The Distractions That Don't Quite Work

Grief is a strange companion. It doesn’t arrive alone — it arrives with ordinary life still happening all around it. The kettle still boils. The washing still piles up. Children still burst through the door with stories to tell. And somehow, all of it happens at the same time as the quiet ache sitting in your chest.

The house has been full of distractions.

Frankie came home with a new fish on the weekend. His name is Dave. Not a dramatic fish name — just Dave — which somehow feels exactly right. Frankie hovered over the tank introducing him to the family like a host at a small aquatic dinner party. For a few minutes we were all leaning over the glass, watching Dave swim uncertainly into his new world.

Rory has fallen deeply in love with a Temu purchase that can only be described as a head massager that looks like a cross between a pet dog and a beetle. It vibrates, it scuttles, and he treats it like it’s a small mechanical companion. He carries it around proudly, showing anyone who will look. His delight is uncomplicated and contagious.

Kailey sat down with one of her readers and worked her way through the entire book with a level of focus that felt almost magical. She slowed down for the tricky words, sounding them out carefully, refusing to skip ahead. Watching her determination felt like watching a small victory unfold in real time.

Aaron has been quietly attentive in the background of it all. He came home with Biscoff flavoured chocolate — which feels like a very specific act of love — and called me outside to show me the toadstools growing in the garden because he knows I love small, whimsical things like that. Tiny mushrooms pushing up through damp soil, like something from a fairy tale.

All of these moments are good moments. Gentle ones. The kind that normally anchor a day.

But they don’t take the tears away.

The tears arrive anyway. Quietly. Randomly. Driving the car. Watching a true crime documentary. Folding a load of washing. Nothing particularly sad happening at the time — they simply appear, as if grief has found a small crack in the day and slipped through it.

I keep trying to understand it scientifically. I think about the stages of grief the way a nurse might — trying to place myself somewhere on the map. Am I in denial? Anger? Bargaining? Something else entirely? But grief doesn’t seem particularly interested in following a neat sequence.

It moves in waves instead. Sometimes small, sometimes sudden.

For now, I’m hoping that Thursday — the funeral — will bring some sense of clarity. Not an ending, because I know grief doesn’t really work like that. But perhaps a moment where everything can pause long enough to acknowledge what has been lost.

Until then, life keeps offering its small distractions: fish named Dave, head massager beetle-dogs, determined readers, Biscoff chocolate, and toadstools in the garden.

And somewhere between all of that, the tears keep finding their way through.

Right now I’m sitting in the car waiting for Frankie to finish being a tour guide at her school open night. A role she took on with absolute confidence, rocking her school blazer and leading the next generation of tiny primary school kids around the place like she owns it. Apparently she doesn’t need her mum hovering nearby for this job — which is both slightly offensive and a clear reminder that she is growing up far too quickly. The Sass, however, has definitely brought on a smile, and for a little moment in the middle of all of this, that feels like exactly the breather I needed.