Grief & Audley

I was dreading the funeral, as it got closer I would have done anything to magically have woken up the day after, but now it’s happened it was actually a kind of nice day. Obviously it was a tough day, not something I plan on going through again, but it was also a great celebration of his life.

The funeral was pretty much a full house, as was our home afterwards. This made a difference, it was nice that so many people were there because of my Dad, rather than necessarily showing their support to us, because it affirmed to me what I’ve always thought of the guy, which is that he was just a really nice fun bloke to be around who will be sorely missed. Not only did a lot of his friends turn up, a lot of mine did too, again not because they were showing their support to me (which was nice) but because my Dad really was just one of the guys when my friends were around and everyone loved the youth club that was the Carter family home when I was a teenager.

It’s probably premature to spout advice about dealing with grief given I’m less than three weeks into it myself, but I think I am handling things well and this is what I’ve learnt about it so far:

Talk about them – I know people who think the best thing to do is avoid the subject but talking about Dad regularly, good things and bad, has really helped me get my head round whats been going on. It feels like you are keeping the memory more alive.

Go through every stage of the grieving process – I actually thought I would try and avoid things like seeing his body, arranging the funeral etc, but again doing these things have helped, they’ve been unpleasant, but they have helped me come to terms with things.

Do – I’ve been working, which has been a great distraction. I’ve been doing my best to sort out his estate and run errands for mum, which has helped me feel like I am being useful. I went out on Saturday and I’ve been going to the gym. It doesn’t numb the pain completely, but it does get you out of the limbo of sitting around doing nothing.

A long way to go yet, perhaps the worst is yet to come, but the whole thing has made me realise how lucky I am to have what I still have in life – great job, great fiancée, great family, great friends, great dog.

On to cheerier stuff and I went to Haye vs Harrison over the weekend and what a joke that was. I did actually enjoy myself because I was with some good mates and we had a laugh, in fact we had a real laugh on the way back at just how bad it was and the chants of 'Your shit and you know you are' will always make me giggle.

It was such a shame because the atmosphere in the MEN was amazing. The crowd were going nuts when Frank Bruno & Lennox Lewis got in the ring together and it really felt like a special night was brewing.

Then Audley came out to a weak ass Phil Collins tune and I knew the writing was on the wall. Don’t get me wrong, I never expected a great fight, I was going for a laugh with my mates more than anything, but it was even worse than I could have feared. I’ve actually seen a pretty interesting video which suggests the fight may have been a fix, I’ll leave that for you to decide.

Booing Audley in real life was so much fun, Dad would have been proud. I can only imagine the chat for his table on Full Tilt will be gold. 

Things at PokerNews are going great and I am getting involved in some pretty exciting stuff right now, more of that to follow I guess. 

Finally this made me lol