What if my Prose and Poetry were, in fact, my Life’s Story? (Part Four:)
The steam train thundered through the dark, away from everything I know. The smoke from its stack is horizontal. Discernible whiffs of gray come through the window, down which rivulets of rain race to the bottom. The rail carriage clatters toward the unknown. I am alone, not rubbing shoulders with strangers. The woman opposite rasps her newspaper, seemingly irritated by my indifference to conversation, offering me a discourteous glance over the edge of the headlines: MV Estonia Sinks with Massive Loss of Life.
Part Four: 1990s, Grief, alcoholism, eldest son.
The gathering of years clearly showed in my beard and on my temples. The years had been good to me. As I worked through my forties, we were a happy family. It was a time when enterprise and achievement were goals in life, but we were simple, honest folk. I had started to discuss with my wife if we had everything in place for our children. Had we shown the love we have for them and not just spoken it, important as is the telling.
I was never the best husband, faltering as a father, eager to move on, find a new adventure, create a reason to leave, and a better one to come back. We had our differences, silences, and tortured times when we couldn’t agree, especially the boys’ education.
I never enjoyed school; I wasn’t happy or liked how it felt. Daniel had problems learning. School killed his spirit. But if I gave him a problem to solve with his hands, and it was a pleasure to see him set about the solution. You’d think a boy with such difficulties could not learn navigation skills, all its complexities, but if his spirit was in it and saw the benefit, learning came easy. Not so much with science or algebra.
It was the advent of the nineties when the music industry went through rapid technological development changes. Compact discs opened the door for longer albums, and digital processing allowed producers to pitch shift instruments and vocals, adding an unprecedented sheen to their finished products. If vocalists had an off day, engineers quickly overhauled imperfections, giving the finished product something the artist failed to do. Again, compact discs opened the door for longer albums and, consequently, more songs.
Nothing of my life had been worth recording except one undeniably beautiful thing. I had put all my vitality into my marriage and the love of our children. Then, of course, hardship came to me just as it comes to everyone, but without exception during those times. My wife’s constant urging to overcome difficulty, weakness after weakness, was her never-ending tenderness.
Taking risks in the music industry was fraught with danger. It was a competitive industry. While I worked hard and wrote some beautiful songs, I judged people too quickly. What on earth possesses a man to feel he must set some moral examples in business. I will wonder about this to my grave.
The simple answer to my dilemma came to me while visiting the Virgin Islands, on the island of Necker, meeting with Branson, who owned the island. Looking at what Branson had achieved, believing he was the example of what hard work can attain, I wondered if his only reason was to build up reserves of business energy to protect his sensitive spots? I could hear dad in my head, everything he believed about wealth.
Love overcomes everything, not money. “Imperishable friendships are an obligation,” dad told me, “We should all make the effort to meet that obligation.”
We should strive, I have since thought, to serve others and ourselves. If we can meet the needs of others in hardship and stand by them, then perhaps, whatever heaven is, we will enter it unfettered of religion or prayers.
We returned home, and I retired from working in the music industry. I wanted my children to experience the world, to feel safe, unsafe, amazed, and bored. It took over a year to have my wife on the same page. We set off on a voyage that took two years to complete. We were sometimes not safe, we ate, and sometimes we didn’t eat; we laughed, cried, argued, fought, and made up. The two years were a gift I was yet to learn.
I missed flying and sought a new career to fly helicopters for HMS Coastguard. Fully trained and reintroduced to rotary flight, I returned as an ASR (Air Sea Rescue) flying the Westland Sea King. This helicopter was, in fact, a Sikorsky HR-3 made under license in Britain. To be honest, it was a flying pig, but a machine that did the work without hesitation or fault.
There was nothing about the recording industry I missed. Those years made me intolerant of youth. Due to leakage in my understanding, too much expectation, and often a complete communication breakdown. I sold my shares in Chrysalis and PYE and settled down to live a simple and natural life on the island.
I was over the North Sea on the day it happened. I had said goodbye to Daniel and his mother, as they would stay with her parents for a few days. Eight hundred fifty-two people lost their lives on MV Estonia that fateful day.
I rarely drank alcohol. My career and alcohol did not mix.
On the first awful day following the disaster, how did I feel? It’s hard to say, shocked, numb, disgusted, suicidal. I thought I had let them down. It was a trip we were all to take — my wife’s parents’ anniversary in Sweden. Being with them would have made all the difference. I believed this for a long time. Everywhere I looked, listened, hid, the story was there. I tried to shield my oldest son from it. The whole reporting of the tragedy by the vessel owners was third-rate, inefficient, inaccurate, and incompetent.
It was like a bad dream; I kept seeing them so close yet unreachable. God, my heart ached. Nightmares of watching them drown, wondering what was going through their minds, and I saw in the dreams my son render his mother unconscious, not wanting her to suffer.
The days and weeks ebbed. Hearings, witnesses, experts, and everyone with a different opinion. Accident, sabotage, negligence. I was distraught, angry, and bloody angry. I knew how restless she would sleep. But I had to say it to myself, it was a good thing Daniel was with her. She will sleep well at his side.
I had six months unpaid leave.
The noise wouldn’t stop, or that of having my personal space invaded by strangers. Instead, I was filling time with observations, the more minor things, mascara, lotions, her panties in the drawers, how they looked on her, and her favorite scented bubble bath. Her voice once again told me, if you want to give me a gift, give me an hour in the tub and no interruptions.
I kept opening her wardrobe for the scent of her.
By December, the snow had fallen. I watched Barnaby Rudge, my son’s Shetland pony standing in the paddock corner, despite having a warm stall. I knew in my heart that Barnaby knew his friend wasn’t coming home.
Christmas loomed as the ugliest black cloud one could imagine. I wanted to cancel, not just Christmas but the following year and the next. It wasn’t that loved ones would be missing; it was the love of it all. The hopelessness of Christmas without the love of it all.
Their bodies never recovered.
The memorial service went ahead in January, and I remember that morning. My son sat with me at the breakfast table. We didn’t eat. I didn’t know what to say or how to say it. Then, finally, my son reached across the table and put his hand on mine. “Dad, I’m still here.”
Those four words gutted me. So consumed in my grief, I had not paid the attention a grieving son should have. I was ashamed, sorrowful. I would never let him feel alone again.
For a year, the newspapers were speckled with conspiracy theories about the sinking, insurance fraud, smuggled cargo, anything and everything that would drain the strength of the departed’s families. Then, my son started medical school, but we spoke every week. It would mean years of study and concentration. I never realized my eldest son’s strength. It wasn’t rugged, forceful, it was sensitive, caring, thoughtful, and I knew from whom such force came.
I started drinking. I remember the night, feeling I was in a wilderness. I walked shorelines, knowing the tides, believing I would one day find them. Friends were concerned. I knew I couldn’t go back to the Coastguard with a drinking problem and tended my resignation. The summer was wet down with tears. My son and I got together as much as his studies would allow, touched each other, breathed the same air, and told him how much I respected him. He wasn’t aware I was drinking heavily and consumed with writing about my wife and my son’s death.
My son soon noticed the changes, the missed meetings, and the shortness of the calls. So, he wrote me a letter: with his permission, I print a paragraph here:
Dad,
Things have come to a dreadful state between us. It is impossible to talk to you. You make it so. On purpose, I believe. But, there are things I need to say, and this is the best way to say it. You are in terrible shape. I know you are tired and still feeling badly hurt. You are not only broken for yourself, but for me too. I’m okay, dad.
Please spare yourself my pain. I must move on. I know you are suffering. I know because I love you so much. I’m trying to lay my heart open. I’m not in pain anymore, dad. I’m grateful. I’m thankful for the time I had, for their love, and that love moves me forward now, not to forget, but to thrive. I’m blessed to have them in my heart.
But being around me appears to cause you pain. I don’t want to be the cause of pain, dad. I want to make you proud.
For a year, I controlled my drinking but didn’t stop. Finally, I went to see a doctor, who suggested I started eating again. I went back to Greenpeace. I saw it as a way to fuck with the world. I cannot say I was an environmental activist. It was the pleasure of fucking with people. For my first meal on board, I had eggs and some bread. It did not cure my problem.
What do fucking doctors know?
