Preface: Santa Cruz Bolivia, 1985

Jo Farrington arrives with her four boys in the minibus. She has also brought along our friend, Anjy, and her two girls. Annie calls our children, picks up the packed lunch and they set off for a day at the zoo. Santa Cruz Zoo is definitely worth a visit. Scarlet macaws, three-toed sloths, jaguars, tapirs, capybaras and some very entertaining monkeys – all animals found in Bolivia. The kids love it and they enjoy a great day out. Then it is time to go. The three mums round up the ten children and make for the exit. They climb back into Jo’s minibus and head for home, a half-hour drive away. Jo drops off Annie and our children. I make a drink and call everyone into the kitchen. Tom doesn’t come. We call him again but he still doesn’t come. So, feeling a bit annoyed, we go and look for him: in his room, around the house, in the garden, but he isn’t there. He must have gone home with the Farringtons. We ring them, but he isn’t there either. They come over to help with the search. We look round the streets, but he’s nowhere to be seen. I am trying to keep calm but by now my heart is pounding and my stomach churning. It is hard not to fear the worst. We get everyone together and go through what happened when they left the zoo. They are all adamant that Tom did get into the minibus. They remember whom he sat next to and what he said on the way home.

Nevertheless, I decide to go back to the zoo. It is our last chance. I get in the car with our eldest daughter, Liz, and we race round the ring road at a speed I would not normally countenance, hoping there are no police cars, which, luckily, there aren’t. We pull up with a screech of brakes outside the zoo. And there, standing patiently outside the zoo, is an old man. In his arms a distraught child, face covered in tears and snot. The man saw the minibus leave, saw Tom left behind, realized what had happened and decided to look after Tom until we returned, which he was sure we would do. He has been waiting patiently, trying to soothe and reassure Tom, for over an hour. We thank the man profusely. We are pathetically grateful. There are more tears. This time tears of relief. Liz takes Tom in her arms and sits with him on her knee. I drive back, a lot more slowly and carefully than I drove there.

Memory is a strange thing. It plays tricks on us. We forget things that happened. We remember things that didn’t. And sometimes we give very different accounts of the same thing which we all experienced. As I write down my memories of Tom’s illness and death, and its lasting impact upon us, I am all too aware that these are my memories. Memories often sharp and painful – perhaps too painful to remember in some cases. Memories confused and reworked in the ten plus years since Tom died. I am sure that if Annie, one of our other children, or someone else close to us through that time, were to write their memories, they would be overlapping, but very different.

So this is my story of Tom’s illness, his death and of, in particular, my struggle to live through it. I thought when I started that I was writing about Tom, but I realize now that it is largely about me. About how I, as someone in the public eye, as a vicar, dealt, and failed to deal, with my son’s death.

It is not always in chronological order, since some events would otherwise have spanned several chapters and lost their meaning. Some people’s names have been changed to protect their identity. It is also incomplete. It is not possible or necessary to include everything. And some things are too personal to include. Nevertheless, it is a very personal account. I share it because others have encouraged me to write it down. I share it because I have read too many sanitized accounts of death that simply do not ring true. I share it because I know that we are not the only ones to face such pain and loss. Indeed, many people face pain and loss which is utterly catastrophic, which destroys their lives. I share it hoping that, through these pages, my story might resonate with some of the painful stor­ies each of us bears inside. That through it, others might find some key to help unlock their own grief. After all, as the Turkish proverb says:

Those who cannot express their grief find no remedy for it.

Finally, this comes with an apology. A common symptom of grief is anger. I have seen this a hundred times in the ­people I meet in the course of my ministry. People who do not recognize anger as a normal part of grief and thus let rip on some poor, unfortunate person who becomes the focus of their anger. Yet, despite knowing all this, I realize now, looking back, that it is exactly what I did, too. Thinking my anger was righteous, justified, when in fact it was just my inability to cope, my being overwhelmed by grief and pain, all my defences down, shattered, unable to take any more. And maybe it was, too, my ­misplaced anger at God, who wasn’t tangible enough to shout at in any satisfactory way. So to all those of you who had to cope with my anger and bear the sharp edge of my tongue, I am truly sorry.