It would be wrong to suggest that the sudden and totally unexpected death of my younger brother James was anything other than the most significant event of the last few weeks. It was indeed one of the most significant events of life so far and very uncomfortable for all of us especially I would imagine for those of us who claim to be orthodox Christians. It seemed, and still does, to be gratuitously cruel. Bad enough if you think it was an accident of fate, worse still if you have to accept that it was done by God, on purpose.
As I become more and more of an agnostic if not atheist I tend to be more phlegmatic about the bloodiness of life. On the whole actually and with reservations I have to concede that I've been very lucky and privileged but on balance life is pretty unpleasant but why should one expect it to be anything else? I suppose that what one comes back to and what any unexpected and premature death elicits is a sense of "Carpe Diem". Jim got just over sixty years which, in the present British climate, is a pretty good knock. It was good that when I last spoke to him some 48 hours before his death he sounded relaxed and happy. When we tidied up his effects we found walking boots, a new volume of the collected poems of RS Thomas which he had obviously been reading, a bottle of Irish whiskey into which decent inroads had been made and notebooks and a laptop. All this suggested a well-rounded, hard-working, individual who was enjoying life and living it to its full.
It was incredibly tough on my mother who found his body; tough on his widow and children; tough on his relations; tough on his friends. Not too bad for him, perhaps but pretty ghastly for the rest of us. Suddenly a life which still had endless possibilities and potential has come to an end. Jim's got a birth date and a death date and his chapter is closed. The funeral in Wells Cathedral was very well-attended (we reckoned on more than 300 mourners), dignified, moving and vastly improved by all the participants - priest, speakers and readers, being people who really knew him so that we all had a real sense of a personal tribute. Afterwards I had a word with the priest who had run the service and he said that he had introduced James to the American mystic and writer, Thomas Merton, and also remarked that James had been a regular at Sunday morning services but had never once stayed for the coffee session afterwards. In other words he had a strong interest in the religious but was essentially quite a solitary person. Or words to that effect.
I went to see my GP this morning to have my fairly regular blood pressure test. It was up which is scarcely surprising though slightly depressing. We may have to treat it slightly "more aggressively" if it stays high. I suppose one of the several thoughts provoked by my brother's death is that once we reach 60 we are well and truly in the drop-off zone. If we keel over at this age there is perhaps a marginal sense of a premature demise but not a lot. Younger people and even our contemporaries will say that we had a "good innings" which in a historical sense is probably true though it's not exactly cheerful.
Still, as one of our fellow-lunchers remarked the other day, "It makes a welcome change to be discussing death and not poverty". Which is, perhaps, true. The poverty news is depressing, not least because it appears to be self-inflicted or at least man-made, and in some instances at least forces regrettable changes in career as well as circumstance. It's sad, for example, to hear of good travel-writers who are forced to sell up and turn to something completely different because the market has dried up. One gets the impression that most publications have a longish back-list of commissioned articles and are not commissioning anything fresh for the foreseeable future.
It was my birthday on the 28th, a seminal one, noted with a photograph in the Times and provoked some fascinating messages, the most unexpected being, I think, the one from Tim Mason with whom I had been at pre-prep school, Danesfield in Walton-on-Thames circa 1950. Amazing and rather wonderful. For the first time in my life I feel rather proud of Danesfield which I'm afraid I barely remember. Do I feel a re-union coming on. Are there other Old Danesfieldians out there? Did we do all right? Would the school be proud of us? Does it matter?
Tomorrow, God, cut-price-airline and weather permitting we go to
I
am having lunch on Monday with David Cairns once the star photographer on the Daily Express. That's ancient. So is coffee with Camilla Cowie
whose parents owned and ran the wonderful Connaught House, at Bishop's
Lydeard outside
I don't really know if these are meaningful definitions and distinctions. Oh, during the month we went to
In other words "und so weiter" and the mixture as usual, a judicious mixture I feel, of past, present and future. Overshadowing everything however is the death of my brother James. It's affected everything. I miss him a lot. I am still trying to work out what it means. Above all I suppose I feel RIP. He was much loved and much appreciated and he had many joyful moments giving them out as well. But it was a tough little life in many ways and RIP seems a meaningful and apt sentiment. RIP James - you deserve it and we miss you.
