Love after death

I’m lucky, I think, that I don’t often get depressed.

Depressed in that crushing way when it seems impossible to move.

Impossible to move, and no use trying, because there’s no point.

And so you sit. And you sit…

It happened yesterday. It was my daughter rescued me.

She writes a beautiful newsletter called Crocuses in the Snow, about loss and grieving, to open up people’s thinking about it, and maybe offer a way through it, and I can’t recommend it enough.

Because yesterday afternoon there was a ping of some kind, and there it was, I could click on it, and eventually I did.

Yesterday’s post was beautiful, they always are, and it was maybe that which got me out of my chair.

Maybe that and my watch which has this annoying but rather wonderful habit of telling me to stand up when it thinks I’ve been sitting too long…

And maybe it was because I actually wanted to pee.

And it was while I was sitting on the loo that I understood what was going on.

Today’s 26th November, and it was on the 28th November 1962 that my mum wrote me this letter.

She was staying in The Ship Hotel, Swanage, Dorset, 28.11.62.

Darling John, she wrote,

Just to wish you a very happy, calm confirmation & I hope you’ll always find comfort & help in your religion -

Don’t expect to feel any different - I did and was horribly disappointed & felt very let down for a long time!

Show that you are pleased to see Dady & Tim-!

Sally wants a walk.

Much love

Mummy.

And looking back I can see she wanted to give me permission to feel whatever I felt during my confirmation as opposed to what I was supposed to feel.

She was a free sprit, my mum, who always refused to see things the conventional way…

I was frightened and shy of my dad, and to a lesser extent of my big brother Tim, 21 then and me only 12, and she could see that and wanted somehow to put it right.

Sally was my little Jack Russell dog who I loved dearly and had been with, and with her, that very afternoon.

And so proud and happy to be with them both.

And she would have thought of writing me the letter because she loved me, and put it in an envelope addressed to me, “John Clifford, Forres, Swanage, Dorset”, and put a stamp on it and popped it in the letter box when she was out with the dogs.

And the letter reached me the next day, and I was happy to get it, though what made me really happy was the thought that I would see her again very soon.

But I never did.

What happened instead was that Mr. Strange, the assistant headmaster, called me out in front of everybody in the school and put his arm around me, which was utterly extraordinary, and took me to his house in the boarding school grounds and there was my dad, and I tried to show I was pleased to see him, but he didn’t respond and I though I’d done something wrong and there was Tim and there were the dogs, and I was sat down in front of the fire and he told me that mummy had died very suddenly during the night.

And my world came to an end.

That feeling of utter shock and disbelief has perhaps never left me.

It was the first thing I tried to write about when, a couple of years later, I started to write.

It was a kind of poem, I think, or maybe a story.

I was too shy and ashamed to show it to anybody.

But I used it again, 27 years later, in 1989, in my INES DE CASTRO.

Ines has just been told her children have been murdered, and she says:

I've heard it said that if you cut off someone's hand
The sense goes numb. They feel nothing. Not at first.
They sit & stare at the object on the ground

& think: Is that a hand? Did it belong to me?
Certain things I just don't understand.

Why light still shines in the sky

Or grass grows or birds still sing in the tree
Why life goes on.
Why won't it stop

Why won't it stop & attend to me

But the world still turns.
I try to understand
What I've been told & I try to believe

The ground is still supporting me.
Somehow these things seem contradictory.
And a voice says:
Its true. Its happening.
Its happening to you.

Not a cruel voice,
Just cold. Indifferent as the sea.

And I remembered then when I wrote those lines. And I still remember now.

And then I suppose they took me out to lunch.

And then I think we went to the Tilly Whin caves.

And then perhaps to Corfe Castle to have a cream tea.

Because these were the things you did on the rare days out with your parents when you were in boarding school.

And then they took me back at the appointed time.

And then they left me.

And the first boy I met didn’t know what to say, and ended up saying

“Did you have a good day?”

And I’m sure he regretted it.

And no-one ever spoke about it.

And I was left to get on with it alone.

And 55 years later I wrote in EVE

“And I know now

when the really bad things happen you have to deal with them alone.”

And I write this now because it so presses on my mind

But also

Because it could have destroyed me.

And it didn’t.

I know writing saved me and my lover Susie saved me and my children saved me and I tried with all my strength and power to treat them better.

And I know that my poor dad didn’t do that out of cruelty, but simply because he had no idea what else to do.

And maybe dads would not do that any more.

Maybe there’s a bit more emotional intelligence out there in the world.

That gives me hope,

That and the sure knowledge that my mum loved me with all her heart

and that her love still sustains me.

(Dear subscribers, this post is just for you. Thank you for being there, and thank you for reading this. Writing it has helped me out of a dark place.)

Do feel free to comment on it, or share it with someone you think might want or need to read it….