The Quiet Days

The 1st of July is a quiet day in our house.  I don’t mean literally - with 5 teenagers, 2 adults and a menagerie of animals, that hardly ever happens.  

In Australia at least, the 1st of July means the first day of the financial year.  There has been a frenzy of EOFY sales both online and in person.  In organisations all over the nation, end of budget expenditure and end of year data collection is at the forefront of managers’ minds.  The 1st of July in Australia means tax time.

In Australia it’s mid winter and in the northern hemisphere it’s mid summer.  Australian kids are heading into the mid year winter break and in the UK, kids are heading into their long summer holidays.

In our house though the 1st of July means something far removed.  My sister’s husband and father of her four children died on the 1st of July and this year, 2024,  marks the 10th anniversary of his death.  Ten years of being a widow.  Ten years of having to explain their dad died.

The 17th of November is also a quiet day.  The 17th of November is the day my sister died; this year it will be 37 years.  The 10th of May is a quiet day too.  The day my dad died.  Next year it will be ten years.  The date of dad’s death is tricky - he died on Mothers’ Day so both Mothers’ Day and the 10th of May are quiet days.  Fathers’ Day is a quiet day too because there are no fathers left in our family.

We’re not the only families to have quiet days.  There are 7 billion people who have quiet days.  Death and grief impact us all.  Quiet days are about sadness but they can also be about relief.  Relief that a person who was abusive has died, or a person who was terribly ill has died; there are a myriad of reasons why people can feel relieved when someone dies.  For us, our quiet days are about sadness but they’re also about relief because each person had an end to the ravages of cancer.  There is no judgement about the complexities of feelings we have on our quiet days. 

How do we honour our quiet days?  

For me, my Grampa was the model of how we honour our quiet days.  My nanna died on New Years’ Eve many years ago.  My Grampa used to live with us over the winter (in the UK) and so he was invariably with us on the anniversary of Nanna’s death.  I noticed over time that he always bought flowers on New Year’s Eve and stuck them in a vase on the mantelpiece or the window sill.  The flowers were always as bright as he could find.  I was curious about this as a young teenager.  It wasn’t his usual practice to buy flowers.  Why did he buy flowers in the middle of winter?  And then one year it dawned on me; he bought flowers to remember his wife.  He honoured his relationship with her, what she meant to him and expressed his ongoing grief.  He never spoke about it, never reminded anyone, he just bought flowers and stuck them in a vase.  He was a welsh miner.  He didn’t use words.  There are no words anyway when your partner of forever dies.

I never spoke to Grampa about this ritual but he unwittingly created a precedent.  Grampa died on the 16th May.  The day before my 21st birthday and almost 6 months to the day after my sister died.  The 16th of May is one of my quiet days.  On the 17th of November that year, I found myself buying a bunch of the brightest flowers I could find and stuck them in a vase.  It was a year after my sister died.  The following year on the 16th May, I found myself buying a bunch of the brightest flowers I could find and stuck them in a vase.  It was a year since my Grampa died.

I bought flowers on the 17th of November and the 16th of May for decades, until one year I didn’t.  There was no planning, no thought.  I just didn’t.

My quiet days sit in my heart.  They are the days for remembering, just a little bit more keenly than every other day in the year.    They are the days that I honour the relationship that I had with them and the changed relationship that I have with them now.  They are the days I honour myself. 

Grief doesn’t end, it just shape-shifts with time.  Grief is simply an expression of love and it whispers to us on the quiet days.