Sorry for Your Loss
One year on from the death of his father, Robin contemplates loss and the launch of the next episode of Bibliomaniac, all about his dad.
In the first episode of the splendid Things You Should Have Done, the recently bereaved Chi is offered the condolence of “Sorry for your loss” and, unaware of how to respond, replies, “Thank you for your loss”.
“Sorry for your loss” is the phrase that comes most readily to mind when we anxiously ponder what to say the bereaved.
It summarises how flummoxed we are in such times, how short of vocabulary, how fearful of saying something inappropriate. Our recourse is to a mild, oft spoken apology that we know is tried and tested. We are embarrassed by death, uncertain how to grieve and uncertain how to talk to the grieving.
The first anniversary of my dad’s death has just passed. He would have been 94 years old on 18th April. Though his life was not without struggles, I think it was ultimately a good life.
He has left behind the ghosts of many memories. I was almost sanguine in my reaction to his death. When people would say, “sorry for your loss”, I would thank them and then add that they did not need to be sorry as I thought he felt ready to go and, perhaps most importantly in this situation, he had not left with unfinished business. There is much I would still like to ask him, but this is out of curiosity more than emotional need.
Perhaps I broke the rules, but I used “sorry for your loss” to try and open up the conversation, hopefully allowing a response that might allow the other person to tell a little of their story too.
So often, in our silence, we are just waiting to be given permission to speak. In I’m a Joke and so Are You, I wrote about a Samaritan who explained how this can work.
An elderly woman will call the switchboard asking for help to find a charity shop where she can donate a lot of man’s clothes. The Samaritan gets a rough idea of their location and suggests an Oxfam, Age UK, whatever it might be, and then, after this diligence asks, “just out of interest, why do you have so many men’s clothes to donate?” To which she’ll reply, “oh, my husband has just died”.
Now, the conversation can begin.
Permission has been given.
I realise that I am lucky.
My job is telling stories.
This means that when good or bad happens in my life, it is natural for me to think, “how does this become a story”.
When my father died, I could express myself in my column in The Big Issue or on stage. The day after my dad’s funeral, I was talking in a library in Leeds. Stuart Hennigan (author of the vital Ghost Signs and a Leeds librarian) was surprised that I could do such a thing, but it was the most perfect thing to do.
A few days after his death, I came up with an idea of how top celebrate him beyond the church eulogy.
I suggested to my sisters that I do a show in the local independent bookshop where I talk through my dad’s life in books and other places.
It was the opportunity for ritual. They agreed. I rifled through his bookcases and gathered everything that I knew would be the spur for a story. The stories continued to be made. He was a great lover of the work of Henry Williamson. On his last day, we sat around the hospital bed and read Tarka the Otter to him.
One day, looking at the bookshelves of Stewart Lee, I noticed he had some Williamson too.
“Would you like some more Williamson books?”
“No, I haven’t finished all of those yet, and anyway, he was a bit of fascist”, replied Stewart.
You can find out the conclusion of this in a documentary we have made, that will be out this Thursday, April 18th. The next episode in our Bibliomaniac documentary series will be focusing on my Dad, where my Bibliomania came from.
Anyway, I think it was the otters, salmon and other rural fauna that drew my dad to Williamson, not the politics.
On the night of the bookshop event, the refreshments included a large bottle of homemade Sloe gin. This was the bottle that he had accused me of drinking in its entirety in the back garden. Something that I vociferously denied. The bottle, full, was found the day after he died. Okay, so maybe there was some unfinished business. The audience thoroughly enjoyed the gin.
Our ability to tell stories, to create shape to our chaos, is unique and vital. I am lucky to have his stories. I also have all the letters from the western front that my grandfather, who I never knew, sent home. And there are the inscriptions in the books, the Christmas wishes and the valentine’s day declarations of love.
When I was in Westwood books in Sedbergh, they told me of a large donation from a regular who had died young. In each book she bought, she would write the day and the location of the purchase. then, when she began the book, she would write where she was and at the end of the final chapter she would scribble where she had finished it.
It is a habit I am trying to remember to keep to.
That little bit of you, left in the marginalia.
I mentioned ghosts at the beginning. I believe in them.
Not the ghosts of headless horseman or wronged drowned women returning for vengeance, but the ghosts in our imagination. In every bookshop I visit, I find the book I would have chosen for my father, and at that point, he is alive in my mind.
Tell your story.