Menopause, funerals and some very questionable decisions

Previously in Helen?’s Story…

In Part 1 – Big girl pants, cinemas, ice creams and hot flushes – Helen? shared her ten-year menopause journey: hot flushes, weight gain, COVID destroying her business, a devastating battle with Polymyalgia, and the struggle to rebuild her confidence and career. Through it all, friendship, resilience, and a stubborn refusal to give up helped her keep moving forward.

But Part 2 begins where things take an unexpected turn… involving three funerals, friendship, menopause and one very questionable Harley Davidson purchase.

Helen?’s story continues in this moving and unexpectedly funny chapter.

Ladies. Your closest friends are your main support. They sprinkle their magic dust over you when you need it.

During all that time, from the initial interview for the job through to leaving it and suddenly realising I was unemployed again over the next few months Venus constantly encouraged me to try and do new things. She still says that I’m talented. Maybe I am but I haven’t got the confidence to do that for myself. Not once has she wavered in her support of me. Plus also she ‘gets’ me. I think that’s a big thing, her getting me. But we’ve always bounced ideas like this off each other. She’s always believed in my business. Which was a fantastic business. Right until the minute. That COVID killed it

So here we are, sort of September, October 2025. Okay. This is also probably a menopausal thing. Or maybe this is something that might happen to anyone, at any age. But it happened to be last October.

Jury service
I was called to do jury service.
And there was no really good reason why I couldn’t do it.

It turned out to be extremely difficult: Just the physical drag of getting there every day I was exhausted. Public transport in South Devon is difficult. I had to go to court in Plymouth, every day. The buses were unreliable. You had to turn up to court on time. I was on a particularly unsuitable route, which went all around the houses. And at the same time….

Sorry I need to backtrack a little to put this story into context.
To tell you about some of my oldest friends.
I’m going to be as vague about this as possible. And selective about some of it.
Let’s just say that I first met Ares when I first moved to Warrington, to go to art school.

We were 18-ish. We hit it off straight away. There was a group of us. We all just clicked at art school, we’d have lunches together go to the pub and generally hang out. We all did our own stuff, there were some kids from my junior school there too which added to the group becoming a bigger bunch of friends, who kept in touch over the years.

Our lives changed. We all went off in different directions. But that bond we had built helped us say in touch especially when Facebook came along.

Now. I met Ares when I was. 19. He was 17. But I probably met him on the same night that I met the other group of people who are still in my life. One of them being Don.

At some point in your fifties, you realise you only see some friends at funerals.

And then, of course, when you get to my more mature age, people sadly start dying. Funerals seem to become the only time you catch up with old friends and former lovers, and they were really the only occasions when we saw each other.

Funeral #1
The next time I saw Ares was about eight or nine years ago sadly, at Don’s funeral.

Don’s funeral was in Lincoln. When all the group arrived at the funeral we just slipped back into taking the piss off out of each other -Just because we’d known each other that long. Because we’d all been just teenagers and forming when we met. We just slipped back to the way we were.

Funeral #2
And a few years later, another of the group sadly died – so then it was Martin’s funeral.

Martin died of pancreatic cancer. Very quickly. Out of the blue.
I think at that time he was 52. He hadn’t been feeling well.
He was in the Ministry Hospital on a Monday morning.
Monday lunchtime, he was told he had pancreatic cancer.
By Monday evening he’d died.

That’s when we, the friends really started keeping in touch.

Menopausal woman might find this amusing. And yeah, it was funny. And it was awful:

Martin’s funeral was in Cambridgeshire.
Martin was a biker. For his funeral cortège, he was taken to the crematorium in the sidecar of a motorcycle. He was in the sidecar, obviously—not riding the bike himself. And he was in a coffin, not sitting on top waving at everyone.

For his funeral cortège, he was taken to the crematorium in the sidecar of a motorcycle. He was in the sidecar, obviously—not riding the bike himself

The funeral cortege had arranged to meet up at the local Harley Davidson dealership. So that’s where everybody set off from.

Now I’d been drinking the night before, because a bunch of us had gone to Cambridgeshire & met up. None of us lived in Cambridgeshire so it had been a trek to get there and the evening ran away from us. We’d had quite a lot to drink. and I probably wasn’t quite sober as we all met up at this dealership on the morning of the funeral.

My mum had died about a year or so before that and I’d come into my part of the inheritance. Which was frankly burning a hole in my pocket at the time.

I didn’t have a bike then, although I did have my motorcycle licence.
I’d never owned a Harley Davidson.

I’m five foot four. With short legs.
I hadn’t realised that Harley Davidson’s are low.
Probably something that the guy in the showroom shouldn’t have done was to show me a Harley – and let me sit on it.

The moment I sat down, the temptation was there…
‘Oh my God. I can touch the floor. I’ll have it!’
Because I had money in the bank, I just put the money down there and then.

And then we left to go to the funeral.

There were other shenanigans too, with the usual fun and games, of course. When your mate’s died, it’s important to have family and friends around, and we all knew each other so well. It made the day easier to cope with.

There was Bob and Gabby. There was Mark. There were Megs and Andy. There were Ares and Medea. And there was Martin.

Well, no, obviously Martin wasn’t there.
Well… he was there. But he was dead.

There were also people that you kind of thought you’d hope you’d never see again but you have to be polite to them because they might have been really shit to their past girlfriend of twenty years ago who happened to be your mate from school. But, you know, you have to get on with it. Anyway. this was Martin’s funeral. (This bit is all about funerals by the way.)

Martin was there. Well… he was there. But he was dead.

Going back to last July.
July 25th. When I just kind of thought. You know what. This job isn’t for me I can’t really be getting up in the morning doing it anymore. Whatever.
I’d also been in touch with another long-time friend who put out on Facebook.. We’d caught up on Facebook over the years. And managed to meet up a couple of times. She also happened to be the long-term girlfriend of Ares. The guy that I mentioned earlier.

She’d put out on Facebook, she was diagnosed with vaginal cancer. And that it had spread. She was diagnosed in July. We kept in touch. Medea and I. A little bit. Well. As much as we could. Obviously she was trying to have as much treatment as she could. But in October, she lost the battle. The week that I was doing jury service.

I knew that Medea was going to die. And kept in touch until she was no longer able to keep in touch.

So, I went to do jury service one morning. By that time, I was checking Facebook every day because I knew that somebody would say something, knowing that she was in her final stages.

Halfway during that week, there was a message on Facebook, on her account. That just said she’s gone. And it was just like, Fuck. Really? Okay. But still I had to go into court. And queue up to be, you know, frisked for weapons and stuff. And go to a jury room to hear about a very, very nasty rape case.

Medea had died. But then my thoughts turned to Ares. Because they’ve been. together since she was 20 and he was 25. This is a guy who I met when he was 17. By that time, I’d known him for about seventeen years or so, in and out of each other’s orbits. We’d gone to the same parties. We’d done the same stuff. We knew each other’s history including all the inappropriate boyfriends that I’d had.

My husband was a wanker

We went into different careers. He trained as an electrician. When somebody told me that—I was married at the time and needed some electrical work done in the house—I asked Ares to come and do it. He was a mate, and I’d rather give him the work than anyone else.

My husband was a wanker.
When Ares came in, he kind of realised that too but didn’t say anything. But. I kind of almost felt quite embarrassed. And questioned myself, ‘ What am I doing here?’ Not surprisingly, that marriage ended.
And I met Venus soon after.

Funeral # 3
Anyway, back to October 2025.
Obviously. Medea’s funeral is now something to be talked about. There’s no way. I wasn’t going to go because we all the best of friends. And Ares is now on his own.

I’d never even had Ares’s number.
I reached out to a mutual friend ‘Silly John’ and asked for Ares’s number.
Said I’d like to do what I can to help because, I am pretty cool with funerals – having lost both my parents and worked in a hospice. And blah…

Death. Dying. That kind of emotional shit, doesn’t really bother me.
I gave a reading at Don’s funeral. I know that funerals have to be done properly for the living, for the people who are left behind and I want to do what I can.

John texted his number back and I phoned Ares that night.
The other thing that John had told me was that Ares had not only just lost Medea, his partner of 35 years but in the previous 12 months they’d lost Medea’s mum, Ares’s mum and Ares’s stepdad. Which is really too much for anyone.

Funerals have to be done properly for the living, for the people who are left behind.

Anyway, called Ares and said how sorry I was. And he said, “Yeah. You know I would have liked another 20 years. But it is what it is”. I asked ‘Can I help with the funeral?’ He said. “Well. If you want to”. And I went. ‘Yeah. You know you can load anything on to me that you want. Because I don’t care, it’s fine.’

And. I helped a little bit. Not with the funeral arrangements as such. But stuff like putting things on Facebook. Telling people who needed to know when the service was. Because there’s a slight, other complication to this which doesn’t really have any bearing on this story. But I’m going to tell you anyway.

What you don’t know is that Medea was adopted.
She had a really, really, really shitty childhood, I think.
Medea was quite a complicated person. Both her and her brother were adopted. Her brother committed suicide a few years ago – Drink and drugs and being gay. Which nobody else judged him for.
But his birth mother did.

Medea spent a lot of her time, from when I knew her, until her 30s trying to find her birth mother. And when she did the experience. was very disappointing:

Her birth mother had conceived her when she was on acid.
And, (this is only something I only really know in hindsight) then her father would have taken the children. But her birth mother told him that he couldn’t. This was the 70s. These things could happen then. And had Medea and her brother adopted out to two people who were abusers.
I do not know anything about the abuse.
I do not know whether it was physical, emotional. Or spiritual.
But I do know that. Medea was a very damaged person. But equally she was an amazing and wonderful person. And, I wish you’d known Medea.

Anyway, I’m talking to Ares, saying like, ‘Do you want me to help with the food? Because I don’t mind. It’s what Medea would have done to get it under control. But if I could first just let people know on Facebook what had happened. but in a way that didn’t let all and sundry know.

People who knew me, contacted me to get the details. But people that didn’t know me couldn’t get the information, help keeping Medea’s adoptive family out of the loop.

Which is how it worked out. Medea’s funeral was 14 November.

What I hadn’t known was in the last few years Medea & Ares had moved up to north Norfolk. During all these conversations. I thought they still lived near Canterbury and when I found out that I was going 350 miles to a funeral, I was a bit flummoxed to say the least. But never mind. It’s what you do for your mates.

And although I’d not met Ares since Martin’s funeral, and hadn’t had his phone number, and hadn’t spoken to him probably for 20 odd years, because the last time I visited Medea at the Canterbury home he hadn’t been there. I remember Medea & I had had a lovely day out with the dogs on the beach at Herne Bay. You can’t beat that feeling of hearing the sea and seeing the dogs running and loving their freedom.

It’s what you do for your mates.

We also had a fun night together, of course. A few laughs, reminiscing and generally talking rubbish as you do, into the early hours.

Anyway, leaving South Devon I set off to the funeral north of Norfolk. Even being 350 miles away I was determined to go.

I had a torturous journey. I left home just before midnight, two days before the funeral:

Got the sleeper train from South Devon to Paddington, arriving midnight. If you go in the sleeper carriage, you’re allowed to get a shower and stuff at Paddington. Got into there. Then travelled all the way across London to Liverpool Street. Got another train. I left on Wednesday night. I can’t even remember travelling across London but managed to get across London – which is a horrible journey. Anyway, from Liverpool Street to something like Norwich. And then another train to Great Yarmouth. Got to Great Yarmouth about noon. But I was not able to check into my hotel until three o’clock. I felt like a zombie – so I had to hang around on a beach in freezing Winkworth. Norfolk in November is not fun! I could have flown to Australia the time it took to get here.

Got to my hotel.
Phoned Ares, said ‘I’m here’ and he went. “Right, okay, great. Well, funeral’s tomorrow. I’ll pick up a bunch of people tonight to go out for something to eat beforehand. [people I’d not met before] and I’ll see you later.” And I said, ‘Well yeah, fine. But I might fall asleep – so get them to bang on the door or something. Get them to come and get me’

I had a nice bath. Had a couple of glasses of wine. Six o’clock that evening I got a phone call to say that they were downstairs.
Went down and met them. And as the lift doors opened, that was the first time I’d set eyes on him for about well, twenty years… The geeky, skinny, ginger seventeen-year old in my mind. Pfff. Who was this big, tall handsome, sad, familiar person with Medea’s other best mate, Abigail? [Who’s known Medea since she was 15] They bundled me into a transit van. It was difficult getting up to the seats because I still had a bit of Polymyalgia.

We were due at the restaurant in about an hour’s time. So, first we went to Ares’s place. Just sat down and had a cup of tea before we went out for dinner. Obviously I was very, very aware of Ares’s sadness. And very happy that Abigail was there, who I’d never met. But we hit it off straight away. Because we both loved Medea. And we both loved Ares in a friendly way.

We sat down. And within a couple of minutes we were chattering away.
He turned around to me, called me a muppet and It was just like – yeah -We were back being 17, 18 & 19 again. It was like the years had just melted away.

We had a cup of tea. Well I didn’t.
I had a glass of wine, obviously.

We had a cup of tea. Well I didn’t – I had a glass of wine, obviously. And then we got back in the van. More hauling me up into the front seat, (not as elegant as I would have wished) and set off to have some dinner with some other of Medea’s sort of adopted family to reminisce a little bit. That and I think everybody wanted him to have a proper meal before the funeral. Which was always going to be pretty hard.

At some point. Abigail’s son turned up to the restaurant.
It was a rainy night and he’d come on his really nice bike.
As you know. I like bikes…

He came into the restaurant. They knew who he was. I didn’t know who he was. All I knew was I was sitting on one side of the table of about eight people. And. I didn’t know anybody else there. But we were all chatting because we had a lot of things in common. I was facing Ares and Abigail when Abigail’s son, Mike came in & started stripping off his wet bike leathers & his tee-shirt.

Ares clocked me looking beyond him.
Then he turned around to watch me with my mouth open, ogling this 24-year-old God, stripping off bike leathers in my eye line. You know, you’re not going to not look, are you?
Ares caught my eye. And raised his eyebrows as if to say, ‘What are you looking at?’ Anyway, it was all quite light-hearted. The meal finished and we were all friends. I got to talk to Mike – the wet-biker guy. He’s a lovely boy. Then they dropped me off at the hotel. And that was that.

Next day I wake up in the Premier Inn in Great Yarmouth on the seafront and yes, they do have the best beds, went and grabbed some breakfast as it was going to be a long and emotional day. Put the respectable dark outfit on and waited to be collected to go to the funeral. One of Ares’s neighbours drove a Range Rover. We all piled in, picked up another couple of people on the way and went off to the funeral.

You know, you’re not going to not look, are you?

We got to the funeral place. There’s a café where you can meet up – but that morning its roof had blown in. I was so glad I’d had breakfast. Everyone was stressed, mainly because they needed coffee – a whole bunch of disparate people waiting to go into the funeral

I’m going to need to backtrack a bit again…

I worked for a long time for a London courier company called Security Dispatch, I worked there for nine years and I only left to start my own business. I kept on very, very, very good terms with pretty much 30 or 40 people from there.

Weirdly, as I was leaving, Medea was just starting there. Even more bizarrely she ended up doing my logistics job, which was fairly specialised. Although we never worked that job together or even worked at the same place together. It surprised me because I hadn’t really known the extent that all those friends of mine had also become friends of Medea’s. A small world as they say.

And a lot of those people were here at the funeral, and they’d all come from London to Norfolk.

One particular guy that we all loved, Bill – it’s impossible not to love him – rode his bike. The weather was awful. The rain’s coming sideways. The wind was really strong. He rode his bike all the way from Surrey to Norfolk in the pissing rain. He was of course freezing cold and drenched. I saw that his bike was in the car park. But we couldn’t find him.

He was waiting in the chapel.
I went and got him and brought him into the café. Tried to get him warmer with a few hot chocolates. I then said to him. ‘Can you stay with Ares tonight? And he said “No, I’m going straight back.” And I said ‘Please stay, because you’re wet and you can’t go home like this.’ He’d got nothing with him, so he said “No, I really need to get off. We’ll see but I really need to go back”. And I went. ‘Well let’s get you warmed up and stuff. Because you know you can stay, don’t you?’.

Anyway. The funeral happened and did what funerals do. One of the things that I haven’t mentioned yet is that pretty much the last conversation I had with Medea was when I had asked her if there was anything that I could do. And she replied “Marry Ares for me”. And I went. ‘Well I think He’ll probably have other ideas about that! But you know I’ll do what I can to look after him’. That conversation happened. And that conversation actually came up in the eulogy.

At the funeral, I went and sat on the bench a couple of rows behind Ares because, at that point, the others hadn’t come in yet. Otherwise, I would have sat with them. When Ares looked around, he beckoned me to come and sit next to him, which I did. Because you’re not going to not do that when he asks, are you?

Then, the friend giving the eulogy dropped in “Oh, Medea was very cunning, very controlling. Even controlling who Ares should go out with him in the future – she chose that person too.”

At which point. Ares grabbed hold of my hand and sort of raised up in a salute. Which everybody laughed at, all the biker people were there, college friends & dispatch-riding friends, all knew that it was a joke. And, obviously, now me too. We all went back to the reception – what really shocked me as there were at least 60% Security Dispatch people plus biker people. Sometimes the same thing, but not always. And about 5% Medea’s family. Which is sad but she didn’t have much family.

At some point I’d realised that Ares hadn’t eaten anything. He was just meeting & greeting & that kind of thing. Now, I’d worked at a catering place where we catered for a funeral a few months beforehand. And we did beautiful food for it. And yet the people who’d pay for the food and organised the funeral were busy meeting so that by the time they got to the food part there was nothing left for them. This was in the back of my mind and said, ‘Right. You need to eat. You need to eat something now. What do you want? What do you like? What do you not like? I’ll get you something’ and made Ares sit down and eat it. It was just what I’d do for anybody. But Bill, the guy who’d ridden his bike in the wind & the rain commented “Aren’t you lovely, looking after everybody like this. Blah blah blah.” I mean he’s that kind of guy.

Anyway, towards the end of the reception, Bill started putting his gear on. And I said ‘You’re not going back. The weather’s is just awful’. And he replied, “No. I’m going to go” I asked him to promise me that he’d phone when he get home because I was worried. And he said. “Yeah. I will”. And he did.

We all went back to Ares’ house, stopping at the shop on the way. And we got snacks. And there was more wine. Eventually one by one people started leaving.

But you know, it’s not the first time, or the last time, you’ve woken up with a hangover in somebody else’s house.

I started getting more drunk.
But you know these are my friends. These people that I’d known literally all my drinking life. And it was no surprise to anybody.

There came a point where There was just me and Ares left. He said, ‘I’ll get you a taxi now’ Well I’m not I’m not leaving. That’s how we ended up sharing a bed.

Of course, over the years as you might know, while we were biker babies, you partied, you get drunk, you fell asleep. Sometimes you wake up next to somebody and you’ve not had sex with them or anything. You just fell asleep next to them. I didn’t really expect it to be any different. It was just convenient.

It didn’t feel bad. And it wasn’t bad. And I don’t regret a thing. Nobody else offered to stay and you couldn’t leave him on him own. and if anyone wants to judge me, well they can because they didn’t fucking stay, I did. And yeah, only ‘stayed’. Because I hadn’t enough strength and was really too drunk to go back to the hotel. But you know, it’s not the first time, or the last time, you’ve woken up with a hangover in somebody else’s house. Charlie’s one of those. He actually wanted to stay over although possibly not the day of her funeral.