You've probably heard of, maybe even have, a five-year plan. I'm not talking about the industrialisation of the USSR in the early twentieth century. This five-year plan is an approach to life planning whereby you consider what you'd like your life to look like in five years’ time.
Honestly, I think it’s all a load of shit.
I'm writing about this because this year marks a number of five-year milestones for me.
2024 marks five years since…
I came home from Sydney at a moment’s notice because my mam had a scan that showed “something on her pancreas”.
I started my business as a way of working from home while looking after her after she was diagnosed with pancreatic cancer.
I decided to stay in the UK and not return to Sydney.
We adopted our first dog, Potter, a rescue greyhound with whom you will likely be familiar if you are a regular reader of this newsletter. This dog is my heart and soul.
My mam died just five days after my grandad (her stepfather) passed in the same hospice, and we had a double funeral.
We bought our house, the first place I have ever felt properly at home.
So, as you can see, 2019 was a wild ride. I can’t say I have even processed the majority of this, and listing it above has certainly irritated some old wounds.
The chaos of grief
When it comes to grieving a loved one, the process is never linear. I found the first year very hard, especially milestones like my birthday, Christmas and Mother’s Day. Since then, the grief has become more sporadic, often hitting me when I least expect it.
One of the most difficult parts of losing a parent relatively young is that you then have to live through the life events that you always expected they would be front and centre at. Nobody wants to get married without their mam there, nor do they want to give birth to their first baby and not get to see her holding their grandchild.
Becoming a parent has actually been one of the most testing parts of grief, and I’m embarrassed to say it has even brought up some rather ugly feelings for me. In the early days, I would feel jealous of mothers at baby classes who brought their own mams to share the bonding experience. I feel angry when I think about what cancer stole from me and her, knowing how much she would have adored her very first granddaughter and begrudgingly accepted her grand-dogs.
I drive through my hometown, knowing my childhood home is just a few streets away. I want to pop over, walk through the front door, help myself to what’s in the fridge and let my daughter wow her granny with her amazing speech skills, help her weed the back garden, or learn to ride a bike on the very same pavement I did.
But now that house belongs to another family, and the memories I have are just that… memories. I can’t go there, I can’t see her, I can’t tell her about my minor inconveniences or ask her for advice. She will never meet my daughter, her namesake.
And now, five years have passed, and the distance between who I was then and who I am now has grown exponentially. I will grow older, and she will not. I am now the same age she was when he gave birth to me, and in 27 years, I will be the same age as she was when she died.
Don’t get me wrong, the last five years haven’t been all doom and gloom. I’ve written extensively about our rescue greyhounds and, in particular, Potter, who really did save my life. He’s ten now, and as I look to the next five years, I worry about how many more he has with us. But because he was an unexpected blessing, I thoroughly appreciate every moment we get together. Every day he hops out of bed for his morning walk is another day I am happy he found us.
Read more about the serendipitous events leading up to our adoption of Potter in the piece below.
So, I guess this newsletter has probably shown you that you never really know what is going to happen tomorrow, never mind in the next five years.
The whole concept of a five-year plan goes against everything I have learned about myself and how I choose to live. While there may be things I would like to achieve, for example, I am toying with turning this newsletter into a book, I also work hard not to hinge my happiness on the realisation of any of these goals or dreams.
I’m sure I have talked in the past about Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, and how it helps to visualise what we really need to both survive and thrive as human beings on this planet.
It’s worth mentioning that even Basic Needs aren’t always easy to meet, with the likes of the Cost of Living crisis and other recent political disasters threatening many people’s financial and social stability.
But for the sake of brevity, I want to talk specifically about the psychological and self-fulfilment sections of the pyramid. If you look at a typical template for a five-year plan, it encourages you to picture how you want your life to look in half a decade’s time - Where do you want to live? How much do you want to earn? Do you want a child or perhaps more children? Most importantly: Why do you want these things? Are you simply ticking a box or is this something that will make you truly happy?
Sure, I’d love a bigger house, with a separate working space and a big garden. But I know, deep down, that I’d rather work less now, and live in my perfectly adequate small house, rather than work tirelessly to pay for something that’s at the very top of my budget. I work hard every day to give my daughter the best life we can afford, but no money will replace the invaluable time we spend together now.
If I’ve learned anything from my mam’s premature passing, it’s that time is our greatest asset, and many of us don’t even stop to think about how we spend our time until it’s too late.
I don’t know if I'll die tomorrow or live to 101, but what I do know is that I don’t want to work for my whole adult life with the sole purpose of being able to afford my dream at 50 or older. My own mam was desperate to buy a campervan and travel the country, stopping for picnics and countryside walks everywhere she pleased. But she never actually bought the campervan and died, leaving behind enough money for probably three bloody vans!
Obviously, I’m not saying you should drop your life savings on a campervan right now (although you can if you want!), but I do think it’s worth looking inwardly and asking yourself if you are working towards goals for outward validation or because that’s what truly makes you happy.
I’d love to chat in the comments about any of the topics explored in this week’s newsletter, whether that’s grief, rescue dogs, life planning, seeking happiness, or parenting.
Another busy week at work for us, but I did manage to take our daughter along to the beach (where I grew up) and now she’s pretty steady on her feet, she really enjoyed toddling along the promenade and shouting at the big waves.
I don’t have a lot of new media to share as I have fallen into the warm embrace of re-watching old favourites, so I am back enjoying the peak stress of the first season of The Bear.
Remember, you have one more day to read four years of posts before I turn on paid subscriptions.
From March, I will be launching a paid subscription - for just £4 a month (or £40 a year), you will get:
Access to the full back catalogue (currently free to browse, but I will be locking this next month).
My monthly Touching Grass email with book, podcast, TV and film recommendations (free preview of last month’s here)
With even just a small amount of income, I will be able to dedicate more time to growing the newsletter and writing more personal essays and interviews for your reading pleasure.
Thanks for reading!
Ellen x
As usual a beautiful portrayal of life as a thirty something parent in the 2020s. You've always made me proud, you all have. Watching the five of you walking, yes, walking up the street as I waited for your brother to get his a*** together for Paris was a blessing. Five years indeed. I no longer plan five days! It works for me, I only hope one day you can take your foot off the gas too.
Love Dad xxx
You have my sincere condolences on your loss is a phrase I've heard funeral directors use many times when I've been an organist at many funerals over the years, as well as booking agent for organists and funeral director myself.
However the grieving process through losing close family (my parents are still alive thankfully), but as you know I did lose a spouse in mid-January 2022, which was hard as during pandemic restrictions the usual places to turn to for support when you lose a close family member weren't there.
She died in a hospital - due to pandemic restrictions the Bereavement Service at that hospital just gave me a leaflet rather than face to face. The same hospital moaned at me over the phone as next of kin that her body was taking up space in their mortuary, and that I should hurry up and get it moved for the funeral/cremation. Unfortunately I had no say over that as the death had been referred to the coroner (who had control of the body).
Even the cremation was delayed because the hospital (not following pandemic protocols) weren't willing to share the time of death/doctor who certified death either by email or by phone to the funeral director (who then had to visit the ward in person). And now that's the same NHS Foundation Trust I was elected for a 3 year term to be a governor at last year (starting in mid October 2023).
So yes, I know what grieving is like when the whole world has gone crazy and is just going to make things up and refuse to behave reasonably (or legally). My bereavement counsellor says I went through a complex bereavement (which was an understatement) - there was a very long wait for bereavement counselling - I finally got to the top of the queue 6 months after the death, but broke my arm so couldn't drive to the appointments in person (the person I had the appointment with couldn't do online appointments), so yes, a long journey regarding grieving.
It was made worse by the attitude of DWP regarding refusing bereavement support payments, DWP acknowledged she was dead, but said that her class 1A national insurance contributions she had weren't the class 1 NI or class 2 NI needed to grant bereavement support payment, DWP were also pretty unsympathetic in other ways too, as they often are regarding vulnerable claimants, for example wanting overpaid/underpaid Disability Living Allowance and state pension payments sorted (even though I wasn't at that time in charge of the estate - which didn't happen until around 2 months later due to the delayed certification of death due to the referral to the coroner and eventual (delayed) ruling that she died accidentally.
Anyway, back to work!