Until death us do part

 

 

The trouble with having a father die when you are sixteen months old is that after that you always know that death can happen, and you always fear that death can happen. You know that the world can rock on its axis, which can be handy when it does ('I told you so') but is tiresome in the long run. 

My death fixation when I was a child settled on my maternal grandmother, who lived next door to us, in Twyford, Berkshire. Every time she toddled down to the village in her open-toed sandals, dachshund in tow, I would climb the yew tree that overhung the garden wall to await her return, hidden in the murky branches, ashamed of, but utterly unable to control, my fear. She always toddled back again, her feet slapping on the pavement and her busy voice full of Twyford gossip. When she dutifully took me to see Dr Doolittle, in 1967, because that was the kind of grandmother she was, she kept falling asleep. And I kept nudging her awake with my elbow, just to check that she wasn't dead. Because she was very, very old, at least 70, and she could have been.

So Death and me, we've been mates pretty much since the beginning. The fact of losing a parent makes you part of a club with more and more members as you grow older. It might provide a very solid foundation for an otherwise unsuitable relationship. My husband Joseph lost his mother when he was nine. Or eight. We had that in common, and we had in common that were both the youngest of five siblings, and we had in common that each of our surviving parents was a tricky customer. And then we had in common two children and a whole life, but that's another story, for this is about death, not life.

Once you know about death, it's everywhere. 

There were other deaths when I was a child, of course. Our old keeshond Nicky, my Cavalier King Charles Rowley, hit by a car, who was rapidly replaced by Rowley, because my mother didn't like having a distraught daughter, not because she imagined I'd be fooled. I was fine with whichever Rowley - they both gave me and my friend Kate Hartley, who died later, of MS -  a chance to dress a dog up skirts and make him walk around on his hind legs. Until my mother, in what I still think was cowardly move, gave him away when I was at boarding school. By that time the house had been divided between Max, Nicky's successor, and Rowley, because otherwise Rowley would have met a more ghastly and bloody death. Keeshonds are much smaller than they look, but they are invincible in a dog fight, because the fur that makes them look big protects them from the whitest of teeth.

My godmother Polly, died, of cancer. She had huge feet and a raucous laugh, and took me to see Coco the Clown with the Bertram Mills circus. I worshipped her, until she died. When I was sixteen, my grandmother, she of the open-toed sandals died, and when I was nineteen,at Manchester University, our friend Howard died, of some rapid blood disease. We were full of hash and hubris and had no means to understand, although at the back of my mind, I heard "I told you so." When I was thirty, my first husband Alexander Matthew Holgate died, of alcohol poisoning, in Southampton, the morning after St Patrick's Day. I was still married to the man, although I hadn't seen him for three or four years. He had disappeared from the radar of those of us who knew and loved him, and was, as I found out when I travelled down to Southampton to meet her, being taken care of by a kind, skinny woman and her daughter. We had a fine party in the Half Moon in Islington. For a man who had no family, at his death Matthew collected together a band of thirty or forty, many of whom are still friends today.

Others died along the way. Paul S., also known as DV, who dropped out of university to become a fireman and remained one until his death from bladder cancer. Geraint Turner, my second husband, of throat cancer. I had not seen him for twenty years, since I left him one catastrophic night in a scrubby village in the South of France to return to Joseph, the father of my daughter. I learnt about his death from a tiny clipping from the Guardian newspaper, spotted by my observant friend Gillian. Laurent Renié, a gentle, skinny neurologist who had treated Joe for epileptic seizures after a brain hemorrage, and who advised me by email, whilst dying, on how to cope with Joe's advancing dementia. He was all of forty or so, and left five children. He had colon cancer. Steve Hewlett, he of the red anorak, irrepressible laugh and insatiable appetite for facts and fun. He died of cancer of the oesophagus, and talked about his illness memorably and movingly in a series of interviews with Eddie Mair on BBC Radio 4. My mother, indomitable to the age of 97. My uncle John, who faded as a wisp with dementia and his second wife Giuliana. My aunt Molly, from a series of strokes. The three siblings were gone within a decade of each other.

My beloved sister-in-law, my sister-in-truth, Dilou, died in 2017 after battling bladder cancer and pain for too long. 

My sister-in-law Mary, far too young, of breast cancer, leaving three sons, one of whom was only twelve. 

My third husband Joseph, father of Claire and Pierre, on September 24th 2020, not of covid-19, but alongside covid-19. His death is ambiguous. What was life too him for the five or more preceding years, as he sank below the waves of what was diagnosed on autopsy as severe Alzheimer's disease and severe Lewy Body dementia? It is impossible to know from the outside whether death was welcome to him, and it is impossible as yet to know from the inside of me whether his death was welcome to me. Most recently, Mike Redfern, of complications, long drawn-out complications following the removal of a brain tumour. I hadn't seen the man, an old friend, for forty years, and caught up with him on one of those disembodied Zoom sessions we have all grown so used to, just two months before his operation.

So forgive me if I worry when my daughter has food-poisoning or my son tests positive for Covid-19, or if I add up the number of months since I last saw my brothers, or I can't sleep because my text message has gone unanswered. "I told you so" doesn't just go away.