Lost Without You: Loving and Losing Tanya

by Jones, Vinnie

  Whenever Shane played a show, he would always sing ‘Everything I Own’ by Bread. A lot of people probably think that’s a romantic love song, but it’s actually about the songwriter, David Gates, missing his late father and wanting him back alive. Tans would sob when Shane sang it. But now it was all topsy-turvy – Lou had lost his daughter and I know he would have given everything he owned for another day with Tans. We all would have.

  Kaley and Shane organized three slide shows, detailing the key parts of Tans’ life, backed by the songs we loved – one was of me and Tans, one of Kaley and Tans and the other was of Tans with all her friends and family. People were heaving with sobs, as you can imagine. Kaley was also able to stand up and read a note she’d gotten from her mum – it basically said that she hoped Kaley was lucky enough to have found what she found: unlimited true love.

  Kaley was so strong that day. She had picked up her mother’s legacy, wrapped it around her and that’s what’s kept her going. But still I had to ask her how she had managed it.

  Kaley said, ‘It was Mummy speaking through me.’

  About three months after Tansy left us, I went on Good Morning Britain to talk about her and what we’d been through. I did it because I wanted to show people that it’s OK to grieve, it’s OK to talk about loss and it’s important to share stories of your loved ones when they go. I don’t know how I got through it, to be honest, but then, I wasn’t ashamed to cry. I felt like Tans was there with me and I hoped that by just being honest I’d reach some other people who’d gone through a loss. And I hoped she’d be proud of me, too. This was her legacy coming out through me.

  Tans was forever helping someone, that was just her way, so for me to be able to go on that show and hear afterwards that I’d helped a few people – well, that made it all worth it. I did hear from a lot of people, actually, and I hope they all know that I get it, I truly do, and will always get it. I wish I didn’t, but I know that Tans would insist on me looking outside of my grief to connect with people who need support; that’s what she always did, and that’s what I’m trying to do.

  A little while after, I went on Celebrity X Factor, which of course gave everyone the chance to have a free hit at me. How could he do that, having just lost his wife, they asked? Well, Tans had been eager for me to do it – she loved it when I performed like that and urged me on to be a part of that show.

  So I was determined I was going to make Tans proud, but more than that, this is why I did it: when I was on the stage, even if it was filled with dancers and musicians, I was actually alone up there, and there was only one person sitting in the audience. All the other seats were empty, but Tans was sitting there, right in the middle, and she was waiting for me backstage too.

  X Factor kept me busy – it drove me on. Kaley would call twice, three times a week, and say, ‘Just be you, be cool. Don’t let yourself down.’ And that’s what I did. It was all to give Tans a smile and to make Kaley proud, like all those years ago on Top of the Pops.

  It wasn’t for Simon Cowell. I was grateful to him that he let me join at the last minute, but no, it wasn’t for the judges. That was for Kaley, and my Tanya.

  20

  JOYOUS GRIEF

  We are Tans now. She remains in the differences she’s made to our lives. Every time we choose something better, kinder, more caring, that’s her. That’s what eternity means. Her physical form has gone, and we miss her constantly. The smile, the laughter, her voice, the way she looked back over her shoulder at us, the constant caring and nurturing and listening. All those things are gone, yes, but she saved us and so every time we’re better people, we’re emitting a dose of her into the world. But that doesn’t mean it’s not crushingly sad, every minute of every day.

  After she went, so many little moments brought me to my knees. We cleaned out the house on Greenleaf – we couldn’t stay a second in that place after we lost Tans, so we moved to a different house 15 minutes east – and I said to Kaley, ‘This is the first time in 27 years her medicine hasn’t been in the bathroom or by the bed.’ It’s all I’d ever known.

  How to turn that grief into a joyous grief? That’s the test now – how to turn this huge negative into something positive. I don’t have all the answers, but I have a few.

  First, tears. There have been so many tears, some public, lots private. There’s nothing wrong with that; I have no shame in crying about Tans. She wouldn’t want me to be crying all the time, but when it hits, I just let it out.

  Then, I keep contact with her. I speak to her a lot. I still have a chat with her all the time – and you have to do that. You have to carry that with you.

  I try to be kind and supportive of the people I love. Also, I’m not afraid to laugh and joke, however hard it is. Tans would have insisted; she was the life and soul of every gathering. That’s what she’d want – even when my head is saying it’s wrong.

  As time goes on, each week, each month, different memories have come back to me, which is wonderful. That’s helping build the joyous grief. You can’t just curl up in a ball and let the world trample all over you. That would have devastated Tans. Our job now is to look after each other as best we can. That was Tans’ wish.

  But the central point of joyous grief for me is that Tans gave us all a task to do after she was gone, and we’re trying to do it each day. We each have someone we have to care for, to look after, to love, someone whose dreams we have to try and bring to life. We have to find the positive in life and we have to move forward – always move forward. I’m going to make sure Kaley is settled, and Lauren is going to look after her, too. Kaley looks after me; I make sure Lou and Maureen are OK. Kaley calls them all the time, they call her.

  Shane sent me a copy of the videos he and Kaley made for the funeral, and I let myself have a cry. I was on my own, I had my little cry, but it was a joyous cry. Grief can be joyous as well as heartbreaking. When you’re watching videos and you’re looking at the pictures, you can just let your memories flood in – the good memories. I had 27 years with Tans so for me the final equation is a completely positive one – she was fantastic and our relationship was fantastic. This doesn’t mean I don’t cry; but I’m starting to cry happier tears.

  We get all this from Tans; she was the one who set the tone for life after she left us. She is the core of joyous grief: we make decisions based on what she would have wanted, what she would have asked of us, what she would have insisted we care about. Tans wasn’t a taskmaster – she was just a very loving, caring person, and she made people better around her. This gives us joy, to have been in the presence of that for so long. Our job now is to make sure we choose the right thoughts, ones that will ensure we do the right thing for each other. We’re Tans’ proxy, now; she can’t be here anymore, but that doesn’t mean we can’t keep her alive by being there for each other, like she was always there for us. That’s joyous grief; that’s what we’re up to now.

  Kaley said it best: her mum was the definition of joyous, no matter what she was going through, so we have to honour that as a value in our lives, something we make a part of what we stand for as people. Tanya Jones was joyous, despite going through the most horrific things one can endure as a human. So, we have to find strength like she did to live with the same light and joy that she had. We have to live like she is watching and listening, and we have to have blind faith in that, or else we would fall apart.

  She wrote out a poem for Kaley that said don’t spend your years shedding wild tears but reach your hand out to others in cheer. And that was Kaley’s mum: always reaching her hand out in cheer to each of us, to everyone, in fact, no matter how much pain she was experiencing, no matter what we’d put her through, no matter how lousy she felt. Tans focused on us at every turn and it alleviated her pain and her tears. This is our survival guide now – this is the survival guide she created for us to move forward in joy. We can learn how to cope by remembering how she did it; that’s the great lesson, the great gift she left us.

  And tha
t’s what I urge others to find in their lives. Yes, we’ve lost someone so, so special, but we are her now; we can embody who she was. We can learn from her, even though she’s physically gone. What a gift she was. That gives me so much joy, even as I pull the car over and cry for the missing of her.

  And I focus on what me and Tans were – that’s a great comfort. Someone said to me, ‘What made you two so strong?’ And I said, ‘I think we were two swans. Swans partner for life and I think we were swans.’ I’m content with that. I’m very content with that.

  I know she’s gone, physically, but at the same time, I feel a glow around me. Sometimes I think, ‘Come on, is that you?’ It gives me comfort. A tiny bit of joy.

  Others feel it, too. It was Maureen’s birthday recently, and a while back Tans had bought them a tea at the Grove Hotel in Hertfordshire but hadn’t been well enough to do it. Maureen finally went to redeem the tea this year and, as she was leaving, there was the golf cart that used to drive us all around when it rained. Maureen just texted, ‘That bloody golf cart!’ I was able to write back, ‘You know somebody who would have a great big smile on her face today.’ These are the little moments we cherish, the tiny messages from the universe that perhaps we’re not completely alone.

  Sometimes I find myself being a little angry at what I call the wasted years of the drinking, when I let myself down and upset her so badly. But all the time I knew a better person was in there, and Tans knew it too. That’s an incredible thing to take with me, every day. That someone believed in me. It makes everything fall into a perspective I can live with.

  My advice to anyone going through this is to keep busy and go and talk to someone.

  I’m so tired, though – I’m so tired that I can’t get excited about anything. That’s not like me. I can’t get a buzz. If I just checked my numbers now and had won the Euro millions, I don’t think you’d see a different expression on my face. If a truck came towards me in the street, I’m not sure I’d be able to dive out of the way. They say depression is anger without energy; well, I guess I have that.

  I’m really, really irritable, too. I’m very quick and short tempered. It feels like … like confusion. I don’t know.

  All I can say is if you’ve got problems and you think that the weight is too heavy, you have to go and speak to somebody.

  And if you need to leave, like we did from our house, Greenleaf, then just leave the place.

  I know Tans’ love will get me through this. I’m looking after Kaley for her, but I’m not ready to do much else – I’m not at that stage yet. I still want to hide a little bit. I think, ‘Just leave me with her for a minute. Let us have our moment. I’m not done with our moment.’

  And I don’t know how long it will take for that feeling to change. That’s a very private thing. Sure, I’ve got to run around being busy, doing X Factor, and acting, and the tours, and playing golf, and everything. But that’s my brave face, an art face that I put on, every time I leave the house. I have an entertainer’s suit and a grief suit. I take the art face and the entertainer’s suit off at night and I sadly don the others, when I’m alone and Tans isn’t there.

  What’s happened to our family is too big to really get our heads around. Recently I said to Kaley, ‘Right. You know, I feel we’re moving on a little bit now,’ and as I said it, I thought, ‘Of course we’re not.’

  Of course we’re not. There’s no moving on.

  I’m going to get through this, though – that’s the thing. But grief is not like a sweet wrapper in the wind – it’s not going to flit off and go further and further away. And it’s not like a boat going under the bridge downstream – it’s not going to go away out of sight. So that’s why I say I’m trying to build a joyous grief and really embrace the great love that Tans and I had, and build on it and strive off it, and that’s where my energy will come from.

  And we need to fulfil Tans’ wishes. If we can keep moving forward – a house, maybe a baby one day for Lauren and Kaley, god willing – then her final wishes will come true, and that’s not nothing.

  I saw that little girl’s face today when we were walking around that house. That, there, is everything now. That’s her mother, shining through Kaley, smiling at me, a little girl aged 11 or 12 in Sun Sports in Watford, a lifetime ago, before all this happened, before before before.

  Epilogue:

  THE HOUSE IN VAN NUYS

  It sits in the north-west corner of a quiet cul-de-sac in Van Nuys, a neighbourhood about half an hour from where we live now. There’s a little yard out front, leading to the garage; the house itself sits back a bit at the end of a sloping driveway. Inside there are three bedrooms, two bathrooms. It’s about twelve hundred square feet. There’s a big kitchen with plenty of space for Lauren, who’s a professional chef, to create her magic. At the back there’s a closed-in porch which looks out over a big yard, which boasts a cabana kind of thing, with a built-in grill and barstools and a TV.

  This was the one last thing we had to complete, one last promise we’d made to Tans. We’d spent months looking and making offers and getting out-bid, but still we tried. And then we found the house in Van Nuys, Kaley made the offer and – boom.

  We used the money we made when we sold Hunter’s Oak, the place where it all really began for the three of us. And maybe when Kaley moves in, it will lighten the grief a bit more, because it’s something else that we’ve fulfilled for her. Maybe I’ll be able to look up into the sky and imagine Tans’ smile, the one I lived with for 27 years.

  Now it’s up to me to let go a bit and let Kaley and Lauren fly.

  I’ve done up a lot of houses and I love it, but I have to let them do it their way. I went to the new house with them and in my head I made a list. I want to change the doors, paint this, paint that, knock that wall out, knock this wall out – but it has to come from them. I have to stand back; it’s got to be all their own decisions.

  As I write, Kaley and Lauren have just left to go to Home Depot to look at light fixtures and bedroom stuff and bathroom stuff. It’s what me and Tans always did. It’s déjà vu.

  I’m alone in this rental, near my golf club, in Los Angeles, in early 2020. It’s been a good, beautiful day in California. I played golf with my dear friends, made some silly Instagram movies and larked about, though I shot a much higher score than I used to – I just don’t have the drive, literally and figuratively, right now. It’ll come back I suppose; who knows? And maybe I’ll stay in Los Angeles; maybe I’ll move back to the UK full time. I’ll land wherever I land. I always have. Until one day I land back with Tanya, wherever she is in the universe.

  Will I be happy in three years, or six years, nine? Who knows? All I know is I am getting nearer to those pearly gates. I’m going to entertain Tans for a little while until I get there.

  Tansy has been gone seven months today.

  We’re busy getting work done on Kaley and Lauren’s house, and we aim to have it finished by 14 April, Tans’ birthday. Kaley and Lauren will sleep in the house for the first time that night, and wake up on Kaley’s birthday, 15 April.

  I’ve got to look after this beautiful spirit that Tans brought into this world. I’ve got to see it through, now, until this little girl is in her new house with her partner. Then, hopefully, in the near future, there will be three of them living there (plus their little dog), and I’ll be over there cooing and singing ‘Where Do You Go to My Lovely’ to my grandchild – no, to our grandchild – and telling that little boy or girl all about their grandmother, Tanya Jones, my Tans, and how she was the most wonderful person who ever lived.

  Acknowledgements

  Myself and my daughter Kaley, who helped me write this book, would like to thank the following: Lou Lamont, Maureen Lamont, Shane Lamont, Lauren Keefe, Julie McGregor, Joanne Southern, Harefield Hospital, Dr Andrew Mitchell, Sir Magdi Yacoub, Cedars-Sinai Hospital, Dr Fred Rosenfelt, Luke Dempsey, Vicky Eribo, Alex Segal at InterTalent Rights Group and Alex Cole at Elevate Entertainment.

/>   Illustrations

  Tanya and Shane – sister and brother, and best friends all her life.

  Tanya and Shane with their parents, Lou and Maureen Lamont. Tans was already a fashion maven, even by the age of three.

  Shane pretending to run for prime minister? Tanya would have voted for him – she was his biggest fan.

  Tanya and Shane at Ganders Ash, in front of a clock that’s still there. Tanya wore that leotard at all times so she could do her gymnastics at a moment’s notice.

  Tans was beautiful inside and out. I was so punching above my weight – and that’s a feeling I had until the day she died.

  In Watford General, right after having Kaley, and right before her heart stopped working.

  Tans couldn’t have known that in a few weeks she’d receive a heart transplant that would save her life.

  Summers at Hunter’s Oak with Kaley. I moved in next door by chance, and the rest is history.

  Tans loved being a mother; she and Kaley shared an otherworldly bond.

  My first Christmas as a guest of Lou and Maureen at Gaddesden Crescent.

  We loved each other so much we got married twice; once in a registry office on Friday, 24 June 1994, and again on Saturday, 25 June 1994 at our house at Redbourn.

  For our Saturday wedding 200 people attended the ceremony, and 400 came to the party in the evening.