I’ve been reading excerpts from Alastair Campbell’s new book Persevilience in last week’s edition of The New World, a weekly publication which has become essential reading in my life. I was particularly taken with a section where the author writes about the people who he has lost along the way and how he still speaks to them. It is obviously a one-way conversation since dead people are not given to replying, particularly after they have become buried bones and scattered ashes, but I kind of get it.
Campbell explains that those who have departed from his life are still there. He quotes a poem by Frances Day that his mother left instructions to be read at her funeral. It goes like this:
Farewell my family, my life is past
I loved you all to the very last
Weep not for me, but courage take
Love each other for my sake
For those you love don’t go away
They walk beside you every day
I am toying with the idea of leaving instructions to those I leave behind for when I shuffle off my mortal coil to have it read out at my funeral (if I have one), too.
Obviously, as a card-carrying atheist, I am as certain as I can be that death means death, as the former Prime Minister Theresa May said about Brexit, which she said, meant Brexit. We do not survive our own deaths, ascend to Heaven or descend to Hell. By the same token, I do not believe in spirits or ghosts, so when I concur with the thoughts of the poem, I don’t literally mean that dead people are walking beside me every day. There’s no spiritual presence, let along a physical one, but the way Campbell puts it resonates.
He has a framed photograph of his mother in the kitchen and he imagines her saying, “It’ll be fine, you’ve been through worse.” Now I don’t keep photos of dead relatives and friends on display. It’s not because I have made a decision not to, it’s just never occurred to me. But from time-to-time, I do think: “What would so and so have said and done?” It’s a way of dealing with loss, not because somehow you can now connect with someone who isn’t around anymore, but because you can use your imagination and, hopefully, powers of memory to imagine what they would say and do. It’s surprising how effective this can be.
My dad did not suffer fools, so I am reminded not to suffer them myself. My mum always put my health and well-being ahead of her own. I try, though sometimes fail, to put friends and family first. My inbuilt imperfections sometimes get in the way but I believe in the ideal that you try to be the best version of yourself. Certainly, my dad did that. It’s what he would tell me, tell anyone and everyone, today if he was still around. The things people did, the things they said, the advice they gave, the actions they carry out: they influence how I behave today. They are not physically here to advise me, but they left so much behind that, yes, they still walk beside me every day.
I don’t literally talk with dead people, as Campbell does, but my imagination can make it seem that way. If I am struggling, sometimes there is an answer in the past through the people who used to be in my life, which makes them still part of it today. Those you love don’t go away. How true is that?
