Peter Emmerson

Another freezing, solitary covid morning.  It was about now, 16 years ago, that you could fight no more.  A different type of morning, freezing yes, but I was with you and no pandemic.  We had spoken our bedtime words as always last night, our last conversation, a conversation that spoke of your pain and no ‘sweet dreams’.  Not long afterwards a phone-call got me driving to your hospital bedside in my sky-blue racing car.  I rubbed your cold feet and sang quietly in your ear, our bedtime songs, songs you sang to me as your boy, to make me feel safe.  I sing them now, but quietly to myself, as if.  You’re safe now.

You died at 44 – it is difficult to see any fairness or justice in that.  Now, 54 years later, I look around and hear people talking loudly and passionately about fairness and justice, but see little evidence for such commitment.  Who are these people so fervently debating issues of fairness and justice?  They are idealists, pedlars in linguistic sleight of hand such as monarchs, presidents, politicians, employers and others with influence, who pay priests, philosophers and mathematicians to concoct and supply fallacious notions of which fairness and justice are but two.  Why is this so important to them?  Ideals have at least two functions.  Firstly, they offer certainty and a comforting capacity for control over our fears and anxieties, equipping us to feel safe and able to sleep at night, immunized from a world that is cold, brutal and unconcerned.  Secondly, ideals can be associated with more insidious goings on, by enticing us, under banners proclaiming justice, freedom etc., to put aside our feelings of empathy and compassion, to authenticate and sanction terrible acts of violence against those with whom we disagree: killing people who are unquestionably wrong is easier to justify.

Experience tells me that there are in fact no certainties, no truths, just contingencies; mundane, day to day involvements that are always comparatively uncertain.  Nevertheless, these ordinary little experiences, these momentary happenings can make an unpredictable, insecure living feel worthwhile.  One of these is joy.  Once when I was a boy, I watched Dad dance to an Artie Shaw recording of Begin the Beguine and shared his joy in music.  Tragically, in his dying, he also introduced me to another, more difficult form of joy.  This is a joy that comes from having engaged with, and seen off feelings of grievous loss and self-pity, without resort to idealistic comforts.  I have learned to live unhappily and still feel joy.  It has been a long, lonely, sleep deprived journey, since those days of his dying, that at times has tested me sorely.  Would I live through it all again? – yes, I would, because it has made me, me.  Crippled though I am, I am still prepared to be joyfully empathetic and compassionate, and still willing to engage deceivers.  Part of that joy finds me contemptuous of ideals such as fairness, justice, equality, freedom etc., and those who profit from them.

For three years or so I have been going through what has often been, and in some respects still is, a painful and distressing reconfiguring of my habitus, in order to put my teenage traumas and 55 years of fatigue and self-sabotaging to bed.  My aim is to flourish as I did when a child.

As part of this process I have needed to test my relationships past and present to see who I can trust, to see who loves me and cares for me.  By opening yourself up in all your vulnerability, you expose people for what they are and find those who are worthy.  One wonderful example is my father.  I lost him both physically and emotionally this day in 1966 when he died – why did he leave me so broken and unprepared?  Through my re-evaluation I have found him again in all his joy, love and warmth.  An essential aspect of my habitus has been restored. 

52 years ago today we spent our first morning without the person who kept us safe.  Living had changed inexorably – Dad was dead.

What becomes of those who are broken hearted?  If they can’t find joy in taking care of themselves then probably a long slow dying.

Having stood at a crossroads for a year or so ‘through all kinds of windy weather’ I know now who my friends are.  Thank you xx.

Dad I have sorely missed your masculine wisdom,

a masculine wisdom of someone I loved and respected – of someone who knew.

It was removed from me before I was ready.

I feel sure I would not have wasted so much if you had been around;

even till I was nearly ready.

Grieving is terrible, terrible.  It is especially difficult for those with no god or any other idealistic palliative political dogma given substance and guarantee by priests, philosophers and mathematicians.  Dead people are dead; those who have gone are gone.  It is those left behind who grieve in lonely exile till they die too.  And yet we are so willing to let go of those we love for reasons other than self-defence.  We are so obsessed with optimism that we fail to appreciate feelings of melancholy and loss associated with change until we stumble into their consequences when it is too late.  And when they are lost, and grieving takes their place, we have so little to help, if for you, as with me, god is dead and political dogma properly tarnished.  Only Nietzsche’s words have offered me guidance and some solace: he is not right, for he was a philosopher.  But as a philosopher who debunked philosophers, he is worth listening to.  I believe that by grieving we are living as we should.  We should not deny it, but drink it in full measure as we would any other of our most significant experiences.  After such grieving, uncorrupted by supernatural and political beliefs, we may be far more resistant to so easily letting go those we love.  Why did nobody tell me this all those years ago when I really needed it, when I was young?  Because they were too busy ‘getting by’ to deal properly with grieving; too reliant on ready-made tools for grieving supplied to political zealots by priests, philosophers and mathematicians.  Only those like I am now, with autonomy enough, have time to think and time to grieve.  If this helps anyone I am pleased.

Since 1965 when I was 16, thoughts of dying have never been far away: panic attacks re-structured my habitus; I was now dominated by fear and anxiety, any possibility of sweet, comfortable slumber driven out. Where once I could experience joy in living now I was obsessed by my physical vulnerability, over-sensitive, over-vigilant and isolated.  But 50 years ago today when Dad was killed by cancer, I witnessed dying as something real.  What I find terrible about people who have died is their cold hard silence.  Until then all you have known is noise.  Then quickly, suddenly they are quieted for good, their cold hard silence immediate and palpable, all questions from now on left unanswered.  Fear of dying is a noisy, feverish, living experience; real dying is about cold hard lonely, unrelenting silence.  They have gone – now live without them.  Dying is a problem for those who are alive.  I strive to make what I can of what he gave me till I too am silenced.

Me dad would have been 94 today. At 18 he was firing railway locomotives.  At 22 he was an RAF bomber pilot: quite a progression for a lad from Middlesbrough who grew up without privilege or connections.  War opens up all sorts of opportunities to live and die fast.  On his 44^th birthday he was in hospital dying very quickly and with little fuss, ravaged by cancer: me mam, two brothers, sister and I gave him a shaving mirror that he hardly used.  I have missed him grievously over the last 50 years and love him still!