Work update: Talking about sad things…
…to close friends and famous strangers
The other day, during a long walk to the high street near to where I live, my son asked if I could carry him on my shoulders. “I’m tired,” he said, which I believed to be true. “Me too,” I said, which was true but which he didn’t believe. Though I wanted nothing more than to hoist him onto my body, to have him be supported by me, in the end I shook my head to mean no. “You are six!” I said. “You are too big!” This was also true, though it is a truth I have recently been trying to ignore. How could he have become too big to be carried? I wondered. And along we walked.
Lately I have been writing a lot about fathers and sons, and how they support each other, and what happens when that support disappears. The writing has involved discussing trauma and grief with famous strangers. It wasn’t a strategic decision to write on these topics, it just seems to have happened, and the conversations have been as fulfilling as they have been exhausting. In November, for example, I interviewed the comedian Rob Delaney about the death of his four-year-old son, Henry. In December I interviewed the actor Rory Kinnear about the death of his 54-year-old father, Roy. Last month I interviewed the writer Michael Rosen about the death of his 18-year-old son, Eddie. And in the midst of these interviews I wrote about the loss of my own father, some 20 years ago, when I was only just emerging into adulthood, and how I might pass on some part of him to my children, whom my father never met.
What have I learnt from these experiences? I don’t know, it was only three interviews and a minor slice of introspection, though I will comfortably say something simple and unoriginal, which is that these things are very hard, and that they don’t always get easier, at least not in the ways we might hope.
You don’t forget, is what I think I mean, though perhaps forgetting would be helpful.
Recently, a friend who is suffering through incredible tragedy right now — right now! It doesn’t switch off! It is happening now as I write this! — described their life before trauma as a kind of la-la-land. They were once free, but now they recognised they were not. And once they had left freedom behind, they could not return — they were forever unfree. (Delaney describes this feeling, less dramatically, as developing “a new capacity for pain”.) “I want to go back to living,” my friend said. We were walking together when they told me this. I said, obviously profoundly, “I think this is living.” And we laughed briefly at the absurdity it, of me having said an absurd thing.
There is trauma all around. Rob Delaney and Rory Kinnear and Michael Rosen know this. We know this. But what can we do other than get on regardless, taking the good when we can. A couple of years ago a friend said to me, “I think you should just forget about 2021.” I had told him about a trauma my family was experiencing, an event disassociated with the pandemic, and though I understood the sentiment of his remark, which was kind, I couldn’t do as he suggested. 2021 was the year my daughter turned one and began to speak. It was the year my son learnt to read. Though tragedy raged around us, how could I dismiss those events as things to be forgotten?
All this has forced me to wonder: would I return to la-la-land if I could? The answer, most days, is yes. I would have preferred the curtain that obscures real life not to have been drawn wide open, revealing it all. And though experiencing trauma will teach you skills that are helpful to learn as a human being — more empathy or whatever, which I suppose is beneficial when talking to friends and famous people about sad things — well, I would rather have less empathy.
On we go.
As ever, thanks for reading. Here again are links to the four pieces I mention above: interviews with Rob Delaney, Rory Kinnear, and Michael Rosen, all cover stories at the Observer Magazine, and the piece about my father and my son, for the New York Times Magazine (which this week has an excellent story about the menopause by Susan Dominus).
In other news, I have just interviewed a famous comedian, a very funny, usually happy man who — what is wrong with me??? — I made cry. The interview will be published soon.
Peace, Alex x
Very cool - as always. Keep smiling brother. x