Lost Without You: Loving and Losing Tanya

by Jones, Vinnie

  And me. Vincent Jones. The 12-year-old boy who became the man who loved her with a passion that still cannot dim and was not dimmed even by the merest amount on that day they’d told us ‘days, weeks, maybe months’. Tanya had saved me and had shown me the unconditional love I had so craved for all my life. I was there, with her family, with our family, and I watched her sleeping, knowing those four evil words – ‘days, weeks, maybe months’ – were poisoning all of us, but knowing, too that we loved her purely and completely, as she had always loved us, and that no poisonous words could ever change that.

  We had lived under the threat of death for the entirety of our relationship because of her heart. We never knew how much time she’d get, and certainly in the early days she would say, ‘I’m not having another transplant.’ Her new heart had been a trooper, though; it was strong to the end.

  Whenever Tanya was scared, she’d say the same thing: ‘I’m going to be alright. Vince here will look after me. You’ll look after me, won’t you?’

  And every time I had said, ‘Yes, I’ll look after you.’ And I always did.

  But suddenly, and though I always knew this day would come, it was one step too far. I could no longer fulfil the promise I made every day to look after Tanya Jones. After all those years, I couldn’t do it; it was out of my power. I couldn’t stop any clocks, and I couldn’t look after her, now. I couldn’t save her.

  We’d been in intensive care a couple of times with Tans before, and sometimes we’d had to face that maybe she wouldn’t be coming out. Then she’d beat it, and she’d try and get back to a normal life. But now it was real and unbeatable.

  In that last year, most days we were at a doctor or in a hospital. But she never lost her determination. In fact, Tans would get cross if I told her I was staying home. ‘Go, play golf!’ she’d insist, and she’d send Lou with me – ‘Go look after Dad,’ she’d say. And as sick as Tans was, she’d be determined to cook me dinner; I don’t know how or why. And in 27 years, she never cooked me anything out the freezer – imagine that. Even to the end, she’d prepare something fresh and then she’d sit on the sofa and her ribs would hurt so much that she would have to go upstairs and lie down.

  I’d gather her up and carry her upstairs as gently as I could, then once she was settled in bed I’d come down to clean up. But I could hear her upstairs watching TV. I’d be downstairs and this little girl upstairs … I could hear her laughing at the TV show Friends, or old comedies like Airplane or Naked Gun 2½, even though she’d seem them umpteen times. She’d laugh and she was in so much pain.

  In that room they’d told us her laughter would be ending, in days, weeks, or months.

  One of the hardest things about that meeting in that room is that you talk for yourself, but you’ve got a daughter there, a mother there, a father there, a brother. I’m talking as the husband and I’m saying, ‘Oh, I don’t want her to know,’ and I had to hope I was doing the right thing for everyone.

  There were other decisions to make, too – terrible, awful, horrible decisions. Lou, understandably, had initially said, ‘We’re going to take her home.’ He wanted to bury Tans with her Nanny Ella and her grandfather Tommy, whom Tans had idolized. I completely understood how he felt.

  Then, Lou slept on it, and the next day he came to me and said, ‘You know what, she needs to be here with you and Kaley.’ I can’t imagine the size of his heart, its depth, to be able to say that. Lou is a man’s man; he’ll probably die with quite a few bloke’s secrets. You can tell him something and that’s that and it’s buried with Lou. That’s who he is. But here he was, able to put aside his coming grief for the good of his granddaughter and son-in-law. Kaley was settled in the US and that’s where she and Lauren were planning to be for the rest of their lives; I never know where my road’s going to go, but ultimately, I’ll probably end up here. So that’s where Lou thought his daughter should be, too.

  These are the decisions which that room in Cedars-Sinai, and in hospitals around the world, force you to make. Should someone know? Where should someone be laid to rest? How will we live without her? We sat around her bed, waiting for her to wake up, knowing what we now knew. There would be hundreds of decisions to come – could we take her home, could we give her the care she needed, could we make her comfortable, could we keep the fear from her, could we give her hope, even though our hope had been dashed by that room?

  Tans would come home – that much we knew. We could nurse her, Kaley could nurse her, we’d make do.

  Years earlier, Tans had needed regular morphine injections and she faced being hospitalized for them. To get her home, I had to be the one to inject her, otherwise they would have kept her in. Not in my wildest dreams did I think I could ever have put a needle in someone. But there I was, injecting her in the mornings and in the evenings, with the needle in her belly. We did it so long that her whole midsection was just little dots.

  I had become someone who had to inject his wife with morphine. I never batted an eyelid in the end. I would have done anything to take away her pain, to make her safe.

  ‘I’m going to be alright. Vince here will look after me. You’ll look after me, won’t you?’ That was what she always said. And it had been true, right up until that day in that room in Cedars-Sinai. The room I never wanted to see.

  Later that evening, Tans stirred, then she woke, and then, as ever, she rallied, and I have her on video going across the room behind her walker, saying, ‘I’m going home. I’m going home.’

  There are some things you cannot look at straight on. Imagine a fire, or a star exploding, or the sun suddenly appearing right outside your window. This is what we all saw that night: Tanya Jones walking to and fro in a cramped hospital room, chanting that she was going home. The burning heat of the moment makes me want to scream still.

  Only one tiny moment of joy came from that meeting in that room in Cedars-Sinai. While we’d been discussing Tans’ care, Lauren had taken the opportunity to ask Tans if she could marry Kaley. Even in the darkest moments, there can be light. You just have to fill the holes with love.

  18

  THE EARTHQUAKE

  One of the hardest things about Tans being on hospice at home was that the care she was given by visiting doctors and nurses naturally didn’t involve anything to do with prolonging life. But we still kept on with her heart medication; it would have felt wrong to not do so. We’d been all about it for our entire relationship – every morning, every evening. We weren’t about to stop now.

  All Tans wanted to do was plan Christmas 2019. I think she wanted another milestone to get to – as long as she felt she could get there, she would have crawled on her hands and knees to do it. ‘Right, I want to book my mum and dad’s flights now,’ she’d say. ‘I want Shane and Amy,’ (her niece). ‘Right. Let’s get Belle sorted out. Let’s get the flights.’ Belle is Steve Terry’s daughter from his new relationship, but she is part of our family – she called Tans ‘Mummy’. ‘I want us to celebrate New Year’s Eve. I don’t want to celebrate our anniversary now,’ she said. ‘I want to do it on New Year’s Eve, when we’re all together. We can celebrate our anniversary when I’m not in the hospital.’ She was forever looking forward.

  Tans also never lost her sense of humour, either. Around that time, she whispered to me, ‘You’ve got to promise me, Vincent, that if anything ever happens and they come to get me, make sure I’ve got my underwear on.’

  I’m proud to say that my son, Aaron, and I are best mates. He’s got two children, making me a grandad twice over – six and two, they are now. He’s served in the military and now he’s training to be a pilot in Ireland; I couldn’t be prouder of him.

  But disaster has struck his family, too. In the middle of June 2019, I was in Ireland burying my new granddaughter, who had died at birth. To see your son and his wife put a tiny white box in the ground … I’ve never seen grief like it. There’s something so wrong, so upside down about a parent having to bury a child; it’s the world in r
everse, it’s against natural law.

  It’s the hardest thing there is.

  By late June, when the doctors came in to see her at home, Tans was very weak. But she’d still find the energy to say, ‘I’m married to this beautiful boy. He’s very complex, but he’s very beautiful, and he’s my boyfriend.’ Our wedding anniversary was 25 June. Leading up to it, if anyone came in – nurses, doctors, anyone – Tans would say, ‘It’s my wedding anniversary in a few days. I’ve been married to my boyfriend for 25 years.’ And, as ever, even at her most poorly, when I left the room, I’d throw her that kiss and she’d catch it.

  Despite the terrible times, we also tried to look forward. Kaley and Lauren needed their own place and Tans was so excited about the prospect of them finding a house. Tans had been looking at real estate during the early months of 2019; she wanted to find us a plot of land to build on where we could settle and she wanted Kaley and Lauren to find their first home together too. In fact, she would sit for hours looking at houses for Kaley, every evening. She’d show the brochures she been given to everybody in the UK on FaceTime. Some nights, I’d wake up and find her awake next to me, and she’d ask to see the real estate listings again, which she kept by the bed.

  Lauren and Kaley would sit at the foot of her bed and talk with her about houses for hours. She would reminisce about all the houses she’d lived in – Gaddesden Crescent, Hunter’s Oak, Redbourn, Box Lane, Cedars in Tring, Shootersway, Mulholland – and tell stories. For her, this was one of the most special things: making a home. And yet I knew she’d meant it when she said she’d live in a caravan as long as we were together. In May, Tans seemed even just about well enough to actually look at one of the houses that Kaley and Lauren were thinking of buying, but it was a struggle to get her there and, after that, we just knew that it was too much for her.

  One day, about a week before the end, and with everyone around her in the bed – Lou, Maureen, Lauren, Kaley – Tans looked at me and said, ‘We’ve been married 25 years and we’ve been together 27 years. Isn’t that amazing? I’m still crazy mad in love, giddy mad in love, and that’s rare after 27 years.’

  Lou stroked her face. The world span at a different speed than usual. There was too much air in the room, and not enough. This woman who had saved so many people … I’d promised her I’d look after her and not let anything bad happen to her, and here we were, watching as the cruel world let its grip on her loosen.

  Tans was still thinking she could beat it, even then. The doctors had always said that she was the strongest person they’ve ever met.

  I got a call a few years ago from Angie, a sister of my lifelong friend, Seamus. Seamus had been in Harefield awaiting a new heart. In the call, Angie said, ‘Vin, I don’t know if you ever knew this, but I went in to see Seamus a couple of years ago. Tanya was sitting on the bed holding his hand talking to him.’ Tans had never told me. That’s who she was; that’s the perfect Tanya Jones story.

  Now we were sitting on the bed holding her hand. I couldn’t leave her side. Tans often said, ‘Vin’s got a good heart. You’ve got to trust him. He has got a good heart.’

  I had given her so many reasons to not think that and yet she never wavered. She saw the 12-year-old boy and she loved him unconditionally, right up to this moment, when he couldn’t save her as he’d promised he would. It was one more way I’d let her down, but even I couldn’t change this, though I still held out a glimmer of hope. That’s what humans do; that’s what love does. You never give in – you can’t. Your body and your mind won’t let you.

  I flew Tans’ best friends, Julie and Joanne, over to see her. They’d both lost dear people in their lives and they knew what was what. I was still talking about how we were going to get Tans over this and how she was going to recover, but Julie and Joanne could see something different. They said, ‘She’s not going to make it through the weekend, Vin.’ That was the cold light of day, right there.

  I flew Shane over, too – the man who’d played his guitar in pubs and restaurants and at parties and who never looked up from his strumming without seeing his sister singing along to every fucking word – his biggest fan. By now, Tans was sleeping a lot, but when he arrived, she woke up and she was chatting nonstop for half an hour. Tans was so happy to see him.

  At the end of every night, for as long as she was able, Tans would walk to the landing of the house and yell for everyone – mum, dad, Shane. They would come out of their rooms and meet her on the landing and she’d say, ‘I just want to say goodnight.’ That’s what they used to do when she and Shane were little – the two kids would sit on the landing and sing songs together, and then mum and dad would come out and say goodnight and everyone would go off to bed.

  Kaley had taken 2019 off of work to be with her mum full time. By the end, she would feed her mum a couple of spoons of rice pudding and sprinkle some of her meds on it; or she’d just sit holding her hand.

  The week before Tans died, the hospice people said, ‘It’s not worth her taking her heart medication anymore.’

  That was crushing. Those medications had always been within arm’s reach, for 27 years. Now, they were of no use.

  And then June turned into July. On Thursday 4 July, Independence Day, we were all up in Tans’ room when a massive earthquake hit – the Ridgecrest earthquake was the biggest in living memory for most of us. It originated about 120 miles north of L.A. and measured as much as 7.1 on the Richter scale (that’s a lot). It was crazy in that room, there, with Tans, as her life ebbed and the whole house rocked.

  Strong aftershocks from the earthquake hit again on Friday 5 July. Even the very earth couldn’t let her go.

  I was holding her when she was taking her last breaths.

  I felt the pain leave her. It had been six years of pain, but now it was flying away, Tinker Bells of pain flying from her body.

  I felt Tanya leave.

  Tanya Jones died on Saturday 6 July 2019, surrounded by everyone she loved and everyone who loved her. She was 53 years old, and she was 32 years old.

  And she was everything.

  19

  THE WHITE LIGHT

  The night Tans died we were all sitting outside in the back garden at Greenleaf – it was around midnight, a still, overcast night, no moonlight. One by one, people were heading inside to bed, and I told them I’d be in in a little while. I wanted to smoke and watch the darkness and be alone.

  On the wind, I could smell the night-blooming jasmine, a scent everyone associates with Los Angeles. There’s really nothing like it; sweet and strong and beautiful; I always knew I was home when I smelled it.

  That night, the scent was everywhere, and it mixed with my smoke until I was going mad with grief. These were the first moments of a new life, and I didn’t want them; I didn’t want any of it.

  As I sat there, I noticed above me a white light. I knew it couldn’t be a star because of the cloud cover, but there it was – a simple white light above me. I already knew that when you lose someone you can start to look for things, for signs, so I was on guard. I never believed in any of that stuff and I wasn’t about to start now, even though my grief was stronger than the earth below me.

  But that white light was there, and there was no denying it. It definitely wasn’t a star and it wasn’t a helicopter, or a plane, it was too low. I’ve since checked and re-checked the weather forecast for that night and it was overcast in Los Angeles on the night of 6 July; the sun didn’t appear until noon the next day.

  To the darkness I said, ‘Well, that’s a bit bizarre.’ And I don’t know why – as I said, I really don’t believe in this stuff – but in my grief and desperation I said to the light, ‘Is that you, babe?’

  The light shone above me; it didn’t waver, or change. Was it Tans? There was only one way to find out. I thought about all the times she’d say, ‘Where’s my kiss?’ and I’d throw her one to catch. So that’s what I did, right there in that dark garden – I threw one last kiss up to the white light above me,
the light that wasn’t a star or the moon or a plane or anything I recognized.

  Suddenly, the light swerved, and dipped, and hovered, and then it flew – zoom! – it flew and swerved and then it disappeared away from me in that garden, with the jasmine blooming all around me, and left me, once again alone.

  One of my first phone calls after Tanya died was to Dennis Byatt. He was the poor man whose wife and child had died years ago, and whose absence had allowed me to briefly play for Wealdstone, which had led to so many opportunities for me in my life.

  Dennis said, ‘I’ve been waiting for this call.’

  ‘What do I do now, Den?’ I said.

  Dennis paused, and then he said, ‘The only thing you can do, mate, the only thing I’ll tell you to do, is make your own decisions. There will be people telling you to do this, to do that, this is right, that’s wrong, why have you done this, and why have you done that. And if you go with what everybody else wants, you’ll be disappointed later on. You just have to make your own decisions; go with how you feel.’

  So that’s what I did. I let Kaley organize the funeral; I felt it was hers to do, given the extraordinary bond she shared with Tans. And Kaley put together a beautiful service.

  We had figured there might be 30 or 40 or so people at the service, but how wrong we were. I had stopped a few from flying over – it was too much to ask. But folks came anyway. Wally Downes, my mate from Wimbledon, flew in, attended the funeral and flew out the same day – can you imagine? Tans had always stuck up for him and they would text each other back and forth with silly videos he found to make her laugh. Jason Statham and Rosie Huntington-Whiteley came. Everyone from my golf club came, too. In the end there must have been at least 300 people there; it was standing room only. Tans had touched so many lives.

  I looked at Maureen and Lou that day, and it just felt so unfair. As with Aaron and his wife having to bury their baby, it’s just wrong when parents lose their child. It’s out of nature.