“But I feel more than words can say…”

A not-review of WAITRESS (2022 touring production)

The first time I listened to the soundtrack to WAITRESS, Sara Bareilles’ musical based on the 2007 film of the same name, I cried silently at my desk for approximately 45 minutes. In my defence, I was pregnant, and a musical about the life-changing impact of motherhood was always going to get me (something Mike knew full well when he urged me to listen to it!). But even then I couldn’t have anticipated quite how important it would become to me.

After my daughter was born in 2018, I struggled with pretty severe post-natal depression. It was some kind of cosmic joke — I had spent most of my life dreaming about becoming a mum, and I’d gone through a traumatic late miscarriage, invasive infertility testing and months of crying over negative tests to get there, and yet here I was, with my much-longed for baby, completely unable to enjoy her because the chemistry in my brain was utterly fucked. During that time, She Used To Be Mine became a kind of anthem — a love song to a lost self, full of regret and longing to go back to a happier version of me.

Thanks to excellent professional support (top tip: if you’re going to become mentally ill, do so a) in Northern Ireland and b) when you’ve just had a baby, because the oft-intractable NHS is actually suitably funded in this area and the help is incredible) and some stellar husbanding/parenting from Mike, I made a good, if slow, recovery, but I couldn’t listen to the Waitress OBC any more as it just hit too close to home. I resigned myself to letting it go, at least for a while.

Then came the announcement that Sara herself was going to be playing the lead role of Jenna for a limited West End run. For Mike — and for me — it was really too good a chance to miss. I have always loved Sara’s voice, and while I’ve never heard a bad version of She Used To Be Mine, for me Sara’s is the definitive one, and the idea of seeing her perform it in person was just… blissful. By that stage our daughter would be old enough to leave her with her much-beloved Auntie, giving us that rarest of things — a child-free break in our beloved London.

So we went. The whole trip was emotionally charged from the start — it was our first time away from Lyla for any longer than a day, it was the first time we’d managed to get back to London (the city we met and fell in love in) since she’d been born, and, to top it all off, there was this new thing called “coronavirus” which was closing airports across the world and threatening to make it our last visit for a while. All in all, set to be a feelings rollercoaster. And we were front row, dead centre. Madness.

It was wonderful, of course. Watching Sara perform She Used To Be Mine was everything I hoped for and more — both Mike and I started openly weeping at that point (sorry Sara) and didn’t really stop for the rest of the show. But for me the real revelation was the song that marks the show’s emotional denouement — Everything Changes, sung by Jenna to her newborn baby daughter. And I was listening to it for the first time since I’d undergone the incredible, life-changing, exhilarating experience of falling in love with my own child.

Oh boy.

It was, to be short, the most magical experience I’ve ever had in a theatre (and I’ve had a lot of magical theatrical experiences).

About a week after we got home, everything shut down. My world contracted to just me, Mike and Lyla. And honestly, we didn’t mind. We were the lucky ones — the ones who had a safe, warm, loving home to cocoon in. For six, seven months we stayed home, just the three of us. Not knowing they would be our last months as the three of us.

I didn’t know, but now I see
Sometimes what is, is meant to be

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I’m 17 months on now from Mike’s sudden death, and starting to slowly rediscover myself — attempt to do the things I love again, try to find a way of being just Ems, rather than one half of Mike-and-Ems. One of the things I’ve started doing is using the night my wonderful friends babysit for Lyla to go to the theatre — sometimes with friends, but often just me. There’s something very freeing about being able to just go and have whatever emotional reaction I need to have in the moment and then… not have to have an opinion.

(Aside: I don’t know if it’s just me, but the older I get the more I want to be allowed to not have an opinion on stuff. There’s a quote from Marcus Aurelius, variously translated but something like: “You are not compelled to form any opinion about this matter before you, nor to disturb your peace of mind at all. Things in themselves have no power to extort a verdict from you.” The first time I read it, as an angry twenty-something, I thought “What a boring, passive way to live one’s life!” Now I read it and think how blissful that knowledge is, and that if everyone in the world adopted the same mantra, it would be a much more peaceful place. And YES I realise this is hypocritical to say when I’m writing a review of something. But a) it’s a not-review, not a review, and b) I never said I wasn’t a hypocrite.)

Anyway, the touring production of Waitress had Belfast as a stop along the way, and included in its cast the incredibly talented Evelyn Hoskins who I had seen as Dawn in the West End production. No matter the emotional wringer I suspected it would put me through, I still desperately wanted to go, and so I booked a ticket (yes, you guessed it — front row… any self-respecting theatre-goer will agree that it’s the best value you can get, I’m not just a glutton for punishment!).

And I was not disappointed. My goodness, what a show. It was everything the West End production had been — laugh-out-loud funny, incredibly moving, packed full of talent (seriously, if you told me 15 years ago that Matt Willis from Busted would be one of the best Dr Pomaters I’d ever seen, I would have — well, I would probably have believed you because I bloody loved Matt Willis from Busted, but 2022 me wasn’t quite so sure it was going to work and was delighted to be proven completely wrong.

Like I said, I knew when I booked it that it would be an emotional experience, but what I didn’t expect was the particular moment that would break me (and break me it did — sorry to everyone who had to share a train carriage home with the fully-grown woman sobbing into a tissue the whole way back to Bangor). It wasn’t Everything Changes. It wasn’t even She Used To Be Mine. Nope, it was the song Dawn sings in Act I, when she’s umm-ing and ahh-ing over whether to put up her online dating profile: When He Sees Me.

Listen, I’m not dating. I have no intention of dating any time soon. Logically I understand that widowed people can date, and that they can remain head-over-heels in love with their late spouse while doing so, but my head and heart are still so full of Mike every single day that I don’t think I’m anywhere near ready.

But. But. There’s still a small part of me that thinks… maybe one day?

And When He Sees Me spoke to the soul of that small part of me, the small part that thinks maybe I deserve to be loved again, to experience that kind of happiness — different but still good — again. And also the small part of me that is terrified of that ever happening.

Dawn sings “What if when he sees me, what if he doesn’t like it? …What if I give myself away only to get given it back?” — a sentiment which I’m sure resonates with anyone who has ever dated, or thought about dating.

But the genius of Bareilles is that it turns out that isn’t Dawn’s biggest fear. What she’s really most terrified of is something a lot more complicated.

Or even worse he could be very nice, have lovely eyes
And make me laugh, come out of hiding
What do I do with that?
Oh, God

What if when he sees me
I like him and he knows it?
What if he opens up a door
And I can’t close it? 
What happens then?
If when he holds me 
My heart is set in motion 
I’m not prepared for that 
I’m scared of breaking open

The only thing that scares Dawn more than being alone forever is… not being alone forever. And oh my goodness, when I heard that, it was like having my own innermost thoughts and feelings, ones I hadn’t even been able to voice to myself, being sung back at me by a redhead in oversize glasses.

Right now the way I’m getting through the day-to-day of life is by being okay being alone. By focusing on me, on Lyla, on building some kind of life for the two of us that looks and feels okay. By not allowing myself to want anything more than that — not even allowing myself to entertain the idea that there is anything more out there for me.

But then there’s that small part of me. The part that wonders if that’s enough for me long term — as a person who loves to love, who loved being one half of a partnership, who relished in the kind of contentment that only comes with the fulfilment of, as Balzac put it, “the heart’s eternal quest to be completely known and all forgiven”.

And like Dawn, I think I’m even more terrified of the prospect of finding that than I am of not finding it.

But still I can’t help from hoping 
To find someone to talk to
Who likes the way I am
Someone who when he sees me
Wants to again…

The watchful heart.

It’s been a tough weekend. But maybe that’s a good thing. Because by tough, I mean griefy – the word I’ve started using to describe the hours and days where the loss of Mike becomes overwhelming and I can’t distract myself from it any more. And although those times are awful, I guess they’re also healing. Early on Becca said “every cry is one cry closer to some kind of healing” and I remember that every time it happens and it does help. So does the analogy of grief being like waves – you’ve overcome by it and you weep and you rage and you’re desolate – but then it passes. And I guess as time goes on I’ll get better at seeing them coming and riding them out.

I certainly should have seen this one coming. My lovely friend Emma recommended the Abbey Calling programme to me, an initiative from the Abbey Theatre where, in return for a donation to Aware, you can arrange a call from a professional actor to perform your choice from a selection of poems, plays and songs. At first I wasn’t sure which to go for but then I saw that one of the selections, The Watchful Heart, featured two of Mike’s favourite poems –  When all the others were away at Mass by Seamus Heaney, and Everything Is Going To Be All Right by Derek Mahon.

The first is written from the perspective of a son reflecting on precious memories of his late mother, which spoke to Mike whose mum sadly died when he was 21 after complications relating to the same type of cardiomyopathy Mike had. And the second he had read to me just days before he died and will be one of my favourites forever:

How should I not be glad to contemplate
the clouds clearing beyond the dormer window
and a high tide reflected on the ceiling?
There will be dying, there will be dying,
but there is no need to go into that.
The poems flow from the hand unbidden
and the hidden source is the watchful heart.
The sun rises in spite of everything
and the far cities are beautiful and bright.
I lie here in a riot of sunlight
watching the day break and the clouds flying.
Everything is going to be all right.

Derek Mahon, from Selected Poems

It so perfectly encapsulates Mike’s zeal for living, the way he found beauty and wonder in the every day, the way he faced his health difficulties with a sense of positivity and such grace. There will be dying, there will be dying – but there is no need to go into that. The actor, Muiris Crowley, who phoned to perform the pieces asked if there was was a reason we had chosen them, and when we explained he spoke to us with such kindness and compassion that it brought me almost as much comfort as the beautiful reading itself.

That evening we attended a virtual concert by New Irish Arts, whose orchestra and choir count amongst their numbers close friends of Steph (my sister in law) and are lead by the brother of a friend of both of ours. Steph’s friends both played at Mike and I’s wedding, and one kindly and heroically led the music at Mike’s funeral despite having only recently lost her own dad. So I knew it would be an emotional watch.

What I didn’t expect, though, was them to show Keith and Kristyn Getty’s beautiful performance of their song Consider The Stars. When Mike was in hospital, Steph sent him this song to comfort him during the long and frightening nights, and he in turn sent it on to me. It became something of an anthem of comfort for us both during that long and anxious time, and hearing it again was utterly overwhelming.

Consider the stars in the sky;
When it is darkest they shine out the brightest
Consider the stars in the sky
In every anguish, Oh, child take courage
Do not be afraid
Do not be afraid
He who made all of this, and who holds all of this,
Holds you in his hands

As anyone who has sat next to me while I sobbed at the theatre will attest, I have long been a believer in the power of the arts to move, to inspire, and to heal, but I’ve never had that power demonstrated so acutely in my life as by these two incidences on this one day. Together, they brought my agonising grief to the surface but simultaneously comforted me – comforted me with reminders of Mike’s beliefs, of his way of living, of the way they have imprinted on me and will always be with me.

I miss him in ways I couldn’t possibly have imagined surviving, in ways I pray my worst enemies never have to experience, in ways that can’t ever be fully healed. I long for him and fear that longing will never be dulled. But I also remember what I learned from him: to live, to search for the wonder in the everyday, to stand tall and lift your face to the sun and breathe in the sea air, breathe deep and fill your lungs with hope, and to go to sleep every night being at ease that a force far greater than us, far greater than we can ever understand, is watching over us.

My most fervent prayer is that in his last moments those words came to him: do not be afraid – he who made all of this, says “You’re worth more than this,” and holds you in his hands.

Because he was. He is. And He does.

And as for me? Well, I keep going back to Derek Mahon’s words: The sun rises in spite of everything / and the far cities are beautiful and bright.

Everything is going to be all right.

I hope so. Because right now, I can only hope.