We are all our stories (originally published late 2021)
Sandra and I were both storytellers we knew in our different ways the importance of stories to inspire a vision for the future and to make sense of our messy scattered pasts.
We lived in the layers especially when the moments were utterly shit, as they often were, with wave after wave of bad bloody news and difficult to swallow unfoldings - given kindly by doctors with tilted heads and concerned eyes.
We both rolled our eyes at the sometimes narrow business of mindfulness. Sandra had been of the mind that it possibly sounded good until I quickly pursuaded her of how it was an annoying buzzword in public health and a plot by the patriarchy! This was compounded by a funny story of how I met up with an old ex who had become a teacher of some standing in the mindfulness world who seemed furious that I said ‘fuck’ in one of her classes which I had perhaps misguidedly offered to host at my studios. She said I was too rough to be spiritual and my language was inappropriate. Should have heard Sandras response to that when I rang her from the bus stop in tears. To all my beautiful friends who love or teach mindfulness I love you and respect what floats your boat just dont buy me the book for christmas. Because I don’t want to be in this moment. This moment of registering deaths, of stark sharp realities and answering question I never want to be asked and deciding funerals and choosing a coffin. I know what will save me now is the stories - the rich ripe healing stories of our shared past.
I am sitting here in the dark typing away at 4am. I just wrote this long long beautiful perfect post about all this and deleted it in one slip of the hand and then wailed and wailed and got so sad and angry because I couldnt retrieve it - it was all gone in a second … it was too much. I’d been typing since 3am. I am so fed up at deleting my pages of words and nothing would bring it back just like nothing nothing nothing I can do will bring Sandra back…nothing will make her walk up the stairs again carring me a cup of tea and making everything ok.
I must go on and must not give up but type the whole fucking thing again… carry on with our stories and not let them be deleted.
In 2008 I was chosen to bring creativity into health settings for Liverpool Capital of Culture. I was sent one day into the hospital unaffectionatly known in these parts as “The Royal” and was shown to a dire room at the end of a corridor and told “this is where you will be - we have sent a memo round to all staff but I doubt anyone will come they are all too busy” I sat for ten minutes and thought fuck this for a game of soldiers and found a medicine trolley on the corridor and some old empty medicine bottles and pushed it into a busy ward. I started collecting stories.
My opening was tell me a love story from your life let me bottle a good memory…
“how did you meet?”
Everyone has a story and once one person started they all began to pour out all over the ward with laughter and tears and irreverence and misty eyes…
“Edna, 1960, I met her on the bus she smelt of roses and cigarettes and I missed my stop ”
“Jack, 1975, he bumped into me in the street and all my college papers went flying and I cursed him but also thought he was bloody gorgeous !”
The nurses came in and started sharing their stories as they changed drips and dressings …stories are a leveller.
Its a cliche but we have all got a story and they are like invisible threads that weave the world together in random magic and somehow make sense of it all.
This was something me and Sandra understood and we both liked to tell a good story… and there were so many to pull out of the bag …our voices weaving together in a loud excited scouse orchestra each fighting to get to tell the good bits, the funny line at the end.
I loved our stories.
Sandra had a strong grip of my hand right to the end. That grip held stories.
She had beautiful big elegant bony ‘Richardson’ hands that held me safely.
She squeezed my soft round chubby hands often in those last days saying…
“we had a ball didn’t we, all those adventures & great stories…it was so brilliant, so funny …. it was the time of my life”
The past we had created was a magic carpet giving us a portal into the past and a moment away from the wires and hospice beeps and buzzing.
Sandra also said many times during the last three months how this was “ the perfectly staged death”.
It was a strange thing to say and it both intrigued and disturbed me and others. What did she mean?
She was … We were living on the edge of a sharp rusty knife that cut through everything and was unforgiving. She was on borrowed and re borrowed time that was running through our fingers despite our tightly gripped hands. She was deeply uncomfortable, in pain, not in control of her body, unable to move … it caused me great distress to watch her struggle and to witness all that loss.
I have come to understand that what Sandra meant was that her death was part of a powerful story which would come to have meaning. Which would connect people, make them laugh and cry and feel and want to create. I think she meant that although she would do anything to cling on to our lives and make more stories… if she had to go she would go wrapped in a fabulous tale… a story within stories.
I think, no, I know what she meant, that she… despite telling me to never ever let her be taken into one of those hospice places had been meant to go to that place. She had been meant to meet each person. The cleaner who told her stories as she mopped the floor. The maintenance man who brought her an umbrella so she could smoke in the rain and who told her of his life. The tired nurse on a 12 hour shift who shared that they had no staffroom to rest in at break times. The way she and I decided to let her poems out in the world to help … how we could never have expected Alison Steadman to read one or drop in to see her. How Jon Snow sent a voice memo reading one of her poems which left us open mouthed. How I for some bizarre funny reason thought it was Jon Snow from Game of Thrones and couldn’t quite compute how different his voice was to on the series! How 200 people recorded her poems on video and how 10k was raised in a week for the staff to have a room of their own and how that became £20k in three weeks and how newsreaders, iconic weather men, soap stars and famous poets were waxing lyrical about Sandra’s Rainbows!
I know she meant this was all meant to be - that this was the story that was unfolding that was gut wrenching but fabulous too. I wanted a very different story and so did she but I know this one helped her make sense of the pain and the despair and the grief. I know not only those who are left behind grieve but those who are losing their lives and their everything in slow motion yet all too quickly. The stories she was weaving, we were co creating, carried us or dragged us through the absolute storm that is terminal illness - I believe they helped her know she would live on in the re telling of them. When the mindful moment was way to much to contemplate the imagining of the future magic was a medicine “ tell our story, finish the unfinished lines of my poems, carry it forward and share - but first have a sleep my love“
“How did you two meet?” asked some of the nurses and consultants.
And we laughed and our eyes sparkled.
It Is a great question to ask most people …even if for some people the relationship in question went sour, was disastrous, or sad, mad, beautiful or heartbreaking.
Try it.
“How did you meet?”
"Me : “I had to find 10 lesbians for a project in Knowsley and I wasn’t having much luck.
I bumped into some friends in Fact Cafe and told them my funny dilemma.
They said immediately “haven’t you met Sandra Richardson she is definitely your woman? ! “
Oh how ironic
I rang her
I said
‘hello lovely Sandra Richardson.
I need to find 10 lesbians for a juicy project and I believe you are the perfect person to help me”
There was not much of a pause before she said …
“well I can get you 20 by Monday”
The rest as they say is a hell of a lot of fabulous history and stories …. and now they are my gift to tell.
A Beloved Grief … diary entries and writing by Clare Jasmine Beloved after the death of her wife, Sandra Richardson from metastatic secondary breast cancer.
You can find other writings from Clare about grief and loss here
Links to Secondary Breast Cancer charities we support https://www.secondary1st.org.uk and https://www.make2ndscount.co.uk Macmillan Cancer Support Helpline : 0808 808 00 00. Marie Curie support and info : https://www.mariecurie.org.uk
Sandra Richardson REST IN POWER & POETRY 13.2.64 - 25.8.21
Originally published late 2021
Original comments:
Sarah Lowes: You've said something that I've always thought but never mentioned: how would anyone want to live in the present moment when that moment can be so painful? Fly to the stories hon, they are deeper and more caring than anything.
Gaynor Dykes: Claire so beautiful, you and Sandra are an inspiration xxx ❤
Catherine Lacey: Captivating read Clare, heart warming, funny, sad - all things wrapped in love 🥰
Lisa Cattermole: Heartbreakingly beautiful and powerful clare. I have read it through leaking eyes and sobbed.
You are right, we are all our stories. Thank you for sharing yours and Sans story with such truth love wisdom and hearbeak. Sandra won't ever be forgotten her story and her light will continue through you and the vast amount of people she touched throughout her life. Holding you in my heart clare and sending you so so much love. Xxx
Laura Carmichael: ❤️
Di Bundy: ❤️