The Last Ocean
Page 24
To ‘fix an image of the self’, and ‘calling forth his double’, from Patrice Polini’s essay in Rachel Davenhill’s Looking into Later Life
13. Saying Goodbye
‘What is loss? Loss is a sleeping giant’: from Marion Coutts’s Iceberg, p. 73
14. Death
‘Death twitches. “Live,” he says. “I am coming.”’: Virgil, quoted by Christine Overall in Ageing, Death and Human Longevity, p. 1
Animals do not die, only perish: for a development of this idea, see p. 50 of ‘Ageing and Human Nature’ by Michael Bavidge, in Dementia: Mind, Meaning and the Person, ed. Julian C. Hughes, Stephen J. Louw and Steven R. Sabat: ‘only creatures who are self-consciously aware of themselves as individuals can die – and only creature who are aware of their own deaths develop notions of themselves as individuals’
‘Death destroys a man: the idea of Death saves him’: from E. M. Forster’s Howards End, chapter 27
‘distinguished thing’: Henry James cited by Louis Menand in the New Yorker, 21 July 2016
This page: These figures for where people die are taken from Public Health England’s official statistics, published in 2018
Beginnings Again
‘Golden lads and girls all must,/As chimney sweepers, come to dust’: from Cymbeline, Act IV, Scene 2
‘There will be no one like us when we’re gone . . .’: from Oliver Sacks’s Gratitude, p. 19
To learn to live,’ writes Derrida, ‘is to learn to live with ghosts’: from Nicholas Royle’s In Memory of Jacques Derrida, p. 71
This page: I am paraphrasing a piece in the Guardian, 10 January 2014, about bereavement leave
‘I wish I could find something to comfort you . . .’: Samuel Beckett wrote these words to Barbara Bray on 10 March 1958
‘Surviving – that is the other name for mourning’: from Jacques Derrida’s The Work of Mourning, p. 1
‘From something done with the dead . . .’: from The Undertaking by Thomas Lynch, p. xviii
‘Undertakings are the things that we do . . .’: ibid., p. xix
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ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I am indebted to more people than I can ever list here; I never even knew the names of some of them. Since the founding of John’s Campaign, I have met a great number of wonderful men and women up and down the country who have supported, encouraged, advised, helped and joined us in the fight to make care in hospitals more transparent and compassionate. I will always remember their kindness.
I owe a debt of gratitude to those people I talked to for the book, the nurses and doctors and health professionals, the social workers and psychotherapists and artists, who so generously gave me their time and shared their knowledge; the people who work in care homes and welcomed me in; the friends who let me explore my thoughts in safety: Felicity Allen, Claire Armitstead, Andrew Balfour, Sube Banerjee, Philippa Black, Alistair Burns, Andrew Cooper, Alex Coulter, Seb Crutch, Jane Cummings, Tim Dartington, April Dobson and the staff at Abbeyfield, Steve Gentleman, Lucy Gilby, Gil Graystone, Rowan Harwood, Sarah Hesketh, Jo James, Liz Jones and the staff at MHA, Kate Kellaway, Claire Kent, Jules Knight, James Macdonald, Michael Morris, John Naughton, Jane O’Grady, David Oliver, Aishlene O’Neill, Maria Parsons, Josh Pettit, Hilary Prior, Martin Rossor, Raymond Tallis, Sophia Tickell, Nick Timmins, Carol Tolpolski, Claudia Wald. Their thoughts and their knowledge were invaluable – and all mistakes are mine alone.
My special thanks go to those people who talked to me about their personal and often very painful experience of dementia. I am bowled over by the generosity, honesty and courage of Gillian Beer, Andy and Claire Bell, Jan Bell, Pam Bell, Theresa Clarke, Joyce Dunne, Tommy Dunne, Jenni Dutton, Maggie East, Mary Jacobus, Disie Johnson, Rebecca Myers, Pauline Teerehorst, Patricia Utermohlen and Gerard de Vries.
I am profoundly grateful to the Observer newspaper, without which John’s Campaign would never have existed, and without which this book could never have been written. They gave me a platform and a voice. In particular, I want to thank Jane Ferguson, Ursula Kenny, John Mulholland, Lisa O’Kelly, Stephen Pritchard, Paul Webster and Rob Yates for their generous help and steadfast support over all these years.
Julia Jones has been my unswerving friend through good times and bad. My thanks and admiration and love go to her, and to Francis and Bertie Wheen.
A great editor is a great gift. Helen Conford has encouraged me, challenged me, unsettled me, helped me more than I can say. Margaret Stead was always clear, scrupulous, kind and invaluable. Ginny Smith in the US was a great support and gave me the confidence I needed. Thank you.
The Last Ocean would never have been written without my wonderful, clever, kind agent, Sarah Ballard. From the first idea to the final word, she has been my guide and my safe place. Thanks also go to Eli Keren for his help and patience, to fabulous Sam Edenborough and Nicki Kennedy for their support and faith in me, and to Joy Harris in the US, whose steadfast commitment has meant a great deal.
The book begins in Sweden. Many thanks to the great tribe of Sean’s relatives who always welcomed my parents to the crayfish parties, tango lessons and summer celebrations there.
Edgar, Anna, Hadley and Molly (and Phoebe and Tom) lift me up, keep me going, and make me grateful and happy, every day. And to Sean, my first reader, my coffee-maker and wine-pourer, my fellow traveller, my unconditional without-whom: thank you.
Above all, I am forever grateful to my mother, Patricia Gerrard, my brother Tim Gerrard, my sisters Jackie Gerrard-Reis and Katie Jackson: the best, the most generous-hearted family anyone could have.
And to my father – well, words fail me. Goodbye.
About the Author
As well as being a novelist, Nicci Gerrard is a journalist, a campaigner and a humanist celebrant. Nicci Gerrard writes for The Observer and is the co-author, with Sean French, of the UK bestselling Nicci French thrillers. In 2016 she won the Orwell Prize for Journalism, for a piece exploring dementia. Following her father's death in 2014, she co-founded John's Campaign which seeks to make care for those who are vulnerable and powerless more compassionate, and is now a national movement in the UK.
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