Forks in the road
We are all Stories, so the saying goes.
As a boy, I believed that when I closed the boards of my book, the characters inside did not cease to be. They did not slip into some sort of hibernation. No, liberated from my gaze, they lived-out their ‘proper’ lives, only picking-up where they left off when I re-opened the book.
People are the same - even when they are no longer with us. They carry on as Stories, like sound waves and ripples in water after the pebble has long disappeared from sight.
We must learn to tell stories in our own ways, to keep people near. Whilst I keep our son’s Story alive through words, my wife, Andrea, prefers to beat out the metre of his Story against tarmac, raising money by running for Mental Health Research UK. Others, like a friend of mine, ‘write’ our son’s Story in Stone.
When supporting our students with their writing at Launch2Learning, the most frequently-used words I hear are: ‘I don’t know where to start, though.’
So it is for me.
I am going to follow my own advice and start with the Time and Place that first enters my mind: Inverness, December 2001.
The day our son was born.
He arrived much earlier than he was supposed to. Neither of us were ready. We were told that this would prove the hardest fight our son would ever have to fight. He did fight. He fought like a warrior, despite being so small that he fit into my hands, with room to spare.
It turned out, this was not the biggest fight he would ever have to fight.
Our boy was diagnosed with Schizophrenia in early adulthood, during his time in Psychiatric Intensive Care, Salisbury. I will not bludgeon you over the head with the shocking statistics around critical mental health in our young people. The data is there, should you wish to find it. The data will stop you dead. But the Stories are where your hearts will break.
It is all about the individual Stories.
On first setting eyes upon the Menin Gate with its 54,000 names carved into Portland stone, Siegfried Sassoon felt nothing, despite everything he had experienced in that war. Sassoon felt the grave of The Unknown Warrior in Westminster Abbey to the seismically more poignant: if you want to communicate the tragedy of loss, best to do it through a single person’s story.
That is why I am writing this.
The last photo my son sent me was a rainbow, and so, inevitably, I now read into every rainbow my boy momentarily returning to Here from There. I can think of no better reminder of the luminosity I remember within him.
I can think of no better symbol for Human Luminosity in time of need, either.
If you would like to donate in support of my wife, Andrea, as she completes The Great North Run this September, please use the link below:
Mental Health Research UK: Andrea's page
All money Andrea raises will target research into schizophrenia, so that the stories of other young people might end differently.
If you are able to donate, might I ask you leave a comment, too? I haven’t the words to describe how your words of support motivate my wife.
Yes, we are all Stories, And we must find our own ways of keeping the stories alive. I leave you with (some of) the words of James Riley, whose way was through poetry…
With a cheery smile, and a wave of
the hand
He has wandered into an unknown
land.
And left us dreaming how very fair
It needs to be, since he lingers
there.
Think of him faring on, as dear
In the love of There as the love of
Here…
- Away, by James Whitcomb Riley -