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Gill and Joe Hammond found a love they weren’t expecting to on their wedding day. They hadn’t realised how much it would mean to see all their friends in one room. Although they didn’t know it then, Joe's death would be “a strange sort of mirror” of that wedding. Gill told me, “The most powerful thing at our wedding was looking around the room thinking, gosh, these wonderful people have come to celebrate with us and to be connected to us in this occasion. And then at the end of Joe’s life, people came through the door to acknowledge his death, too. To notice it and to be with us in it.”
As long-term subscribers of this newsletter might remember, I interviewed the writer Joe Hammond a few months before he died from motor neurone disease in 2019. A year after his death, I decided to speak to his wife, Gill, to find out what the experience taught her about love. I wanted to continue the conversation I had started with Joe. It also seemed a fitting interview for January 1st, because 2020 was a year in which so many people lost so much. But it turned out to be not only a beautiful exploration of grief, but a reminder of how much we need each other. How being in a relationship requires dozens of people, not just two. How humans show up for each other when it matters. How much strength it takes to depend on others and how good it feels to be needed too.
I hope that reading about the people who “burst in” to Gill and Joe’s world reminds you that good things can happen in hard years. Even in 2020, people fell in love while the world fell apart; my beautiful friend got married; another friend found out she could adopt a child; and I gave birth to a daughter I had wished for last Christmas, and the one before. This morning, in the middle of a crying fit, for no clear reason, she opened her eyes and smiled at me. I smiled too, because I remembered it then: good things can surprise us. More will come.
Gill Hammond
How did you and Joe first meet?
We met on a teacher training course in Oxford. Joe walked in and I thought, You’re an interesting-looking fellow. He wore glasses, he was very tall. (I always joke that he looked like he should be in University Challenge.) We talked at the break and that was it — we never stopped talking. I was drawn to him because he was physically sturdy, and that sturdiness ran deeper too. There was an emotional solidity to him. It’s funny, because when I read his book I think, Oh Joe, you never knew how amazing you were. You only knew at the end. And that’s so sad. But I knew from the beginning. And I told him.
Has having Joe’s book out in the world and speaking to people about him been helpful?
Absolutely. We’ve just reached the one-year anniversary of his death and I notice some people are not as forthcoming in their conversations about Joe. I don’t want to push people into something uncomfortable, but for me, he’s not gone. When you asked me about being a single parent, it made me realise I hadn’t attributed the word to myself. I don’t feel single. I don’t feel I need to put Joe into the bracket of an ex. Sometimes I feel myself echoing him, in the same way that you use your mother’s words and it slightly shocks you when you hear them. It’s wonderful when I hear myself using Joe’s words. Telling stories about him is critical, too. The kids tune in when I say, “Oh Daddy would have loved that. He liked pictures of monkeys.”
What were your final months after his diagnosis like? Was it easy to find meaning in small moments together?
Yes and no. We were in a precarious situation, so I felt the weight of practical responsibility. Although everything was loaded with meaning, it still involved phoning estate agents, speaking to people about money and trying to figure out what we were going to do. But I also connected to something physical and emotional within me: a strong awareness that anything can happen and that we’re all going to die. I don’t want to lose that feeling. When I drift back into the day-to-day, I try to find that place again inside where life is true and real. I almost feel like tapping people on the shoulder when they’re caught up in something, and saying, “This does not matter. You’re going to die one day and right now you’re alive. Life is so precious, so short. Let’s find something bigger to be involved in.”
So have you decided to live in a different way now?
I’m shocked at the way we live more than I was before. I’m shocked by the amount of life admin, by the way that we distract ourselves from what’s meaningful. Friends don’t have time to properly be with each other, because everybody is running around doing god knows what in order to achieve god knows what. That felt more normal before. When we were in Portugal, I was struck by how they put community and family above everything. I’m fighting to do that now, but I don’t feel it should be a fight.
It’s tragic that many of us find it difficult to get to that place unless we have experienced loss, or near loss.
That’s true. I’ve got a good friend who lost three cousins. One died, then another died, then another, very suddenly. When Joe was sick, I would ask her, “What was grief like for the parents?” I can’t imagine anything more horrific than one day your son, then your daughter, suddenly not being there. She said after the first child died they disappeared. A dark cloud surrounded them all day, every day. That was the place they were in. And who could blame them? How could they not be that way? But when the second child died, they had a moment of realisation. They thought, well, being in that dark place all day, every day, for every moment, didn’t change anything. So as much as we carry that raw pain within us, it doesn’t mean that we can’t find joy, because that is also part of our human life. I found that helpful, because I don’t want to deprive my two small boys of laughter and joy. Now I find that I can hold those two things together. Actually, they belong together, because in every moment that we have beauty, pleasure and joy, there’s also the sadness of knowing that it’s not going to last. My son Jimmy was whirling around with pants on his head this morning, singing a song about pants. When I looked at him, I felt both things: the wonderful, funny joy, and the knowledge that it was temporary. It’s tempting to push away the pain and just be in the moment of joy, but when you feel both, you feel the whole experience.
You said your final months with Joe still involved life admin as well as profound conversations. Were those mundane bits things you came to treasure too?
Absolutely. Joe said incredible things to me, but what I remember most is when I’ve taken a gamble and put the colours and whites in the washing machine, and it hasn’t paid off. I hear his voice and I know exactly what he’d be thinking: Why did you do it Gill? You should have left it to me. I’d love to leave it to you now, Joe, I really would. He was so much better at those things than me. Those are the things I miss.
When he could no longer speak, what was it like communicating with him via technology?
The technology allowed him to give and show something of himself to us. It was like sending a text message with your eyes; he’d look at all the letters and it would start to predict the word. That process meant conversation took an incredibly long time, because it took a long time for Joe to construct a sentence. But it was wonderful — because it was an effort for him, every word mattered. Even when it was mundane and silly, it still mattered, it still was him.
You said in some ways your relationship was the same, because of the practical challenges. But were there ways the situation changed your relationship too?
We still went through the ups and downs that all marriages do. But the times when we felt annoyed with each other passed more quickly, because they were less relevant. We’ve always been good at going, What’s this really about? Because this isn’t about the fact that I sat on your favourite jumper. And we just got to that point quicker. For me, love is very much tied up in truth. When you can get to the truth, even if it doesn’t resolve the actual issue, you are connected in some way.
One way our relationship changed, was that more people came into our lives with that same approach to truth. The people that couldn’t face the truth in front of them — of this man dying and his family being in a vulnerable position — they ran a mile. But our relationship was enriched by the other people that joined our family. We all trundle along in our tiny little units, don’t we? Actually, we need other people. That’s what we learnt, Joe and I, very powerfully, through this whole experience.
Who were those people?
Carers, old friends, doctors that became friends. There was a taxi driver that took Joe into hospital when he developed pneumonia. One day he banged on the door, and asked, “Can I come and see you and Joe? I just want to tell you that I’m here if you ever need me, at any point, day or night, not just for a taxi.” People just burst in. And when they were able to be there for us, it gave them something as well. That took me a long time to sit with and be okay with — the understanding that I wasn’t a charity. That’s a great gift that Joe gave all of us in his dying. He could have been angry, he could have pushed people away. But he didn’t. He embraced and welcomed this new community that we needed so desperately.
Very old friends came out of nowhere. It’s a bit like when you have a baby; there are certain people you think are going to be around who aren’t, and other people you didn’t expect to be who are. That made me think it’s worth asking, Where am I going to invest my energy? Which relationships should I nurture? Because you’ve got limited time.
Did witnessing him let people in encourage you to do the same in the midst of grief?
I have days where I’m better at it, then I shrink back into thinking, Oh, everybody’s busy with their own lives and families and I don’t want to bother them. I have to battle that and think, You know what? We all need each other. The word ‘needy,’ is poisonous and needs to be reclaimed. Because actually, we are all needy. We all have needs.
How did losing Joe change your understanding of love?
I now know that you can’t feel love if you don’t allow yourself to feel pain. It’s something Joe always knew. One of the reasons we didn’t get married sooner was because he insisted that he wanted a big, deep, black bottomless hole with a white picket fence round it. I said, “Joe, no one is going to let you do that.” He said, “Well, I’m not getting married without it.” Eventually we compromised — he put it into a reading at the wedding and we had a big hole in the middle of our wedding cake. I’ve thought about it so much since. Was that his grave? Some sort of premonition? But actually, we talked about how you need to be able to look into the dark places, because they are there, whether you acknowledge them or not. And if you acknowledge them, you stand a better chance of being able to enjoy the good stuff.
Given you were attracted to Joe’s physical sturdiness, how did your relationship change when he began to lose his physical abilities, before he had full-time carers?
I had to be very much in the moment, no matter how long that moment took, rather than trying to rush it. If it took three hours to wash Joe, it took three hours. I could either fight it and think, Argh, I need to be doing X, Y and Z, or I could think, Okay, well, how can I find the good in this? And actually, I won’t forget those tender moments together. I found strength physically and mentally that I didn’t know I had. People say, “How on earth did you do it?” But I’m not unique. I’m not special. We are all capable of more than we think we are. Just look at mums with new-borns. Look at mums with twins. I also remember someone saying to Joe, “Aren’t you angry about what’s happened?” and he said, “Well, I just haven’t got the time to indulge those feelings.” Now I have to take that same approach. I can’t indulge my self-pity, I’ve just got to go, Okay, well that’s how I’m feeling, but I’m going to do it anyway.
I think what you’re saying about not being impatient in the moment is useful in all relationships. Because as soon as you give into a moment, you become less stressed.
Yes. Another extraordinary thing was that Joe and I became more bodily. That’s a strange thing to say, given he had motor neurone disease and was losing his body, but we live so much in our heads and we both had to be more in our bodies. I had to become physically stronger, and almost put myself into his body to think about how I was going to move his arm to get it into a t-shirt. And he became more connected to his body because he was losing it. I think the body is the key to finding the moment. We’ve got to put the brain to one side and say, This is all very well, but I’m going to let myself deal with this in the physical way right now.
When some physical things were taken away – like being able to hug each other – did that make the small things like holding hands more meaningful?
Yes. That takes me back to the pain-love conundrum. I would often put my hand round the back of Joe’s neck, because there I could feel the whole of my hand on the whole of that piece of warm skin. I would lament the fact that I couldn’t properly hug him, but I would love the fact that I would get so much from that small, soft, warm area of his body.
What you wish you’d known about love?
Feeling the pain that comes with love is enriching. Don’t push it away. As one of the nurses said about Joe, “He is living deeply, and it’s depth of life, not length of life, that matters.” The other thing is, Tom did a project on atoms for school and it was so helpful. That’s the way we talk about Joe: atoms don’t disappear, you can’t lose them, they’re not gone, they’ve just turned into something else. So somewhere, somehow, in some place, Daddy is with us. Joe said that to me, actually. He said, “I’m going to be with you, because you can’t extract me.” And then he said, ‘I’ll be in the washing basket, I’ll be in the toaster.”
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