Peter Emmerson

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!

Nation states such as Britain, France, USA, Germany, Italy, Spain, Russia, China and so on were not forged by democratising processes but through tyrannical, authoritarian, violent oppression when democratising processes were weak and people other than elites had little influence. Their victims have never forgotten and continue resisting: groups of Irish, Scots, Welsh etc. We are members of a union of European peoples not forged in violent oppression and war that speaks of generations of our predecessors’ fight to bring more democratic processes to bear on our lives. Please don’t betray their struggle against tyrannical oppression by damaging a European project for greater democracy that facilitates us doing business rather than killing each other. To leave our European cousins is to call a halt on greater democracy and personal autonomy and to reject what those who gave their lives to deposing tyrants from Charles I to Hitler died for.

You were among the kindest, decentest of men.  I had the privilege of sharing much of my young manhood with you: women and big-engined cars, music and ..  We lost touch, I’m not sure how, probably women, the need to make a living, moving away – I have always missed you.  I was excited about renewing our presences soon: I would apologize again for monopolizing the socket set we purchased jointly pooling our Embassy coupons and for forgetting to pick you up that night on our way home when my mind was too full of ….. – you know.  But you are gone the other day, forever.  Cruel existence means that I will now miss you forever, or at least till the day I die.

Please accept my apologies for the late reply.  Part of the explanation for the delay has been my preoccupation with a medical problem.  However, the main reason for my inability to respond till now is my quandary over the two very contrasting feelings I have in relation to my time at QEGS.  Like too many of us from working class backgrounds who passed the scholarship, I was unprepared for my confrontation with the pseudo public school culture of the grammar school that was so alien and unsympathetic to my way of life.  Thus, on one level I associate the school with the pain of deep personal humiliation, guilt and regret; a place where I developed a distorted persona to counter something that until then had been foreign to me, the prolonged experience of underperformance and failure (the sports field apart).  During those years I became a stranger to myself, gaining self-respect from stupid bravado which sanctioned fooling about as opposed to working hard to get good marks.  The school (teachers) simply reinforced this process.  Thus, I was mostly at odds with those who were supposed to teach and help me: Jacky Dodds (biologist) is the only member of staff I recall with any respect or affection, the sting of the tube from a Bunsen burner apart. 

However, rather perversely, I also remember these days with great joy.  I was privileged (I must confess that at more sober moments I find this conclusion somewhat suspect considering the above) to find comfort in a profound camaraderie with a group of ‘lads’, reprobates all, (alphabetically by surname of course) from A to W, with whom I fooled around in class and corridors, played sport, frequented Smith’s record department and the Pit on a Saturday morning with the hope of meeting some birds.  These memories of our time together occasionally bring tears to my eyes: to paraphrase Dickens – they were the very best and the very worst of times – thank you all!  But nothing can bring these back.

Since those days I have gone some way towards putting the record straight and become more me, finding self-respect in less self-destructive ways, although scars from the damage done during those years at QEGS never quite heal.  However, unlike our self-imagery, those very best and worst of times can never be resurrected, and should perhaps be left to languish warmly in the past until some alcoholic night when they emerge without warning, amongst newer friends and strangers, to re-people the present with those of the past, those beautiful ‘unreliable memoirs’.