14

New life

The New Year is shattered by Grandma falling in her bedroom and breaking her hip. She will spend the next six months in St James’s Hospital in Leeds. Over the next few weeks she undergoes three different operations. At one point it looks as if she has given up and is ready to die, but with a lot of ­medical intervention, she pulls through. The surgeon, surrounded by his housemen and medical students, tells me, in a confident voice, how successful the operations have been. I look at this frail, elderly woman, my own mum, suffering from dementia, now completely institutionalized, wheelchair-bound and unable to go home, and I wonder why they have gone to such lengths, such expense, to keep her alive?

When she leaves hospital, we move her to a nursing home near us in Cambridge. It is not at all how she would have wanted to end her days, yet I am not sure we could have coped with another death at this point in our lives.

I start to wake up in the middle of the night, not able to breathe. I sit on the edge of the bed, trying not to panic, thinking that maybe my lungs are full and I need to breathe out before I can breathe in. Usually, within twenty or thirty seconds the breathing begins to return to normal. I go away for a couple of nights, on retreat to Turvey Abbey, but again I wake up in the middle of the first night, unable to breathe. I sit on the bed, mouth open, gasping, but nothing happens. It goes on a lot longer than usual, for almost a minute. It is a frightening experience. When I finally get my breath back, I get in the car and drive to the A & E department at Bedford Hospital. I tell them I think I’ve had an asthma attack, though I have never suffered from asthma. By now I am breathing normally again. They check me over thoroughly. My lung capacity is excellent and they can find nothing wrong. When I get back home I talk to Annie about it. She suggests it may well be psychosomatic, related to Tom’s death. I am extremely sceptical. She would say that, wouldn’t she? She is a psychotherapist, after all. Over the next few weeks or so it gradually goes away and I forget about it.

Ten years later, as I am sitting writing about Tom’s death, a niggling pain begins in my left shoulder and gradually creeps up to my neck. It lingers, so I take some painkillers. I wonder if I have been sitting in a cold draught? It feels like a stiff neck. It is still there the following morning, only it has spread up the left side of my head. I take more painkillers but it doesn’t go away. After three days and regular painkillers, it still hasn’t gone away. I do not generally suffer from headaches, so I start to worry and begin to imagine all manner of possibilities. In the middle of the fourth night, at about 3 a.m., having tossed and turned, trying to ease the discomfort, I finally sit up, wide awake. I rub my neck and my head with my fingers, trying to feel exactly where the pain is located. It is very definitely focused on the left side of my head, above the ear, behind the eye. As I lie there, riddled with anxiety, it suddenly strikes me that this was exactly the place where Tom first experienced the pain in his head. Surely this cannot be a coincidence, can it? I think about Tom for some time. About his terrible headaches, far, far worse than my own. About the painkillers he takes, all in vain. I talk to him; I pray for him. Within ten minutes the pain is gone and does not return.

The following morning I tell Annie about it. She gives me a knowing look and says: ‘You know what my colleague Evelyn1 would say? She’d say: “We are fearfully and wonderfully made.”’2 Having just finished reading a book about the physical effects of emotional trauma on soldiers in the First World War,3 even I have to admit that she may, after all, be right.

Annie and I go on holiday to Mexico, thanks to the generosity of friends. It is a cut-price package, as the Americans are hardly flying after 9/11 and they are desperate to fill up the hotels in Cancún. It has its difficult moments but we enjoy the sun, the food, Mayan temples, snorkelling, even each other. When we return the local hospice offers us counselling. We are both having counselling individually, but we begin to see Chris, a ther­apist offered to us by our local hospice, together. It is a safe place to say and hear hard things. She helps us a lot. Tentatively, we begin to be able to be intimate with each other again.

Jo goes on holiday as well. ‘Anywhere but Tenerife,’ she tells her friend, who is looking for a last-minute deal to book, but Tenerife it is. Standing with his mates at the bar one evening is a tall Spaniard. He smiles at Jo. She thinks to herself, to her own amazement and disbelief: ‘I am going to marry that guy!’ They meet. They talk. They fall in love. She comes back to England. They are on the phone every day. Antonio, who has never been beyond mainland Spain and doesn’t speak English, gets on a plane and arrives in Nottingham. He gets a job. This is serious.

A few months later they arrange to come down to Cambridge for the weekend. They make sure all the rest of the family can make it. It is a warm, summer evening and we take the dining table outside into the back garden. After we’ve finished eating Jo says: ‘We have an announcement.’ We already know what it is. They are going to get married. Everyone is delighted. We drink a toast to Jo and Antonio. Then a toast to the grandchildren. This is backed up by Ben handing them a present – baby socks! We have had a few drinks by now. The party becomes raucous and hilarious. Each toast envisages an ever greater number of grandchildren. I propose a toast to the eight grandchildren! Annie gives me a look. It is ridiculous, she isn’t even pregnant, but suddenly the thought of new life fills us with hope.

The wedding takes place the following April. Jo is the Bargain Queen. She buys her wedding dress in the January sales, slightly shop soiled, for only £50. It costs her more to have it dry-cleaned. A beautiful pair of shoes: £2 from Oxfam. She makes her own veil and books the University Sports and Social Club for the reception. They decide to do without an official photographer. It is a good move as, within a few days of the wedding, they have hundreds of excellent digital pictures sent by friends, some of whom are keen photographers (though, of course, there are none of Tom, who, in our photo albums, remains 21 years old for ever).

A few weeks before the big day Jo announces that all caterers are complete rip-off merchants! So she has decided to do the catering herself – at our house. ‘Not to worry,’ she assures us, ‘it will not mean any extra work for you!’ Actually, it turns out to be an excellent move. Antonio’s mum, grandma and sister come over a few days before the wedding and it gives us all a common task, which everyone enjoys, in which to share as we get to know each other. I take Jo to the church in our own car, a red Mazda Demio, silver ribbon draped across the bonnet, tooting and waving at everyone we pass. Jo’s godfather, David, the retired Bishop of Argentina, conducts the wedding wonderfully well in both English and Spanish.

It is a beautiful, joyous occasion. We arrive at the reception. The food is excellent. The music starts. We begin to dance. I had not realized what an excellent dancer Ben is, dancing Flamenco with the Spanish relatives. Then, somehow, the five of us are on the floor: Annie, Liz, Jo, Ben and I. We are holding on to one another, arms around each other, in a circle, dancing, leaping, laughing, shouting for joy together at the tops of our voices. I never thought I would really be able to laugh or celebrate again, ever, but here we are, enjoying ourselves without reservation, without restraint, without a shadow. It is a new beginning. We are able to live and laugh and love again.

The wounds have not gone away, of course. We are more fragile now, more fearful. Instead of Tom’s death making us feel that we have had our share of bad luck and all will be well from now on, it has the opposite effect. We have become acutely aware of all the dangers life holds.

Ben goes off to Bolivia to work for several months in a children’s home. We are anxious about him, especially when he emails to say he is walking the Taquesi Trail. This is an old Inca pathway across a mountain pass from La Paz to Chulumani in the lowlands. I walked it myself, years ago. The trail itself is OK, apart from the effects of high altitude at the top of the pass, which is about 16,000 feet above sea level. Coming back on the bus, along the ‘road of death’, is another matter, however. It is a single track, cut into the mountainside, with vertical drops and nowhere to pass oncoming vehicles. There are also regular landslides. There are crosses and flowers, every few hundred yards, marking the places where vehicles have gone over the edge. ‘Please God, not Ben as well.’

He gets back safely to La Paz and his time in Bolivia finally comes to an end, but on the way home he misses his flight in Lima. He manages to phone us. He may be able to get a flight tomorrow, he is not sure. He will ring again and let us know. Hours go by. There is no phone call. Lima is not a place to be on your own at the best of times, even less so with no money. We imagine, in detail, all manner of terrible things which are probably happening to him right now. He has, no doubt, been taken into Lima by an unscrupulous taxi driver, beaten, robbed and left for dead. We are worried sick.

My mobile phone goes. My body tenses. It is not him. A day and a half later, the phone goes again. At last it is Ben, who announces, in a big, cheery voice, that he is in Madrid and should be in London in a couple of hours. Apparently there was a last-minute seat on a flight to Spain and no time to find a call box before the flight. He is glad to be back, but we are all shattered.

Later, Liz, who by now has bought herself a house, announces that she and her partner, Colin, are expecting a baby. It is wonderful news, bringing new life into the family, a new generation. The pregnancy is far from straightforward, however. The doctors fail to recognize the symptoms of eclampsia. Mid-delivery, she is rushed in for an emergency Caesarean section. This is life-threatening, as we know only too well. ‘Not again, O God. Please, I beg you, not Liz!’

I don’t know why I bother to pray. It doesn’t seem to do any good, but I cannot help myself. I feel like Simon Peter. When the going gets tough and many of Jesus’ followers start to desert him, he turns to his twelve disciples and asks them: ‘Do you also want to abandon me?’ Peter answers, perhaps more in desperation than in faith: ‘Lord, who else can we turn to?’ Like Peter, I have nowhere else to turn.

In the film Shadowlands, when his wife is dying, C. S. Lewis is asked by a friend why he continues to pray, if God doesn’t answer his prayers. He replies, ‘That’s not why I pray. I pray because I can’t help myself. I pray because I’m helpless. I pray because the need flows out of me all the time, waking and sleeping. It doesn’t change God. It changes me.’

It is touch and go for some time, but then Liz begins to pull through and starts the long, slow road to recovery. Joshua is born. Not a substitute for Tom, but precious new life. Another generation. We cradle him in our arms and bring our faces close to him, breathing in deeply the warm fragrance of newborn baby. This precious, fragile bundle of love. Joshua Thomas is born and hope is born again, too.

As the saying goes: ‘Life’s too short.’ Yes it is, and there is a strong feeling now that we must all live each day to the full, be thankful for it and make the most of it – not just for ourselves but for others too. I hear the haunting words of Ewan MacColl’s ‘Ballad of Accounting’ ringing in my head. As I think about poverty, the refugee crisis, global injustice, he asks me: ‘What change did you make?’4 MacColl was a communist, an agitator for workers’ rights, one of the leaders of the ‘mass trespass’ movement which led to the moorlands and hills being opened to the general public. So, now we try to live each day as a gift; live each day as if it were our last. For we know, from experience, that it could well be.

I think about what it means to ‘get over it’. It certainly doesn’t mean, for me at least, feeling as if it had never happened. That would be a complete denial of Tom and of our love for him. I still feel the loss. It often catches me unawares, when my guard is down. In the supermarket I spot someone who, from behind, looks exactly like Tom. Someone uses a phrase that is just what Tom would have said. England win the Ashes, but there is no Tom to enjoy it with. Father’s day, there are cards from Ben, Jo and Liz, but no over-the-top present from Tom. Getting over it is not about not feeling the loss. It is, perhaps, about not being paralysed, immobilized, debilitated by grief any more. It is about being able to live again.

We are starting to live again. Indeed, we feel gratitude. We have suffered a grievous loss, but we also have so very much to be thankful for.