Older than he ever was

I am now officially older than Pete ever was.

Back in the early days I worked it out to the day… I knew it was in September 2026. Back then, it seemed forever away.

In the years that have passed I just knew it was coming up at some point but there so much else going on, it didn’t really factor into my life. Except I always kind of knew it was going to happen … hanging about in the background, waiting to come forward.

And so now it’s October and it’s come and gone I’ve had a weird feeling about.

I’ve heard the stories of people getting really upset about getting older than their parents or partners.

I can understand that.

But now it’s happened to me, it feels … well, I don’t really know how it feels.

When Pete died there was this weird thing where people older than us said: it’s too young.

But I wasn’t 40 yet.

Of course 46 was too young to die.

But it seemed ‘old’… or ‘older’ to me.

We had always joked about Pete being older than us all as a friendship group. The moniker ‘grandpa’ had been used more than once in the almost 20 years of our time together by other members of the group.

The reason we had 4 kids in 5.5 years was because he was so much older than me and, now ironically, because we wanted to raise the kids and then enjoy time together before I had to put him in a retirement home.

Now I’m older than he will ever get.

And that’s a bit weird.

I thought it might be weirder. And at the same time - it’s weirdly different to what I was maybe anticipating.

People have said: you are experiencing everything now that he never did …

Except the reality is, that every single minute that I have lived since 4.26pm on January 20, 2019 is something he never did.

The kids have gotten older than he ever got to see.

Our lives have had change, and achievements and ups and downs and everything in between that he hasn’t experienced.

What does feel odd is that all the jokes we made about him being old, 46 absolutely doesn’t feel old. And I definitely don’t want to stop living now.

So in that way it makes me feel a bit sad. And a bit melancholy.

Knowing what I have experienced in the last 7 and 3/4 years, there’s no way I want it to stop now.

But also even that thought train, that can send me down all sorts of rabbit warrens, is flawed … because he didn’t choose to stop experiencing it. He just has.

And so knowing all the things there has been, it makes me sad he did miss it.

He deserved to see the kids be amazing and do good things. And they deserved to have their Dad here for it all, too.

And that is where the ‘meh’ feeling I feel about it all sits.

Somewhere between sadness and melancholy sits a weird little arm of grief around being here aged more than 46 years, 8 months and 3 days old and knowing how on September 15 if I’d never woken up again I would have missed the last few weeks of fun, and now it’s kind of raised all sorts of weird feelings about all the things I’ve got to experience with the kids, and people, and the world… and everything hereon in, which I hope is a really, really, REALLY long time.

I can’t find the words to explain the feeling of it.

Maybe a rock in the pit of my stomach. Or heart. A weird deep ache. A strange just not right feeling on the inside.

For someone who never seems to be lost of words, I genuinely don’t know what the right one is to explain it.

As with all these things griefy though, it’s a wave that’s appeared and crashed over me. I even knew it was coming and it swamped me.

I’m not sure I was at my most productive at work as I kind of just couldn’t get ‘comfortable’ on the days around it … I was like a yo-yo of doing stuff and scolding myself for not concentrating and wanting to walk out of the office but liking the distraction, wanting to be around lots of people but not enjoying what felt like the suffocation of them being there. I’m pretty sure I got cranky at people. I know I walked around feeling overwhelmingly exhausted.

As I have learned though, a bit of a wallow in the quagmire is needed to accept the wave… then take a big deep breath, and put one foot in front of the other again.

Just like every minute Pete hasn’t lived for since 4.26pm on January 20, 2019 when he died aged 46 years, 8 months and 3 days old.