How has the Reniverse helped me? Well, ain’t that a doozy?? The Reniverse arrived in my life just when I needed it to……. I’m still a relative newcomer to the world of Ren, approaching 3 years deep now. There’s not much left of Ren or The Big Push that I haven’t listened to, absorbed and thoroughly enjoyed. I’m aware of at least one song of Ren’s that I haven’t listened to…..yet. I’ll get round to that……errrr……’soon’ (sorry, I had to 😉🤣)!! Anyway, back to the point…. In February of 2020, on a Friday evening, I got a knock at the door at 11:00ish at night. I stopped the bumping and banging I had been doing in the kitchen pretending to be some sort of Gen X wonder-expert of DIY (I’m not - I can usually bodge a ‘that’ll do’ approximation, but by no means anything close to ‘expert’). So, I went to answer the door. It was the police!! …..eeek….errr….. “I’m really sorry, I’ll stop with the hammering, I’ve literally just finishe……..” “Sir…..” “….erm, yeeessss??” **WTF??** “Can we come in, please?” ……. Now, we had a houseful in, family members and friends, so I wasn’t keen on walking into the living room without the chance to instruct everybody to behave as the local constabulary had decided to pop in for……as yet unknown, but I could see in the officer’s eyes that something very important and serious needed to be discussed as immediately as possible. I beckoned both officers in! The panic already building in me, I scooted ahead to the living room and gained a second or two advantage to blurt out, “The police are here!”, to the room. Luckily nobody dived to put anything away in a hurry, so that was good 😰 Now that I had the room’s attention and as two police officers walked in behind me, I locked eyes with my wife and said, “Something’s happened”, and attempted to give her a ‘I’m sorry, honey, but what you’re about to hear is quite probably gonna be horrible……I think….but I’m right here. I love you’ look. I never actually checked if she managed to translate that non-verbal gymnastics I was performing that night. I’ll find out, one day…. So, the police explained that there had been an accident involving our daughter! **Okay? She’s okay, right?** She was in Fort William! **WTF was she doing there? That’s like 60 odd miles away** She had gone to pick up her husband who was working down there! **Sooooo, he wasn’t in the car yet??** She was on her way back towards Inverness when the accident happened! **So, he WAS in the car!!** “Oh my god, who was looking after the kids?”, I think were the first words I heard (not mine) that weren’t thoughts. The officers looked at each other, one gave the inevitable polite throat clearance before delivering the news that the two wee girls were also in the car; our daughter had taken her two lassies out on a road trip for 60-odd miles each way just because the weather was awesome, she loved to drive and it would have made her husband’s week to be picked up from his worksite on that day by his three gorgeous girls!! “Oh my God!! So what’s happening? Are they in hospital? What exactly is going on??” “Errrrrmm……*voice crack*……they were declared dead at the scene!” “Who was?? The kids are okay??” as if the kids surviving was somehow a mitigation or even a ‘bonus’. “They all…….” “Nononono……..” I wasn’t going to let him finish, the poor guy was struggling to get the words out. I’m not actually sure what happened after that - shell shock, numbness, processing, over-processing, reprocessing, re-over-processing, malfunctions. **SHIIIIIT, I need to fix that last wee plumbing job in the kitchen, because when I finally work out what that copper has just said to me, I’m not gonna be wanting to do it.** So, THAT is what I did in that moment, I was being pro-active. I didn’t want to be dealing with a leaking kitchen sink waste trap when the arse was falling out of my world in the morning - that would probably overwhelm me!! I knew there was a shitstorm coming - but at the moment, there was an eerie zen-like calm. Don’t get me wrong, we were upset - all of us, everyone in the house (our friends and family members weren’t ’ushered out’ when the police informed us) but we hadn’t quite worked out just how upset we needed to be. I think most of us kinda got the organised head on, and set about preparing the ramparts for the psychological siege we were about to be subjected to. Aaaand, what a siege that was!!! My boss at the time managed to pull some strings and authorise a full 6 months of compassionate leave (by this time, of course, Covid had kicked off, but we weren’t quite into lockdown…..yet) and I NEEDED every day of that…and probably could have done with more!! Anyway….so, the Reniverse???? Where does this come in? Right, so I had my big noisy ‘breakdown’ grieving on the day of the funeral/wake; I drunk enough Jack Daniels to destroy most mortals, and fell homewards where I slethered and drooled and cried like I’ve never cried in my life, so that checkbox was checked, right? Right!? Nuh-uh!! Grief don’t work like that!! Nah, it’s weird, it’s unpredictable, it’s exhausting!! I did my thing! I turned up for work!! I painted on that smile!! I “functioned”!! Didn’t I?? Inside, I was destroyed!! I was hurting!! I had no idea of how to let it out!! I would randomly burst out crying, get angry, feel hopeless, desolate, bleak, go numb, zone out. I was scared! I had at a point in history had what I think might have been a full-on psychotic ‘break’ (paranoia, delusions, hallucinations, malevolent voices)** and was actually twisting myself up thinking I was heading that way again if I couldn’t figure this out. **a story for another day….maybe!? I’d heard some rumblings about some independent young(ish….or, at least, a good bit younger than me) lad called Ren who had been making some sort of waves in the underground/independent music scene. My missus was playing some tunes one day and I listened to a couple of them - *okaaay, my interest in piqued*. I watched a couple of videos (Sick Boi was first, if I remember correctly) and THAT is when I realised I was watching someone special!! I tumbled headlong into the rabbit-hole after that and embraced the freefall!! It was when I first heard ‘Suic*de’ that something started to happen; when Ren cried at the end, I cried with him - I bawled my eyes out! There are songs that are powerful and will make me cry, there are songs that are beautiful and will make me cry, there are songs that are sad and will make me cry. Then there are those songs, like Suic*de, that absolutely break my heart and make me feel that all-familiar actual pain and grief. I think until that moment, only The Cure had ever managed to move me like THAT!! Hearing Ren expose himself so openly, letting it all show, even the sticky, mucus-y bits FINALLY made me sit up and realise that ‘Yes, other people are out there that know pain like mine’. “This is genuine shit! This guy is important! He knows about life…..and, naturally, death!!!” Hearing Suic*de and then For Joe a short time into the future taught me more about grief than I had learned in my life previous to that moment. It also showed me that just simply letting it out can be helpful. So that’s what I did!! I just wrote, splurged…..a poemy thingummy based on the structure and idea of the spoken heartbreak bit at the end of Suic*de!! You know what? The moment I finished that was more therapeutic, more exhilarating and more productive than the previous 4 years of blindly stumbling around not having a clue about what to do or how to find out what to do. I released my scribblings on the fantastically amazing Rabbit Hole fan page on Facebook and I was immediately inundated with some of the most beautiful, insightful and supportive comments from what can only be described as the single best community of like-minded darlings on the face of this planet. And THAT, folks, is how the Reniverse has definitely helped and is continuing to help me!! I don’t want to sound twee or cliché, but Ren’s music spoke to me, and his fans gave me a huge, warm cuddle!! Thank you all, just keep being beautiful! A Poemy Thingummy Thing It's hard to think of a time before your short lives were cut Without this paralysing pain that completely fucks me up I’ve cried an entire ocean, will it ever stop? It’s hard to see things clearly when my eyes are rough I guess “God” had decided that that’s your lot Denial and anger bubbling, sticking like a clot Bargaining, my life for yours’, it’s worth a shot Depression, cutting deep before more accepting thoughts I try not to think about that sprawling moment on that fateful night Coming round that bend full of panic and dreadful fright Two sweet angels oblivious to the shadow blocking the light Lurking, hiding, waiting until the moment was wrong (or is that right?) A gaping void where your smile once lived I can’t really total up what I would fucking give To see it once again and heal this massive rift Just another moment with you here would be the greatest gift I miss the flying, whirling, spinning dance To the crazy rap about the Enderman I even miss your unhinged, don’t-give-a-fuck rants About silly shit like where himself dumps his pants You were all shining beacons glowing in a broken world Glimmers of pure light, before life was violently hurled Into chaos, darkness and untold hurt Why you? Why him? Why them? Absurd Four years on and I’m still not sure If there’s even such a thing as a cure For the desolate, lonely result of your Absence from this world - I love you pure