that haven’t been easy to do since 2020. But this was one of the hardest ones.

I think back and remember the real sense of community and kindness in 2020. Remember Thursday nights standing outside your front day clapping for carers? Remember making more of a conscious effort to check in on friends and family because you couldn’t see them? Remember enjoying the slower pace of life because everything was shut? I don’t want to sound like I’m trivialising the pandemic, I am painfully aware of what life was like for those who watched someone die during that time. Of all those people who lived alone and felt beyond isolated. Of all those people who were living with mental health challenges that were exacerbated by the pandemic and the effects of which are still felt today. I don’t honestly know how many people can say they came away from the pandemic unscathed in one way or another.

I always wanted kindness to be my abiding memory of the pandemic. Because I really did experience so much of it. The tweet from Jason Donovan sending love and strength the day after I was told to prepare for my husband to never come home. The food packages that kept arriving. The cards. The surprise and thoughtful gifts. The care packages. The video calls. The people on my doorstep just talking to me. The WAY Widowed and Young members who let me vent when I needed to. The phone calls, the legacy of which still continue to this day at 9pm on a Wednesday night. Please don’t try to get hold of me at this time, I’m busy talking to one of my oldest friends after she decided that just because the pandemic wasn’t affecting our lives in the same way and we could meet up again, it didn’t mean we should stop speaking once a week.  

I’m still very lucky to be experiencing kindness. My life as a solo parent is a constant juggle. I have to ask for help and call in favours constantly just be able to work. And then I have to add in living and having a social life. My mum and stepdad didn’t sign up to still be doing the school and dancing run in their mid-60s. My friends didn’t sign up to be looking after my daughter for me so I can go out for nights or weekends away (amusingly she is saved as “R lodger” in one of my friend’s phones. I don’t abandon her that much. I promise.) My friends didn’t sign up to feeding her once a week and taking her to her dance lessons for me. Yet they do it. And I am so exceptionally thankful for every single person who still extends kindness to us. In whatever capacity. I couldn’t do my life without it. I will never, ever take it for granted.

It is all of this that means I will never be able to consign the pandemic to the history books. Mine and my daughter’s life changed forever on 19 April 2020. The ripples are still affecting our daily lives five years on. The tension and the arguments because the grief and anxiety it caused are still a massive part of our lives. The therapy we’ve both needed to help us process the trauma of it all. We live with it, and we move forwards, yes, but we will never, ever move on.

When I’ve written blogs on this Day of Reflection in previous years, I’ve asked readers to reflect, to think about all those who were lost and for those whose lives were never the same again. But this year, I’m asking you to do something else too. Think about what you learnt during that time. Whether you’ve remembered any of it. Send a message to someone you haven’t heard from in a while. Pick up the phone to a friend and check in. Say no to something if it puts you under too much pressure. Let that be the legacy of the pandemic. Change.

As for me. 2020 will always be the year that my world fell apart. I can’t pretend otherwise. My husband died. I’ve since lost friendships. Relationships have changed. I’ve experienced further gut-wrenching bereavement. I’ve hit rock bottom. I’ve had to claw my way back on more than one occasion. 2020 caused all of this. But I refuse to let it just be a negative memory. I’ve learnt too much about the world since then – kindness, friendship and most importantly about myself. It was the catalyst for so much. That doesn’t mean I’m glad it happened – far, far from it. But I’m not the sort of person to experience something like this and not learn from it.

2020 might have been five years ago. I might have become a widow nearly five years ago. I might have been a solo parent and been watching my beautiful daughter grow up without her father for nearly five years. But time has become the biggest juxtaposition of my life. Because to me it’s not five years ago. It’s forever and no time at all.