4.12 /// Sunshine in a person - Cat's story of 'Love, Loss & Life' [Guest Episode] Feat. Cat Part 1

TODAYS EPISODE DEALS WITH LOSS AND GRIEF AND COULD BE TRIGGERING.  SPEAK TO A HEALTHCARE PROFESSIONAL IF YOU ARE AFFECTED BY THE THEME IN THIS EPISODE.

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When the fabric of our lives is torn by the loss of a loved one, the tapestry of our existence is forever altered. I discovered this poignant truth through my conversation with Cat, a woman whose strength and openness during our latest podcast left an indelible mark on my heart. We journey together through the intricate pathways of her life, from the upheaval of relocating and enduring a divorce, to the serendipitous connection with Jon, a British Transport Police Officer. Their story is one of  love blossoming in the most unexpected places, reminding us that even in the midst of personal tribulations, profound bonds can be formed. 

Jon a celebrated hero and who was graced with royal commendation, after his part as a first responder in the Manchester bombing suffered an unexpected health event during COVID that he was unable to pull through, leaving Cat alone grieving.

Our discussion is a raw and honest reflection on the solitude that grief so often imposes, magnified by the isolating protocols of a world gripped by pandemic. The abrupt loss of Cat's partner in the sterile silence of a hospital corridor, leaving with nothing but a bag of his belongings, is a harrowing reminder of the fragility of life.

Through her narrative, we uncover the silent strength required to navigate the aftermath of sudden departure, the courage to voice our pain, and the grace to carry forward the laughter and joy of those we have cherished and lost. Together, we embrace the narrative of moving onward, with our memories as both a shield and a beacon. 

This episode is dedicated to Jon, who was Cat's 'Sunshine in a person'.

Love Loss and Life - https://www.facebook.com/profile.php?id=100087673951381

LinkedIn - www.linkedin.com/in/caitriona-o-brien-aciro-b3531a101

Insta - @catthegriefcoach

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Chapters

• 0:01 Empathy, Grief, and Loss Journey
• 11:18 Life-Changing Stroke and Recovery
• 22:09 Emotions and Reflections on Sudden Loss
• 26:39 Coping With Grief and Moving Forward

Transcript

Stephen: 0:01

Hello and welcome to Infinite Prattle On today's show. As you can see, it's another video episode. A very, very special guest, kat, who's going to be talking to us today about empathy and grief and loss and talking about some of the stuff she's been through and how she's coping with it and what she's doing now. So let's get into that. You're listening to Infinite .

Stephen: 0:43

welcome back to another episode of Infinite Prattle, and I have a wonderful guest, kat, with me today. Hi Kat, how are you doing?

Cat: 0:50

Hello, hello, I'm well, thank you. How are you?

Stephen: 0:52

Yes, very well, thank you very well. We've been trying to get this episode done for a while, haven't we? So I'm really pleased that we're finally getting around to it now, so I'm really looking forward to chatting to you.

Cat: 1:08

And I was hoping you're going to be the first video guest, but it didn't work out like that and dex got that honor, so I apologize for that.

Stephen: 1:11

I actually really enjoyed watching dex's episodes as well. Yeah, he's, uh, we, we may have some plans and a foot in the future for us both, to be honest, because we enjoyed each sounds wonderful. We enjoyed, uh, chatting to each other that much. So more on that soon, probably. Uh, anyway, enough about me. Uh, today is about you and, um, basically, what you are going to talk about on the show is is grief and loss and some of the things that you've been through at one major event that you went through, and kind of how you're coping with that. And I don't know whether it's going to be two episodes or one episode. We don't really know yet, um, as everything on this show is really well planned. So if we go into, the listener will know, because it'll either say part one or just a normal episode. So, um, yeah, so, so tell us about, firstly, the loss is probably the big thing to start with.

Cat: 1:56

So tell us about that, if you would I suppose, to tell you about the loss, I need to tell you a little bit about, about the background to it?

Stephen: 2:05

Yes, definitely.

Cat: 2:07

And that does go on a little. So you know Prattler is definitely the right thing for me as well. I am absolutely a Prattler, whether it's the Irish genes or not.

Stephen: 2:15

I'm not sure that's what I blame all the time to be fair.

Cat: 2:18

So that's what I'll go with. No need to kiss the Blarney here, it's a natural gift. So I moved over from Ireland to the UK 17 years ago when I met my then husband it sounds awful to say my first husband, my then husband online and we married and we had a son and we divorced seven years later and I was working. So we both work at Network Rail. That's how we know each other.

Stephen: 2:50

And I work at Network Rail as well. That's how I know you.

Cat: 2:54

So the connection is really great. Yeah, big shout out for the railway there. But I was working on Piccadilly Station and I was on Piccadilly as a shift manager for about nine and a half years. It was the best and worst job that I've ever had, all rolled into one. It was just an incredible job. It was very hard to leave and John was a British Transport Police PCSO.

Cat: 3:16

So we would pass on a shift and, just, you know, smile at each other and ask how each other's divorces were going. And I'd never, you know, never even considered him as a person outside of his uniform. It was just, he was another picture in the in the station jigsaw, the people you meet on shift. And one day, quite a bit after my divorce had been finalised, I was on the tram going home and I had been supposed to meet a friend for dinner and that friend had declined something else to do. So I met John on the tram. He was in civvies and he was going home and uh, he said you know, you're heading home late. I said yeah, I was. I was stood up for dinner, basically laughing. He said, oh, take me to dinner and I just passed it off, didn't think anything of it. Um, and and you know again shifts in the night. We we came and went around each other on shift. Um, then the he had reason to in a professional capacity asked me to help sort out some antisocial behavior.

Cat: 4:16

Um, that was, I know, so romantic, that was happening underneath the arches on Piccadilly station and uh, in a professional capacity, had to get another member of the team to contact me. Um, and he did that, but he also left his personal mobile number right right they don't have, um, obviously, police mobiles.

Cat: 4:38

It was the only way that I was going to be able to get in touch with them. So I contacted him about this issue and I said, um, you know, I've sorted it all. Put a, put a ticket through that they're going to put up some antisocial, um preventative fencing and stuff. So it's you know, you won't have to go and patrol in that area anymore, it's all going to be fine and dandy. And so between us we managed to sort out some antisocial behavior that was happening on Fairfield Street in Manchester. But then also we started to text casually and then that turned into not so casually and we met in Starbucks for coffee and he came in, as I said, in his civvies and he just turned to look at me and I noticed this pair of blue eyes that I had never noticed before. I don't know why, maybe because he wasn't wearing his glasses and he sat down and on that coffee which wasn't even a date we just said we would meet and chat in person. We agreed that we would do a round trip of Ireland together.

Stephen: 5:36

Really Amazing.

Cat: 5:38

Yeah, and you know, neither of us were kind of making any assumptions, but it was, you know, obvious that there was chemistry there. And you know he kind of coyly said, you know, we don't have to share a room. And I said, oh well, you know, it's going to be cheaper if we only book one kind of thing and over the next few months, things just I can't even describe. Just to go back again a little, a few months previously I had been doing the online dating thing and it was horrendous, horrendous. And I kind of thought I had one date where I asked a chap if he'd like to see me again and he said maybe. And I walked away and I thought I don't want maybe. In my life I've just had a failed marriage. You know, I'm done with maybe.

Cat: 6:26

I want fireworks and then along comes, john, and these Mr Flippin fireworks. Like you know, our first kiss was like a only a little thing. But on on the tram stop at Shoe Tale. Like you know, something out of a movie oh yeah she was going back to our homes for the union and from there on life was just something else. He was that kind of a person. He had served 22 years in the navy, so he was bawdy as all get out. You know, typical sailor, but honestly, um could swear for england.

Stephen: 7:03

I was about to say that was he a swearer because anyone that I've known in the Navy. They can swear in new, normal ways.

Cat: 7:11

Not only can they swear, they're basically obliged to swear, they're trained to. He used to say he went on a 22 year drinking course and I know there are mentions in some of your other episodes about the Antarctic and stuff the stories he could tell about. You know, ice breaking expeditions to the Antarctic.

Cat: 7:30

In fact I have a piece of Antarctic ice still in my freezer in a Tesco bag, but that's a story for another time Interesting. So, honestly, honest to goodness, over the next four years, we just had the most incredible really life together, because he was on duty the night of the Manchester Arena bombing.

Cat: 7:54

Wow so he was on duty at Manchester Victoria Station. We weren't living together at that stage and in fact, we had only been together that was May 2017, so we'd only been together formally since the previous November. He just went into work on a night shift. I had been messaging him previously. He'd had a decent sleep in the afternoon and it was the Ariana Grande concert. He said they weren't expecting too much in the way of trouble probably pickpockets and pervy people because there were a lot of teenage girls expected and that's kind of what they were looking out for.

Cat: 8:30

And then at 20 to 11 or so, a friend of mine from Ireland messaged me and said are you all okay? I said what do you mean? She said, oh, there's been a bomb blast at the arena. And I said you know, straight away, panic John's on shift. So absolutely lost my mind for the next hour or so I only messaged once because I knew if he was okay, he would be in the midst of things. Eventually, in the early hours of the morning, got a message back I'm okay, talk to you tomorrow.

Cat: 9:06

He's got a job to do isn't it so exactly as much as he?

Cat: 9:08

probably wants to like tell you he's okay, he's got to yeah look after the general public and absolutely, absolutely in the mix of it. Yeah, that's crazy yeah um, so yeah, that that kind of worried night. And the next day I went straight out to him and he was just. It was a very sunny day. I'll never forget it, because he was just sitting outside the front of his house, um, and the tears just streaming down his face, because it was the most, even though you know he had done all of that time in the navy. It was just the most awful awful thing.

Cat: 9:38

And you know, he, he confided in me about the people he had tried to help, about how, um, they had no first aid supplies in those first few minutes. It was just him, he had a trainee with him, um, so him and his trainee went into it. He said he knew what it was because it sounded like the gun going off on a warship oh, right so you know it's. It was a familiar sound to him, so he knew that it was bad.

Cat: 10:05

And yet an explosion, basically yeah, exactly, yeah, and yet he, he and his trainee were in there within 30 seconds.

Stephen: 10:14

I think that's you know that's what makes people like john so special. He was obviously a special guy other than being a btp officer, but he people in roles, it's always said, isn't it like everyone's fleeing and they're the people running in the opposite direction into it, and I think that's what makes people like that.

Stephen: 10:32

I don't think people stop and realise that very often you know they're the ones that are. You probably want to run away, but they, they know they've got a duty to do and they have. You have to run towards it, kind of thing.

Cat: 10:40

Yeah, that's it and in that moment, because I asked him afterwards I said in that moment you didn't know if there was a secondary device or what it was even that it exploded, you didn't know if it was a person or a machine or something that had gone wrong. And he said but that was my training in the navy. You, you're trained not to think primarily of your own life. You're trained to think of the purpose.

Stephen: 11:01

And he said that was you used to be the first kind of thing. Exactly, exactly.

Cat: 11:03

And what you meant to do. Yeah, yeah. And I said you do realise that that would have meant you didn't come home to me? And he said yeah, well, you think about that afterwards.

Stephen: 11:10

Yeah.

Cat: 11:11

But that's not what you're trained to think you know so sure enough of that.

Cat: 11:18

Listeners will know, especially those around Manchester, what happened throughout the city and everything else was that there were newspaper articles about them all as heroes, and it was a word that John wasn't particularly comfortable with. They did interviews for Granada Reports and the news and everything else. He got a highly commended award from the police for bravery highly commended award from the police for bravery. He also then got mentioned in the Queen's New Year's Honours list. The following year he was awarded an BEM*.

Stephen: 11:49

Wow.

Cat: 11:51

And that meant that we got to go off to, you know, the ceremony where he was awarded his British Empire medal, but then also to the garden party at the palace at Buckingham.

Stephen: 12:01

Palace for the day.

Cat: 12:02

So all of that together just made our whole time together like something out of TV. You couldn't script that as people's relationship. There were awards nights where he would be invited along and we'd go in black tie. I'm trying to think what one of them was done by a variety the children's, children's charity um invited them all the first responders, to acknowledge again their response.

Cat: 12:29

and you know, just all of those events and things that we did were just made bookended the relationship with the most incredible things, but also that underlying recovery from the trauma of what he had been through. So his blood pressure certainly suffered as a result, but he had always tended to have kind of high blood pressure. So when it came to eventually John left the BTP because it was a difficult thing to deal with, so he left the transport police and COVID lockdown started. So he started to. He thought how can I just help? So he started delivering groceries with Tesco. He was driving one of the food vans because that's what people needed. Yeah, definitely yeah.

Stephen: 13:13

We were some of them because obviously, as you know, my wife has an illness, we were stuck in the house and we couldn't go out, and them deliveries were lifesavers really for us, because we wouldn't be able to go out otherwise, really. And uh, absolutely no it's. You can't rely on friends and family all the time, can you, to do stuff like that for you, and you know limited supplies.

Cat: 13:32

As you know, it was a bit great, a bit of a crazy time, so yeah, absolutely crazy time, and I have an autoimmune condition myself, so I was really self-conscious about him bringing covid home. Yeah, so bless him.

Stephen: 13:43

I'd make him strip at the front door and go and shower I think we spoke about that before, because when I started going back to work I had like a decontamination zone in the hallway which I preached. I was like you had the same thing, but I'd put me clothes in a bag and they'd instantly get washed and I'd go straight and have a shower and, uh, hand sanitize everything. And yeah, it was, uh, it was. It was a strange, bizarre, uh it was, it was something surreal absolutely surreal.

Cat: 14:06

So in the midst of all of that, we went into the second lockdown and John had applied to so in the navy he had been a chef, he had been a Killick chef and he applied to the NHS again a step up in the how can I help thing. He was going to go back to cooking for the NHS, he had been successful at interview and he was taking a week off from delivering for Tesco just before he started with the NHS the following Monday. And that Monday morning I woke up to homeschool my son. My son has additional needs and so that in itself was challenging. He has ADHD. He's on the autism pathway Because, you know, let's just throw something else into the mix of cat's life Always a bit of drama.

Stephen: 14:51

You need a bit of extra things going on, don't you? Yeah, exactly.

Cat: 14:54

More spice on there, why not? He's a cracking lad. He's absolutely brilliant, but it's not been without its challenges, so we were homeschooling.

Cat: 15:05

Yeah, we were homeschooling because he had just started on medication. He'd literally just been diagnosed and I was downstairs trying to balance working from home, writing COVID guidance for people who had to come to work on the railway and how to manage their decontaminations and PPE and everything else, and Sam on the side of me, homeschooling, freaking out because a maths teacher had a squeaky voice and he couldn't bear it. And we worked all the way through the morning and John slept in and at one point he messaged me and he said gosh, I feel really dizzy. So I thought nothing more of it. He was prone to tinnitus, ear infections. I thought, well, maybe that's what it is. Um, I said, go back to sleep. You know, try and sleep it off, babe, and you know I'll see how you're doing kind of later on in the afternoon.

Stephen: 15:56

So sure enough, all he was was dizzy.

Cat: 15:58

Um, he was getting up and down to the loo, fine, no problem. So sam finished up school and I went upstairs and I was like how you doing? He said I'm really bad with this dizziness. So I said well, what does it feel like? And you know, he just said it's not just, I don't just feel light-headed. He said the, actually the room is tilting like it's all it's, it's bad. So we rang one, one one, and when, when the only symptom was dizziness, they were like what you want us to do kind of thing, you know. So, uh, it continued on for another couple of hours and as it did, he started to get sick, um, you know, physically vomiting, um ran a fever, and next thing he was talking funny and I thought are you being a bit daft, like you've been, you know, are you having me on?

Stephen: 16:44

like playing, uh like yeah exactly in the cat or something like that.

Cat: 16:48

Yeah, yeah yeah, because you know he, he was just daft as a brush and, uh, he kind of looked at me and he was like no, um, this, you know, I I just feel really strange and at this point I thought, oh man, there's something going on here that is bigger than just what I was worried about, which was actually covid, I'll be honest yeah, yeah yeah, um.

Cat: 17:09

So we call back one, one one and I said look um, you know he, he's slurring his words. Now. His face hadn't fallen or anything else, but he was sounded like his tongue was swollen. That's what it sounded like. You know, know that kind of blocked noise.

Stephen: 17:23

Yeah, exactly.

Cat: 17:25

Anyway, it took another couple of hours for us to figure out that John was having a stroke Once we did and called 999, it took a couple of hours for the ambulance to arrive because it was COVID times and when they did he was still conscious. He couldn't get himself down the stairs but he managed to, in the ambulance, shift himself from the chair onto the bed and move his legs about and stuff he's. He had no problem with his arms and even then his face hadn't really fallen, like you're told happens when somebody's having a stroke.

Stephen: 17:59

so make out. That's like one of the big symptoms, don't they exactly? Yes, that used to look face arms speech yeah, yeah, yeah.

Cat: 18:06

Um, I kissed him and I said I love you and I will talk to you later. I'll give you a ring because I wasn't allowed to go in the ambulance with him.

Stephen: 18:14

Covid precautions, so that must have been tough in itself. Obviously he kind of didn't know the outcome at the time. But just just to say, just to know how serious it could be and not be able to get in the back of the ambulance, I mean, I can't even imagine what that would be like. To be honest, that's it.

Cat: 18:30

And the paramedic said we do think you've had a stroke now. I've had people in the family who've had a stroke before who have survived yeah, um, not just survived but made a full recovery from partial paralysis or whatever. So in my head, genuinely in my head, the worst case scenario was john might need some looking after when he gets back you know, and if I have to do that, then that's fine, not a problem.

Cat: 18:55

Um, whatever it is, if I have to make a bedroom downstairs, we'll make it work, it'll be okay. Um, but I managed to get some sleep so I managed to talk to him. About 2am I called his mobile and somebody in the hospital answered and said oh, I'll bring it over to him. He was still waiting on a on a trolley in a corridor somewhere, although he had had a cat scan at that point. And he said I'm starting to struggle to swallow, but I'm going to see if I can get some sleep. I love you, I'll talk to you in the morning. And I said I love you, babes, talk to you tomorrow.

Cat: 19:31

And at half seven I fell asleep. At some point at half seven my mobile rang and somebody said to me a woman, I think, the first voice. You need to come into the hospital please. And Again, she hadn't said anything on Sony, you need to try and get into hospital. My thought was I've got an 11 year old boy here. You know he's got schooling you, just there's. No, it didn't click. Why she? Why she would have been saying that. I said just give me a few minutes to try and and sort out. You know, um, because I wasn't driving like a taxi and um, you see what my son is doing. Anyway, I had another telephone call within the next 10 minutes from a man the consultant this time, saying I don't know what the last person said to you, but John is dead.

Cat: 20:22

Oh, my God and I think I wet myself.

Stephen: 20:29

Oh, wow, yeah.

Cat: 20:32

And it doesn't register.

Stephen: 20:34

No.

Cat: 20:34

You know. But it doesn't happen like it does in the movies either. There's no big scream and fall to the floor. No, it doesn't. Oh, I don't know what. It just doesn't compute at that stage at all. Only that at that point I thought right, I have to get to the hospital. I rang Sam's dad and I said can you take the day off work? Can you just take Sam please? And all credit to him, he did. And then I had to ring John's brother. So John's brother and dad lived together. His mum had died a number of years previously. I had told him the night before that john had gone into hospital with a suspected stroke. But I had to ring him and tell him that his brother was dead without even seeing him myself, without even really believing it myself yeah, and I think is you've probably not even absorbed it yourself at that point and and you're transferring this message that kind of isn't tangible um exactly, yeah, that's on was 46

Cat: 21:32

yeah you know his brother, 42, they I barely remember the conversation. Only I said look, you know we've been asked to come into hospital so that we can see him. Um, so you know, if you and your dad can come in then, then please come in. I'm on my way in now. And then I left and I got a taxi and I realized I had no money for the taxi and I hadn't brought anything with me and I was lucky that the local taxi firm were like we know where you live, don't worry about it. You know you're going to need one on the way back, so just ring me. And I think he gave me his number. I can't remember. I can't remember. We'll get you on the way back.

Cat: 22:09

And so I went in and they did do the whole, you know taking me into a room with a consultant and a nurse and you know explaining what happened, which was that he just crashed. At one minute he was sitting there waiting to have blood done and the next he just crashed. And I can only assume that because of COVID protocols, they all had to go and get PPE on before they could do CPR and ultimately everything just led to the fact that they weren't able to get him back, and so I just said can I see him, you know? And they said yes, and they just brought me into a side room. He was in a bay and he was just lying there, fresh as a daisy, in his animal underpants and a T-shirt, and I just sat and held his hand for as long as they would let me. His dad and brother came in, stayed an hour or so and left. I stayed until they asked me to leave because they had to take him to the mortuary.

Stephen: 23:10

Yeah.

Cat: 23:16

And then I walked out into the car park with a shopping bag, with his slippers and his mobile phone, and his wallet in and I thought what the fuck do I do now?

Stephen: 23:22

yeah, I think, oh, it's just. I've heard this story before, guys, you know, and it just I.

Stephen: 23:27

I just it's very emotional for me because I think I think about my own situation, of what I would do probably anyone would think about their own situation, what you would do in that situation and it and I think that that part strikes me the most is like you know, you kind of just say, right, you can go now kind of thing, here's a bag, but like cheerio, that's, and that's almost how it is like. And I know like people that work in the industry and and and you know the the most caring, empathetic people you can kind of get, but they're also like kind of the worst as well, because they deal with that stuff all the time they can. They can, they can be very like blasé about it as well as a bit of a juxtaposition between care workers, because even even in, even in my job that I used to have, like you have to cut yourself off from feelings because you've got the next person to go to and I'm sure, I'm sure john was very similar in his role, to be fair.

Stephen: 24:17

But that that that part of that story is is the thing that gets me in that story is I'm going off to hospital alone and then you leave in the hospital alone with just a bag of his stuff and yeah, um, that all happens in such a condensed time frame that I just I, I can't even imagine. I'm trying to imagine that situation, but it just it's, it's, it's unfathomable for me to think of.

Cat: 24:41

Yeah, and it's unfathomable for anyone to think of, because I couldn't have imagined it until it happened, um, and it just it changed everything, yeah, everything.

Cat: 24:53

You know, I did call that taxi man back, but I had to go. I couldn't stand. I had to go and find something to sit on in a car park, in a hospital that I didn't know. Um, thank goodness my phone was still charged, so I don't know what I would have done, but the nurse who saw me out the door I could see that she wanted to do more, but that her hands were tied. The fact that there is no service, no facility for them to say there's a room, you can go and sit in if you need to.

Cat: 25:21

There's someone on site here that you can talk to if you need to, or you know there's a. Here's a taxi number, even nothing, nothing. You know, but gosh, it wasn't on them in the in the midst of covid.

Stephen: 25:34

It really wasn't. I think that's the problem as well, like if, if it would have been a normal time frame of like day-to-day life, the situation might have been obviously the outcome wouldn't have been any different. The situation of how it was handled potentially would have been completely different. Like you for one, you've been in the back of the ambulance, potentially maybe, or you know at least, you know at least following shortly after, potentially, and knowing that you could just go and sit with him and there'd be no issue with that that's it, or I mightn't have spent the day thinking he had covid and might have got him help earlier who knows exactly I've tormented myself with that one for a long time and I think, I think that's I was about to say that that, like you know, does that sit in your mind?

Stephen: 26:10

I'm sure it does, oh, totally.

Cat: 26:12

Totally. I keep thinking I should have just dragged him down the stairs. You know, even if it had hurt him, I should have just dragged him down the stairs and got some help Somehow, you know, got a neighbour to drive us something instead of sitting there waiting for an ambulance like an idiot.

Stephen: 26:34

But you know the only thing I can say is I didn't for a second think that he was dying.

Cat: 26:35

No, no, he was sitting there beside me cracking jokes and rubbing my knee.

Stephen: 26:39

Yeah, you know, I think that's a strange thing, isn't it, when, when you're in that sort of situation, he sounds like the sort of person very much like my dad, who's ex-military even when he's really early, he'll crack a joke, he'll kind of put off how ill he is anyway and and he'll and he'll just be kind of making the best of it in some sense. So, um, yeah, you don't always think the worst, do you? Especially when someone's healthy and that sort of thing just comes out the blue like that. And, as you say, with that underlying covid thing who had so many, I think they were coming up with a new symptom every day, saying and dizziness and all that sort of stuff was this was a symptom of covid, because when I got covid I felt terribly dizzy, so it was definitely a symptom. So, yeah, it was, yeah, so I think it's, I think that's the thing, isn't it?

Stephen: 27:21

It's the, it's the, it's the what, ifs, and what if I'd have done this, and and it's, it's easy to say you shouldn't beat yourself up. You're always going to there's, there's, in some way, it's. How do you cope with that? And how do you get through that and how do you make peace with that, and and that's it.

Cat: 27:38

You go through every little thing, every conversation you had, every every moment that we had. I even, I even convinced myself at one point, before we knew after a while, that it had been what they call a posterior circulation stroke, which is a stroke at the back of the brain, which is why he didn't have the face arms speech symptoms Right.

Cat: 28:02

So that only happens with an anterior stroke. If it's a posterior stroke, it's a bleed at the back of the brain and dizziness and nausea are generally the only symptoms before things get very, very serious, which is why they're more deadly, right um I we had had the night before a really crap tea, and it was sunday night, and usually we would have something pretty tasty over sunday, whether it be. You know, john was used to do a cracking roast. Obviously he was a chef, he used to do an amazing roast, or, you know, we'd have his.

Cat: 28:35

His absolute favorite tea was um southern fried chicken sweet corn chips, because he grew up in um, america or I'll tell you a bit about that in a bit, about why he was in America. But um, uh, that's. That would be our usual kind of Sunday fair and there'd be some telly and stuff. But this particular Sunday we had been doing some jobs building a chest of drawers upstairs and just generally busy, so we had a crap tea, and a crap tea was a slow cooker, gammon and potato smiley faces out of the freezer, because that was literally all we had. I mean, you know, gammon and smiley faces. How could you go wrong? But I somehow, in the hours afterwards, when I was at home and sitting here on my own, convinced myself that I had left the plastic on the gammon and poisoned him really because?

Cat: 29:24

because where else does your head go, thinking? You know, what if I did something? What if this was my fault?

Stephen: 29:31

what yeah?

Cat: 29:31

somebody might knock on my door. Um, you know just all these, all these crazy, crazy thoughts go through your head and you're just not in your right mind with grief at all at all.

Stephen: 29:44

You know I'm very, I'm very much an in my head person, so I can, I think I can kind of think about what you were probably kind of, you know, postulating in your own brain of what could have? You know what could have been and and what was it. Was it something you did or not do, or?

Cat: 29:59

yeah, and did he pull something carrying the chest drawers up the stairs? You know?

Stephen: 30:04

yeah, what. Could it have been trained himself? Or something like that yeah exactly yes yeah, in the end.

Cat: 30:10

Sorry, go ahead. No, no, no I think.

Stephen: 30:12

I think that's the, I think that's the thing that um probably will lead us on to. Uh is what is going to be. Part two is just how do you recover from that and how do you make peace and and how do you move forward? And I know that you've you when you you tell that story so, um, emotively, but without getting upset. I don't know how you do that. I don't know like how I was teary-eyed a couple of times during that. You know it probably doesn't come through the webcam because I'm going invisible sometimes, apparently so, but it's, it's, um, it's such an emotive story and you, you, you I don't want to say you're so strong to do it, but you, you, you cope with it so well. You know the way, the way you handle it is, so, it's so, um, it's, I suppose it's so strong to the way you handle it.

Stephen: 31:04

I don't I don't know, I don't know, I don't know I sound like cliched about it, if you know what I mean, but it's yeah it's, um, it's, yeah. You just you've just got a grace about the way you talk about him and the, when, the, and and you obviously, you know you obviously had like an amazing, an amazing time when you were together.

Cat: 31:21

Um, yeah, and it was extraordinary, yeah, and I just he was. I'll always describe him as just sunshine in a person. That's what he was you know if anyone was going to make you laugh? Yeah, absolutely. Um, if anyone could make you laugh, it was. It was john, and if anyone was going to stop and help you when you needed it, it was also john he was.

Cat: 31:42

That was just him, through and through. And yes, it was all tied up with a bit of salty sailor bawdiness, but that made it all the more fun, you know I think you need a bit of that as well, don't you?

Stephen: 31:53

well, I think we'll leave part one there. Cap, I think that's probably leaving on that, that that ray of sunshine kind of thing that john was. I think it's probably a good, good place to leave it for part one and then we'll. We'll come back in part two where cat will hopefully tell us about what she's been up to since John's passing and how she's been coping with it and what she's been up to in her personal life to help other people. I would say, would that be the right way of putting?

Cat: 32:19

it.

Stephen: 32:20

Sounds about right. I think. Yeah, I think sometimes my words don't come out the way I want them to. That was good. Well, thank you very much for joining us in Part 1, kat.

Cat: 32:29

It's been a pleasure.

Stephen: 32:31

Well, it'll be probably a couple of weeks for other people, but it'll be right back for us. So, yeah, thank you very much for listening. Everyone, please like, comment, share your experiences, and links to Kat's Facebook and Instagram will be in the link in the description if you want to know anything about what she does. And if you want to know what she does, you can listen to part two. So thanks for listening and I'll speak to you soon. Thanks for listening to Infinite Brattle With your host, stephen. Follow me on social networks at Infinite Brattle and don't forget to subscribe. Thanks very much.