Carrying Grief, Finding Joy

Grief can make one feel entirely alone, even while kind people gather close, send messages, check in and remind you that they are holding you in mind. Still, one can feel suspended in midair, isolated and unable to break something so dense and heavy into manageable pieces.

I am still adjusting to the absence of my mother, and to the loss of that quiet certainty that she was always there. But early this week, I felt my sadness beginning to change shape. It had not disappeared, but for the first time I felt I was carrying it, rather than being carried by it, helped, of course, by two moments of joy that seemed to let the light back in.

My son Felix launched the website for Idle Assembly, the clothing brand he first imagined as a teenager around our kitchen table and has steadily built into a serious limited-edition luxury denim business rooted in island subculture. His brother, Conrad, joined him just under a year ago. While Felix is the creative force, Conrad has become the engine of the business, driving forward all the essential work that makes the brand function.

(Their father founded Idle Assembly rum, these lads founded Idle Assembly clothing. A family idle by name, clearly not by nature.)

There will, inevitably, be friction. Brothers can collide in ways only family can. But there is also great strength in working with someone who knows your history, understands the family shorthand and saw the dream before it had a shape.

The launch marked an important moment, and it felt right for the brothers to celebrate it with David and me in Miami, at the World Cup, watching England play Norway.

Conrad, who interned at FIFA a few summers ago, was able to give me rather more insight than I might otherwise have had into the game unfolding on the pitch below us. And how utterly thrilling it all was.

For ninety minutes, thousands of strangers agree to feel the same thing. Flags become capes, songs become anthems, and people who may have nothing else in common throw their arms around one another when the ball crosses the line. The rolling cry of the Norwegians and the tribal chants of the English filled that stadium, each side carrying its history, and also its hope.

But for me, the most affecting sight was much closer to home.

There were my two sons, their arms around one another, caught up in the joy of England’s triumph. Earlier in the week, that same excitement had carried them into a new chapter with Idle Assembly, now it rose around them again in the thunder of the stadium.

And now I know this is how I will move forward, not by leaving grief behind, but by allowing joy to return beside it.