What Does Easter Mean To You?

For me, it's grieving & masking

Easter means so many things to different people, doesn’t it?

Christ is Risen on Easter Sunday. This weekend is more important than Christmas to many who follow the Christian faith.

Not being brought up in the church doesn’t mean I am ignorant of that, or that I do not care.

I am a spiritual girl, and the sacrifice that Jesus made for us on Good Friday is not lost on me.

However, Easter week has also held a deep personally pain in recent years, for me & my family for two reasons.

It falls on the anniversary of us losing my sister-in-law Karen in 2024.

She was braver than any woman I know. One thing I will always do is fight hard to be as courageous as she was in her final days. She was like a sister to me.

My late brother Fitz always came home to Brum for Easter. He’d lavish so much affection & attention on my Mum: chilling with her, cooking for her, laughing at some old black & white movie on the telly. Then he’d quietly peruse The Observer he’d brought with him, as she happily snoozed for a few hours.

She misses him dearly. We all do.

I still have the last email Fitz sent me - unbeknown to any of us, he’d sent it just weeks before he died - making arrangements for Easter. Who was cooking the family meal, what we were going to have. For the record it was going to be lamb with all the trimmings!

Tony was on chef duties, and Fitz & I were ready to lapse right back into the roles we always did as kids in the family home: table preparation and table setting. Mum was so very excited.

But sadly our Easters have never been the same again.

Just the other week I had a heart-stopping direct message here on Substack from an old grammar school friend of Fitz’s. A reunion’s planned next month, and he wanted to invite him. I wonder how it felt for him to have to offer condolences instead?

Thankfully for us Fitz’s friend shared some memories: ‘He was such a lovely guy-he really was a gentle giant. He made a positive impression on me and many others and that memory will never be diminished… We will be raising a glass in his memory at our reunion in May’

The words choked me but I was so very grateful, even though it took me weeks to reply to him. To really know what to say.

Masking

I guess I am feeling all the more griefy because my immune system’s depleted. A dirty stinking rotten cold tried to stop me working back in London a couple of days this week at GMB.

Thank the Lord for the glam squad: raring at 4.30am to take me from feeling like total sh*te and transform me into a woman who ready to handle the bright lights of a TV studio and the cortisol-pulsing pressure that comes from broadcasting on live TV.

Pretty sure I overdosed myself on cold & flu remedies, blocked nose nasal spray, honey, lemon, ginger, cough lozenges, fruit, chocolate & pastries - the lot! All to try and stay alert, and competent.

There’s a weird kind of resilience inside of us sometimes that makes you able to work through grief and illness. Putting on a smile and pretending nothing’s really going on behind-the-scenes.

Not sure where I manifested it from this time, but I summoned up & channelled as much as I could. And you can be the judge on whether or not I managed that.

So my weekend has been kiboshed. The lurgy has meant I won’t be able to see my niece, great niece, my mother-in-law or my Mum until well into next week.

I’ve even quarantined myself in the spare room because Austen has an Offal Club gig next Friday night in Stourbridge, woe betide he gets saddled with this sickness. (HECK, I’m even meant to be on backing vocal duties!)

I’m totally fed up. It’s official.

Not to continue to be maudlin about this holiday or throw myself a pity party, but just to say please make sure you spend time with family wherever and however you can this Easter break. Hug and squeeze them tight & tell them you love them too.

Because sadly we’re never quite certain when we might see them again next.

Until next time.

All my luv

Marv

xx