How To Manage Grief: Begin Again Moments

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1:22Davina McCall:Hi, everyone. So this is Begin Again Moments. moments and we have handpicked some really magical moments from Begin Again. This week it's Andy Oliver talking about the death of her brother Sean and she talks about it so beautifully and grief is something we will all have to navigate at some point in our lives and we thought you might really enjoy this one.

1:52Gelong Thubten:Sean was a sickle cell sufferer I'm a carrier It was very tricky And then when he was about So he was 18 months older than me When he was about 12 or 13 We found out that he had a Expected lifespan of 30 I feel like

2:13Davina McCall:Remembering Sean I remember him being The most laid back Chilled out, relaxed calm and I wonder now you telling me that um exertion yes um brought on whether whether years of knowing that if I get over excited or I do but it it made him completely unique yeah yeah this level of of chill chill was so attractive to me that over enthusiastic fast brain yeah I mean

2:48Gelong Thubten:so smart his brain was really really really fast but he was very and also i'm his sister so he was the opposite of me and like physically energetically so i would do all the energy stuff and he would sort of direct me from the sofa he would get me to do the most unbelievable shit right like i and we would get and i was always like but what you know i was quite neurotic what if we get in trouble and he'd go yeah but we'll still have done it just I can go and get the thing get the wine Nick Dad's wine you know terrible naughty he was so naughty he was naughty but in a really good way

3:24Davina McCall:a really unbelievably charismatic way I also just want to say I don't know if it's possible on the YouTube channel that we're going to put this on but at this point I would love to put a really beautiful picture of Sean Oliver please so everybody can see the beauty Sean, because, no, really, Andy, he was breathtakingly beautiful. But, like, his energy matched his beauty. Like, it was just, he was incredible.

3:58Gelong Thubten:He was incredible. I mean, the reason I've got my look on my face is because I'm just remembering how annoyed I used to get because he used to sleep with everybody. I just want to let you know, I never had sex with Sean. You're literally one of the only people I know.

4:14Davina McCall:I did happen to be sleeping with his best friend, though. That would have been bad.

4:17Gelong Thubten:Yes, I may not have stopped him. Just going to say, just going to say, OK? Just going to say. But he did very much love Bree, so it probably would have stopped him. But he was unbelievable. I mean, I would get friends and I'd go, can you not? Just, can you just not? And he'd go, and he actually said to me once, can't promise anything. And I was like, I hate you! And then, of course, he slept with her. Just to sleep with everybody. And, you know, with Sean, I just think he wanted to eat up as much life as he possibly could, whether it was with sex, with music, with everything. You know, he just had this.

4:52Gelong Thubten:It's interesting because he was, as you say, incredibly chilled out about everything. Just didn't have those kind of trigger points that a lot of people do. He just didn't have them. But he had an urgency about living. But was that was he aware of his life expectancy? OK. From the age of about 12, he knew that. Wow. because that's really going to affect yeah it's massive but in a way also I think that we couldn't really conceive of what it meant no because 30 seems so far away yes when you're 12 30 is like some far off land you know but we knew it was that meant it was young but it was still hard for us to get our heads around and when he died he was 27 can you tell me a bit about that my oh worst time of my life to be now I was at the globe which was a sort of dive bar in uh what's it what square is it it was the bottom of Powys Terrace which is where I lived and it was a little dive bar place that we all used to run and run around in and it was the first place I ever cooked food and people paid me was in the globe remember when I used to do yeah I do and uh there was a party in Upstead, Carmen Munro, who is a black English actress, Caribbean English actress, was in there.

6:14Gelong Thubten:And I love Carmen Munro, she was in there. And every time I see her face, it reminds me of that night now. And I was in the kitchen and the phone rang. Remember, nobody had mobiles then. It was 35 years ago. Nobody had mobiles. The phone in the globe rang. And it was somebody calling me from the hospital. I still don't know who it was, actually. I don't know who called me. I can't remember I just remember a voice say you've got to come to the hospital now Sean's sick and I got in a cab I don't know who was with me I actually the I remember the phone ringing and from the phone ringing to after Sean's funeral it's all a very weird surreal hard to place hard to put my finger on thing it's this nebulous way thing I remember odd bits of it at funny times and um I went to the hospital and Sam was there Sam Robinson his girlfriend who they were engaged to be married he loved her so deeply like Sam was the tamer she was the lion tamer you know he just adored her and Sam was there I think Hussain was there who was our friend dear friend and manager sean's manager um i can't remember who else was there maybe miranda was there actually as well sam's sister miranda might have been there um there were a few people there anyway and he'd had a sort of stroke and oh we were all out in the waiting area and the doctors came back through and as soon as they walked through i knew and they went to Sam because she was his girlfriend I think and sort of sat down in front of him and said he's just had a what do they call it basically he'd had a heart attack and a stroke simultaneously and it killed him because he was having a sickle cell crisis and the whole thing was just too much of his body the whole thing overloaded and it killed him and I ran past them and he was in the bed no I'd already seen him because I said to him I spoke to him and I said well you'll be home in a couple of days when you get home I'll make you some soup and he was conscious and then he went back out and we went back out again and he was weak I remember that he was weak because he didn't want to be there he hated it there and he was like when can I come home and I was like you'll be home in a couple of days and I'll come and I'll make you some soup and he was like alright fine and then they came and basically said he told us he'd died.

8:54Gelong Thubten:And I ran back in and I grabbed him and I could tell he wasn't in there. He'd gone, he'd left. And he was cold. Body wasn't, it just wasn't, it didn't have the vitality, it didn't have the soul spark in it anymore.

9:17Gelong Thubten:And my mum was on the way. and she didn't get there in time. And I stood in the car park waiting for her to come and I couldn't call her and tell her. There was no phone, you know, so I just stood in the car park waiting for my mum to come. And she got out of the car and she was just so hopeful. And I said, she's gone, mum. She just crumpled. It was the worst moment of my life. I've got tissues I've taken them all out already and having to tell her that he had gone you know it was just a phase I'll never forget a phase

10:07and you know

10:08Gelong Thubten:it nearly broke us it nearly broke you it nearly broke all of us because he was such a you know death does that to people obviously but Sean was a special person and I'm sure everybody feels that about the person they lost but Sean really was a special person

10:28Davina McCall:Do you know what Andy I've been thinking about him a lot obviously because I knew I was going to talk to you today and I thought how lovely for Sean that it's 35 years right 35 years later we're still feeling the hole that Sean left and I was in bed with Bruce the phone rang I picked it up, it was Nenna and I put the phone down and I thought I've got to wake you up and give you the worst news of your life that your best friend since you, I don't know how old they were teenagers too Really then, kids. Has gone. And I was like, I don't want to wake you up. To change his life ever. Yeah. It's awful.

11:24Gelong Thubten:But the beautiful thing out of that is that he made,

11:30Davina McCall:in his very short... Short life. 27 years, a massive impact.

11:37Gelong Thubten:You know, on his gravestone, it says, he who burns twice as bright burns half as long. Yeah. and there's a shooting star on his gravestone. And it's never truer, never a truer word was spoken when it relates to my brother. And I, you know, the further away I get from it, the more grateful I am that I had him at all. Yes. And the further away I get from it, I understand that life is what happens to you when you're here and what you do with that period of time. Some people live until they're 95 and don't make any impact at all. And, you know, there's a sadness to that, deep sadness. And I think of Sean's funeral.

12:19Gelong Thubten:Remember the funeral? There were people that you couldn't get into the crematorium. There were people, it was a sunny day. It was like the royal death that happened on Nabok Road. The whole place went still. The hearse came up the road. It's amazing. There were people lined on the streets. And all around the outside of the crematorium, there's like banks. and there were black people four deep on the banks outside the crematorium. And that's a testament to my brother and what he did with the time that he had here. And that's a beautiful, powerful thing. And his children are incredible. His grandchildren are extraordinary.

12:55Gelong Thubten:And I get to have them and be them. And I get to be his sister forever. You know, that's the other thing. I'm like so proud that that was my brother and that I got to have that with him, that we got to tour the world. We got to be in this incredible band together and do all this extraordinary things in this really short space of time. You know, so I, as an older person, I have so much gratitude for having him at all. And I remember, I don't know if I've told you this, but I think I might have told you when you and Sarah came to do Staring Up with me and Makita. Margie Clark as an actress, she was in that film years ago, something about Letter to Brezhnev it was called she was the lead and it's a brilliant Liberpudian actor, just fantastic woman and I met her after Sean had died I was with Viv Goldman walking up Port Vella Road and there was a big bus there and Margie was filming and Margie brought us onto the bus and Viv said oh this is Andy and I was, you know she was explaining to Margie why I kept bursting into tears and Margie said Andy's brother died a few weeks ago and it was literally a couple of weeks later.

14:03Gelong Thubten:And Margie sat down and she took my hands and she said, I lost my brother 23 years ago. And I was like, it was like water to a dying woman. I'm hearing these words because I looked at her and I knew she understood. And she said, it'll never go away, but you'll find somewhere to keep it. She said, people will say lots of things to you and you probably sort of all the fuck off. And I said, sure. And she said, this is all I can give you. And it was the greatest gift anybody could ever give me. And it's turned out to be absolutely true. It's never gone away, but I find somewhere, I've found a little quiet place within and that's where it lives.

14:48Gelong Thubten:The pain of it. And every now and again, it comes up like just now. And it feels very recent and real and all over again.

14:56Davina McCall:I mean, we were discussing before we started how mad it is that the last time I saw you, because life is just so mad, isn't it? Yeah, we have to tell. I was on your podcast, stirring it up, and it was a year ago. To this week. And we realised then, oh my God, it's actually the anniversary of your brother dying this week. And we've done it again. And we've done it again this week.

15:17Gelong Thubten:Without knowing or realising. We just realised at the car. Yeah, last night a lady in bed and I went, hang on, what day is it? I was like, my God, we've done it again. So this weekend, it will be 35 years since Sean died. So that to me, see, I feel like they are stardust. They are stardust. The people we lose are stardust. And they live in us. They live all around us. I believe this really firmly. We've both lost enough people at this point in our lives. You know, I'm not a religious person, but I do have a spiritual sense of the world that I cling to. Sometimes like it's a lifeboat, you know, that sense of that which we cannot put our fingers on, that which is intangible.

16:04Gelong Thubten:And that's what, again, coming back to these things about books and music, those are the things that books and music help me to connect to, is the stuff that we cannot imagine, the stuff that's bigger than us, that's greater than us, that is outside of our control. It has nothing to do with what we decide and what we choose. It just is, you know. and after I think any great loss in your life connecting to that is the thing that keeps you alive and keeps you going and keeps you inside your own body because somehow grief makes you leave your own body you kind of float above yourself I you know there was a it took a good couple of years before I re-entered my body after Sean died I was like hovering above for quite a

16:49Davina McCall:long time I felt when my sister died I felt like the whole world just stopped spinning and I'd go places and I think oh the world's still spinning for you like I can't move forwards yeah I'm literally stuck which they're meant to do yeah which everybody's meant to do but it was um it's quite hard to explain that to somebody yeah this episode is brought to you by peloton break through

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18:00Davina McCall:Hilton, for this day. I wanted to talk to you as well about grief. because I feel like grief at this time of our lives is something that we have to deal with a lot. But it can be, especially for somebody, I've had a life of loss throughout my life, but a bit like you, I'm so grateful that I've had it bit by bit. But sometimes people get to this stage of their life and they lose a lot of people in like a five-year period. Like a domino effect.

18:35Gelong Thubten:Yeah.

18:37Davina McCall:What can people do with that? I mean, possibly a similar thing to what you were saying earlier, but have you got any advice?

18:44Andi Oliver:I think we need to recognize how much we're conditioned to deny the facts of life and death. You know, we're so conditioned to have this weird sort of fantasy of immortality. Yes. I mean, intellectually, we know everybody dies, but we don't know that emotionally. We don't. So we're so shocked when it happens. And we use, even in our language, we use expressions like, if I die, as if there are options.

19:24Davina McCall:Yes, not when. I never thought about that. The fact we can say, if I die, really does suggest that there's a part of us that thinks,

19:33Andi Oliver:well, you know, there's a side door.

19:36Davina McCall:I could avoid that. The other thing is people are very, they really struggle with the word, they've died, they're dead.

19:45Andi Oliver:They say they've passed away.

19:47Davina McCall:They've left us.