Une mort heureuse?

Une mort heureuse was the original working title of one of my favourite novels, L’Etranger, by Albert Camus, the tale of a man’s struggle to find meaning in a world that seems to have a set of values that he doesn’t understand – a tale for our times, perhaps? (It is often cited as the second most influential novel for young men, after The Catcher in the Rye.) The main character – SPOILER ALERT!!- goes to his death, ‘happy’ with the choices he has made, the honesty he has shown towards the people he has known and the society in which he lived. Even his name, Meursault, translates from the French as ‘death leap’. I choose the title, though, for very different reasons; perhaps I should have called it ‘a good death’ – ‘une bonne mort’. (The pedant in me requires me to add that ‘une belle mort’ would work equally well here!)

Not long after lockdown started, at the end of March, my father died. Not of Covid 19 (luckily?), as his death certificate states: ‘frailty due to old age’. He was, after all, 102 years old, having been born in 1917, when the world was engaged in a very different struggle. Old, so his death was not unexpected. He died, as he wished, in his sleep, after a long and fulfilled life . After being home educated by his mother, he gained a scholarship to Whitgift school and then a place at Cambridge, where he achieved a double first in Classics and Theology. After training to be a priest and being ordained in September 1941, he worked in several city and rural parishes in England, was vice-principal of Cuddeson Theological College, Oxford, set up St George’s Theological College in Jerusalem, before jaundice forced him to return to the UK. After a period of recuperation, he became Chaplain to the Queen at Hampton Court Palace, whilst also working at Streatham Crematorium. In his ‘spare time’ he proof read as an editor for the SPCK. Then, in semi-retirement, he took up the post of Preacher to the Honourable Society of Lincoln’s Inn. In retirement he continued to officiate, both in Sussex where he lived and at the Anglican church in Marseille, close to the holiday flat where he spent three months a year. He preached in French at a service to recognise the 75th anniversary of his ordination and in English in his 100th birthday and read the Gospel during services for both his 101st and 102nd birthday celebrations. So, a long life, death in the way that he wanted and a firm belief in God… does it get better than that?

To sum up a life in one short paragraph clearly does him no justice. Perhaps more telling are the messages my mother has received from people who came into contact with my father, or the memories his family and friends have of him. I remember his frustration as I struggled with my translation of The Aeneid at O level, his careful packing of the car prior to a camping holiday and even more careful packing away after we came back, his surreptitious stirring of a spoon of sugar in to a glass of white wine that he found too dry and the copious amounts of salt that he added to almost any meal, his encyclopaedic knowledge of almost everything (apart from music and sport, though the day he managed to answer a Sport and Leisure Trivial Pursuits question is still fresh in the memory – Fred Perry, was the answer!), his calm and calming manner, his inability to kick a ball, his ability to deliver a cracking sermon in no more than 12 minutes, the way he was still doing the cryptic crossword in Latin in his 90s, his careful way with money, his eyes lighting up when his grandchildren walked into a room… he was an exceptionally clever yet humble man, sensitive and practical, interesting and interested in others.

It is a measure of the nature of our times that I say we were ‘fortunate’ to be able to attend his funeral – almost the hardest part was the social distancing amongst the 11 of us there, especially as we said our goodbyes and went our separate ways. He had planned the service, so he certainly felt ‘present’ and, as he had done for the best part of the last 100 years, he ran the show in his quiet, understated way. It feels like the very definition of bitter sweet, the combination of grief on our part and happiness on his… I feel no greater sense of pride than when my kids say to me that I’m getting more and more like him….

If only…

Eating: Red rice with feta and coriander. Recipes from Ottolenghi in The Guardian last weekend. It had a paella feel to it. I made my usual FODMAP amendments and added more feta than the recipe asked for, and probably more coriander, as we all love it!

Drinking: My dad loved a good red, and the above is full and flavoursome. I sourced it from Virgin Wines.

Listening to: In choosing settings for elements of the funeral, I re-listened to several versions of the Magnificat and Nunc Dimittis, from sung evensong (my father’s favourite service). Stand out versions for me are the Stanford in B flat and the version in G. I also love the Rutter version. In the end we went for the version by Thomas Tomkins, sung by the choir at Hampton Court. I class myself as an ‘indie 80s boy’, but the choirboy isn’t that far from the surface and there is something magical about choral singing.

Reading: Circe, by Madeleine Miller. It took a second attempt at this to get into it, but well worth it. Conscious that my dad probably read the original stories in Ancient Greek or Latin!