Life, Death, and the English Family

CW: Grief

Sophie sat at her father’s bedside, along with her brother and sister. Their faces were all calm, with English stoicism. She listened to his labored breathing and the hiss of the oxygen tank, mentally flipping through her memories of him.

* As a small child, he bathed her while making bottom jokes and she giggled.

* She stayed in bed with long illnesses each winter, and he came home with a small gift each day. A cardboard erasable writing pad. Pictures to color. A pen which could write in two different colors.

* He spent every evening separately from the rest of the family, listening to classical music, until he came to make a cup of tea for everyone before bedtime.

Now he was in hospital suffering from pneumonia, and he didn’t have much longer to live. The bubbling noise with each breath was hard to listen to. The nurses came around often to help remove the fluid from his lungs. The family were all spending time with him, but no one really knew what to say. Once, Sophie, seeing how tired her mother was, let her stay at home. Her father was visibly disappointed not to see his wife. It was a shock to Sophie. She had never seen any displays of affection between the two of them. She assumed they were simply a working partnership. From then on, she did not suggest that her mother stayed behind during visiting hours.

* When she was a teenager, a close friend had mentioned that Sophie’s father always raised his hat if he saw her in the street. The friend was impressed by this show of manners from a time long past.

* At a school concert, it was her father, confident in public settings, who rose in front of the children and their parents to thank the headmistress and staff for their work. Sophie had been embarrassed but also oddly proud.

Her mother had said a few days later “I hope it doesn’t go on too much longer. He knows now, and I don’t want him to know for too long.” Again, Sophie was surprised at this sudden outpouring of feelings. She had always told her psychiatrist there was no emotion displayed in their home.

* When she was in her late teens, her father took her to visit Cambridge University, where he had studied and tutored. He surprised her with his ability to smoothly punt down the river. On the train home she was making prolonged eye contact with an older man in their reflections in the window. For her, it was exciting and memorable. At the time she thought her father didn’t notice anything. With the benefit of age, she realized that he probably saw what was happening but didn’t interfere. After all, he was there to deal with the situation if it got out of hand.

* He was a keen gardener, growing a flower garden, fruit trees, and a number of types of vegetables each year. He tried to keep the pigeons away from the crops. Once he walked towards a pigeon, and the bird did not fly away, opting instead to back away from him. It stepped into the greenhouse, unaware of the risk. Her father followed it in, closed the door, and calmly wrung its neck.

* When she first heard the poem Kubla Khan on the television, she was excited by the language. A few days later, her father gave her the poem handwritten for her to keep.

Sophie noticed a change in the environment. It took her a moment to realize she could no longer hear the hissing of the oxygen tank. She saw that the valve said it was empty. Automatically, she started to rise, to call for a nurse. Her father was dying – did he really want to prolong this suffering? She hesitated, meeting his eyes. The two of them were not close. She couldn’t tell if he was asking her not to interfere or looking at her hesitation in horror.

Her brother, however, had seen her movement, and untroubled by questions of morality and ethics, he stood and called for a nurse. Sophie and her father stared at each other for a few more moments until the nurse came to change the tank. They didn’t speak about it. Her father spoke only with great difficulty now. Her brother and sister seemed unaware of what she had done. Sophie only knew that either way, she had failed him.

* When Sophie married, it was a small civil ceremony. She wore a new suit for the occasion. While she waited at her parents’ house for the taxi to take them to the registry office, she was nervous. No one asked whether she was having second thoughts or needed a hug. They were not that kind of family. Her father gave her a large whiskey to steady her nerves. Her mother didn’t drink, but made no comment.

* When Sophie’s mother talked to her about sex (just once, during her teens, well after the school had taught her about the mechanics involved), the message was confusing. “I’m very lucky. I quite enjoyed” here she paused, embarrassed, “sex with your father. It wasn’t like that for most of my friends.” Sophie thought often about that conversation. Was she saying it wasn’t too awful, or that they had a lot of fun? It wasn’t clear, and it wasn’t a question she could ask either of them.

Sophie stayed a couple more hours, then went back with her mother to her parents’ home. She sat up with her brother for half the night, as they drank most of a bottle of single malt and tried to make sense of their family. She went to work with a prodigious hangover. Just after noon, she took the call to say her father was dead. She went back to be with the family.

Sophie took charge of making the funeral arrangements and calling family and friends. She left the feelings to her siblings, in the hope that they understood what to do.

* Once when she was an adult but still had a key to her parents’ house, she came home unannounced. Her father was hunched over with an adult magazine in front of him. They both froze, embarrassed. Then they both spoke. She said, “I’ll just go and spruce up” while he said, “Would you like a cup of tea?” A few minutes later, they were sitting and drinking tea as if nothing had happened.

While the family were preparing for the funeral, Sophie went to the garage and removed her father’s stash of adult magazines. There was no need for her mother to know about them.

Before the service, Sophie gave her mother a sip of whiskey to give her some support. Her mother drank it.

Years later, with the self-knowledge that comes with age and distance, Sophie realized that while her siblings took after their mother, she was more like her father. She regretted that of all the time she spent with him, their conversations had been about academic and practical things. She had never had an honest, open conversation with him that might have allowed them both to express their feelings. If she had known him better, that final communication might not have failed. But he had been a good father. And now he was dead.