Deep Meaningfuls

I wrote about feeling blue yesterday then I went into school and worked with the smallest children with songs about feelings. They had already matched feelings to colours, so I asked them, in song, what colour they were feeling today. Luckily, most were yellow (happy) or green (calm) and some of that rubbed off onto me. It doesn’t always work like that, though. Sometimes you just need someone to share your misery. Occasionally, you need someone who is more grumpy than you, so that you can feel superior.

I often wonder what possesses me to be such an over-sharer in my blog. No one really needs to know that grief is still there burbling away in the background. Writing about it can make it look like a bigger deal than it is. I think that maybe I should stop and then someone will send a message and say that it has helped them. They will tell me that it’s good to know that it’s normal. People who I see on a regular basis are somehow comforted by the dual aspect of seeing inside my troubled mind and then witnessing a fully functioning, capable, happy human.

It was during one of these message conversations about fresh grief and cake that I remembered the phrase ‘deep meaningfuls’. (Fresh grief is anything less than a year, in case you are wondering, before you’ve experienced all the first anniversaries. Cake is the delicious combination of eggs, butter, sugar and flour that makes everything better). We were talking about how grief is such a huge part of human experience that no one really talks about. It’s not normalised and so people who have lost someone only a few months before feel as though they should be ‘over it’. Yes. That’s right. Laugh. Over it. Ha ha. 

We talked about how everyone is processing the bad bits of their life all the time and how if you get stuck you might need a counsellor, rather than having “deep meaningful conversations with friends all the time.”

The phrase struck a memory tucked away in the back of my head. I could hear someone saying, “Let’s have one of our deep meaningfuls.”

At first, I thought that it was a phrase from a sitcom. You could imagine that but google didn’t provide any answers.

Then I heard my mum say, “She popped round for one of her, as she calls them,  deep meaningfuls, with your dad. A vision of my mum in our kitchen, with its shiny dark blue Formica doors, standing at the counter top, rubbing fat into flour, floated up. 

“I’m making Cornish Pasties.”

Cornish pasties were Dad’s favourite things. Mum’s cold hand were perfect for making the best pastry and he spent most of his life complaining that she didn’t make them often enough.  If she was making them then he must have been doing something that made her proud.

Grief discussions were common in our house. Dad was really good at talking about death and difficult things without ever seeming morbid. People always left feeling happier, unburdened and, usually, a little bit drunk. 

If I’m remembering correctly, it was one of my cousins, who was having a tough time, all grown up and working in a wine bar near us, who coined the phrase. I’m grateful for that memory. 

Deep meaningfuls are all very well but some of the best things in life come from the frivolous meaninglesses. The things that make you smile, like a child placing a cup (cup rhythms are very fashionable this year) on the horn of their unicorn headband and telling you that that it makes a perfect horn protector, is the perfect balance of frivolous meaningless to balance the deep meaningfuls.

A happy life is all about balance.