Down to a sunless sea: memories of my dad
An additional piece written at the end of completing a podcast series based on these medium pieces. General content note: death, dementia, old age, mental health issues, euthanasia, suicide
Legacy
I’ve been planning Down to a sunless sea: memories of my dad for years. The earliest recording I’ve used was recorded by my dad on cassette tape in 1984. This show has covered 96 years of my dad’s life and 38 years of mine. I started recording interviews with my dad in 2011 and began writing essays about our relationship and his journey through old age towards death in 2017.
But at the same time, this show has been thrown together really quickly at a much faster pace than I’d anticipated, and its release schedule was not something I had control over. At the end of 2019, I discovered I’d received The Pulse Award from the British Podcast Awards and The Wellcome Trust. The pitch I sent when I applied for the award described a show that didn’t exist yet, and getting the award meant I had to make that show in the space of a few months, whilst also recording and editing a completely new part of the show that incorporated science communication into the deeply personal material.
And the day that I recorded the last of my in person interviews was the day that the UK officially acknowledged the pandemic which was spreading across the globe. The show launched the day after the lockdown was announced and a lot of the work and promotion I’ve been doing has been happening in a very unexpected context. But then I guess unexpected contexts happen all the time!
In some ways I think of Down to a sunless sea as a way of providing my dad with a legacy that will last after he has gone: his life, his experiences, his work, his love will now last for longer, his influence on the world extended and amplified. For nearly all of his life, he wrote words and wanted those words to reach more people. He occasionally had moments when something he wrote was published, but mostly his writing reached other people by being self-published. He has written a lot of books, but very few people have read them. I’ve read some of them. My own view is that, as a writer, he never really considered his audience. His work is full of really excellent pieces of writing, but they are trapped within convoluted and confusingly experimental surroundings.
Since I’ve been able to articulate what I think doesn’t work about my dad’s prose, I have tried to communicate these issues to my dad. Once, he persuaded me to take two of his books and combine them into one more accessible book. I spent a lot of time trying to make that book work, but ultimately the task of making his science fiction literary erotica with questionable gender politics into something that would appeal to wider readers was too much for me.
My dad carried on writing until he couldn’t write anymore. At the very end, he was no longer concerned with publication. It was just a way to have something to live for. But I think, in some ways, it was still about leaving something behind. He used to tell me that when he died he wanted me and my brother to be in charge of his writing. He always implied that we might try to get it published posthumously.
This is an extract from a memoir he wrote in 2011:
1925–1927: Memories: Push-chair turning from the door. Mother and another woman. Past open-fronted greengrocer. Oranges at eye-level. Large and bright, to right side of pushchair. Old Mrs Waggett blind, in rocking chair. Fear. Playing on floor beside her. Arrival of large teddy bear. Big Ted. Initially frightened by growl. Subsequently (when?) joined by Little Ted. Hand sized.
I guess I used to think about my own legacy a lot. I’ve definitely written novels that have not been published and made albums that I hoped would appeal to the masses. I’ve worried about making it at a young enough age to be a pop star. I’ve ignored critiques that would have made my work better, as well as eventually trying to listen to those critiques and improve my work.
I don’t really care much about my legacy now. Given the state of the world in terms of the climate crisis and political configuration, it’s unrealistic to think about legacy. Who knows what will happen to the statues we erect today. Will they be at the bottom of the sea in 50 years? We used to say, “Be careful what you put online” because the internet lasts forever, but I can see everything being lost. The internet only lasts as long as the servers it inhabits remain.
I don’t really care much about my legacy now. I’m too old to be a pop star — or at least the type of pop star I imagined being as a teenager.
I don’t really care much about my legacy now. To some degree I have achieved recognition. I have made work that has reached people. If someone wrote a history of UK podcasting, or of the London arts scene, I would probably at least be a footnote.
I don’t really care much about my legacy now. I’ve worked through the legacy of trauma that I have from my childhood; my values and desires have changed. I’m more interested in living life now than focusing on a future that may not deliver.
But of course that is only half true. I do still want my own words to reach other people and to potentially last after I have gone. And while I don’t think my dad’s writing could ever be published in the kinds of ways he hoped, I do want his words to last.
When I played early drafts of this series to my partner, she said, “It’s nice to hear him like that again. It’s better than a photo. I know he wouldn’t understand it now, but I feel like he’d like it.”
Spending intensive time working on this show was an emotionally complex experience. When I first went through all the interviews, I listened to them in chronological order. This meant that I was journeying through time, my dad becoming less and less himself as I slowly became more myself. As the interviews went on, I made myself cringe less, but it became harder and sadder to listen to my dad.
There’s a sweet spot in Getting Better Acquainted 155 where I’m less of a dick and he’s still mostly himself. In that episode he is 90. In that conversation, I call him lucky because he still has a high quality of life. By his next appearance in Getting Better Acquainted 278, he is 92 and has a diagnosis of mild dementia. I no longer call him lucky.
The process may have been hard at times, but it’s given me many things. It has reminded me of all the things that I did for him. It has reminded me of all the things I’d forgotten and the incorrect or questionable memories I still hadn’t overwritten. The corrections that had uncorrected themselves. I’ve got to spend lots of time with an old friend, although that has been strange because I rarely see him in person. And when I do, he is not any of the people he has been on this show.
I used to live round the corner from my dad, but now I live on the opposite side of the country. Almost as soon as I’d moved to Lancashire from London, my dad moved into an assisted living facility in rural Yorkshire. The transport links between our two locations are expensive and unreliable. But part of the reason I left is that I needed to see him less, so that’s possibly a good thing. He was moved more quickly than I’d expected. I’d intended to visit him one last time in London, but instead I ended up going back to his now empty flat to go through his things and take some keepsakes to remember him by: his walking stick, a photo of him, gadgets and bits and bobs from my childhood.
Even before I started to listen to all this audio, I would often hear his voice in my head. I think I am already grieving, even though his body is still alive. But during the editing of this show he has been a series of ghosts lovingly haunting me. It was strange in January to write a birthday card to the person he is now, someone who often doesn’t remember me, having been listening to him when he was 89 and full of himself only moments before.
When you edit audio, you have to loop things all the time. Having his voice going round and round saying emotionally complicated things reminded me of the painful circular conversations we would have in our last few years in London.
Listening to us both made me pick up on the ways in which I speak like him. I’ve started playing up some of those things, partly accidentally, but partly to bring him back. Often when my partner asks me a question, I will respond with the lightly belligerent, “Yeah,” he used to give.
As I listened to past versions of me, I tried to temper my irritation and disagreement with compassion. Between 2011 and now, I was changing a lot. To the point where you could say I am listening to past genders of me, as I now see myself as genderqueer. I hadn’t even come across that term in 2011. It’s sad to realise that whilst my dad knew those past mes well, he is not able to really know the current me — not from within the current version of himself. He will never know the me I am today, and he definitely won’t know any of the future people I will become.
As I have put this show together, I’ve also been aware of the alternative shows that could have existed. The parallel stories of my brother’s relationship with my dad, of my sister’s relationship with my dad, the stories and sides of my dad that I will never hear.
Whilst my dad will leave his words and his love to his children, he won’t be leaving much else in material terms. He gave his first wife the house he had inherited from his mum. That legacy may pass to some of his children, but not to me. In terms of his children, I am probably the one with the least resources. That was part of the reason I moved to London to be close to him — so I could provide him with practical support. As I’ve put this show together, I’ve often been reminded of what having financial constraints means in relation to being able to care for your loved ones.
Researching the show, I’ve come across lots of options that I’d like to give to my dad. But since I’m the child who has the least financial ability to contribute, and I’m not one of the children currently seeing him frequently, I don’t really feel I can even suggest these things, let alone make them happen. The assisted living facility was, in the end, a decision I didn’t have much influence over. And the reality is that my dad’s end of life isn’t purely about him. Just as funerals are, in many ways, for the living, some aspects of his end of life care are partially about the needs of his children; they need to fit within and be balanced with our own lives and means. And some of us need ways to feel like we are supporting him and ways for us to say goodbye. This show is my way of caring for him. At this point, I don’t feel like regular contact helps to improve his quality of life, and it certainly doesn’t help my mental health. But making this show is something I can do. I can look after his legacy.
I haven’t been able to give him the death he has repeatedly asked for, but I have been able to make a show which has reported those wishes. And on the magical realist podcast drama series The Family Tree, my co-producer and I collaborated with my dad to dramatise his ideal death. His character changes into a tree that is planted where he wished his life would end, rather than the place he currently finds himself living.
When my dad had his heart bypass, I stayed nearby: I couldn’t imagine being far away from him if he might die. Now I am far away from him and he could die any day, and yet I don’t have a desire to be near him. I do visit him from time to time, partly to make my family feel better about things, and partly because I want to know how he is and who he is now. On the rare occasions that I have visited him, he has still run through his circular conversations about wanting to die with me. Although who knows if that will be the case the next time I see him. At this point, I would like to get to the point that he forgets to have those conversations, as they don’t make either of us happy. And yet when those circles stop happening, he will be even less himself.
When my mum tells me I should visit my dad more, she says that if I don’t, I will regret it when he is gone. I don’t think she’s right — I have seen him many times, and I’d actually rather remember younger versions of him than have the last version of him overwrite those memories.
When my older sister tells me I should visit my dad more, she says that she feels he misses me and would be happier if he saw me more frequently. And people have reported back to me that he asks how and where I am sometimes. But when I last saw him, he didn’t remember who I was initially. And after he remembered, he forgot a few more times. I think he remembers me on a level beyond memory. But I’m not convinced that necessarily makes my visits any kind of comfort to him. He remembers me enough to find his way back into circular conversations about wanting to die. And unlike other people who know and love him, I can’t bring myself to change the subject. Ignoring his testimony is not something I can do. In some ways, I wish it was.
But I can edit audio. I can write. I can make podcasts. I’ve got a large archive of interviews with my dad. If I am no longer good at helping him in person, I can help in others ways. Or at least, it’s good for me to convince myself that I can still do things for him and with him. As my partner says, because he is featured so strongly on this show, it feels like he is a co-author, a collaborator. If I can’t ignore his testimony, then I can at least amplify it.
A question I’ve often asked myself when putting this series together is, “Will I have anything left to say about him at his funeral?” If this show is a document, it’s also a memorial: an audio gravestone for someone who is still alive. An epitaph. A eulogy.
I’m glad I made this show. That it hasn’t just remained an imagined show. It’s been a tough journey at times, but it’s one I’m so glad I’ve made. Thanks for travelling on it with me.
This is part of a collection of essays. Click here to read the introduction.
If you want to know more about me and what I do, have a look at my website: davepickeringstoryteller.co.uk
Thanks to J Adamthwaite who edited these pieces for punctuation/grammar and provided notes and support.
