I Fucking Hate Mondays

This post describes finding my husband. Please skip it if that’s not something you can read today.

Mondays are the hardest day.

I wake up at around eight and remember that was the same time I woke up on 25 May. It was a bank holiday, so the idea of lying in was more tempting than usual. I decided to shut my eyes and fell back to sleep for about another 40 minutes. At some point I heard a door bang, but wrote that off as a breeze going through the house.

When I woke up, I needed to get to the bathroom.

I still see everything in slow motion. The way I walked to the bathroom without thinking anything was out of the ordinary. Just a Monday that Darren was off work and we were going to build, well, he was going to build, the barbecue.

The Bathroom Door

I was still half asleep, still waking up, and pushed the bathroom door, only to find it was stuck. I had that split second of confusion, because I wasn’t expecting anything to be so catastrophically wrong. I thought maybe it was Daniel’s clothes behind the door, or a dressing gown that had fallen down and got stuck.

But I quickly realised this wasn’t something that was simply stuck behind the door.

Looking for Darren

I called out Darren’s name, hoping he’d appear from the spare room.

The night before, he’d left our bed early to go into what we called the wee room because he was so warm. Belfast, and probably most of the North, had been hit by quite a strong heatwave that weekend. He’d remarked on the Sunday morning that his pillow was soaking. That was why he’d left the room, and it was still wet when I woke up.

Back to the Monday morning, I shouted and heard nothing.

I woke Daniel, who couldn’t understand what was happening, and told him to go downstairs to see if Daddy was on the sofa. For different reasons, one of us would often choose the sofa to sleep on. If one of us was sick, the other would sleep on the sofa. If the snoring was too much, I’d sleep on the sofa. That kind of thing. So I thought, he’s probably not gone into the wee room, he must be on the sofa.

But he wasn’t there.

Daniel came back upstairs. We both pushed at the door, and we could see that it was him behind it. I didn’t know quite what to do, so I went downstairs and next door to knock on Connor’s door. There was no answer. They were away.

Calling 999

I ran back into the house and told Daniel to call the ambulance, 999.

He could barely call. We got through and kept telling them what was wrong. Daniel was practically screaming and crying at the same time. The whole time, the person on the other end of the phone was telling us to keep pushing, but we were pushing against an impossible thing.

The way the bathroom was laid out, the door opened inwards. Darren was lying behind it, and then there was the bath and the toilet. You couldn’t actually push it open. Nothing felt as if it would work. It felt as though you’d be squashing someone to try to get in.

At that stage, we didn’t know if Darren was alive or dead.

Waiting for the Ambulance

We kept pushing and pushing the door, and then Daniel pushed higher on the door. We pushed as best we could, but we also didn’t want to hurt Darren. So we pushed, but not like our lives depended on it, more that we wouldn’t end up causing him more problems.

We didn’t really make headway, just created the tiniest bit of space to look in. Daniel could see part of him and I could touch part of his arm with my fingertips. It felt cool, but not so cool that it felt cold, at least not in my head. It was really warm weather, if you remember, so it was hard to tell. And also, when my mother passed away, I’d really noticed the heat leave her hand, even though hospitals are warm and close environments. So there was hope, and a belief that we might get through this.

We kept calling and calling out to him. Then the ambulance arrived, unbelievably fast, and we cleared a path for the paramedics.

One of them told me they’d actually been passing on the road, which was why they were able to come so quickly. I contacted NI Ambulance afterwards to thank them, and I got the chance to speak to the angel paramedic who was our only rock at the time, one of many who were there.

I suppose you could say the whole nightmare started then, and that’s another post.

Every Monday Since

Every time it gets to Monday morning, I can’t help but think of it all again. It’s like a film you’ve seen so many times that you know every detail. It just feels as though every Monday of my life is always going to have this memory that I can’t shake.

Why I Hate Sunday Nights Too

I hate Sunday nights too, because they remind me of us sitting here happy, watching The Running Man, the new remake. It’s directed by Edgar Wright, and we both like his work. We decided we’d watch it, and both really enjoyed it.

Even I, well known for going to bed early on a Sunday night, stayed up and watched it.

I play the Sunday night and I play the Monday morning. At this point, I can’t remember a lot of the Monday after the paramedics arrived. My brain doesn’t register it at all, but I know we were here.

But yeah. I fucking hate Mondays.