Life and Laughing_ My Story - Michael McIntyre [67]
We waited for some privacy, and then Holly tried to say a few words, but they were blown downwind so Lucy and I struggled to hear her. Then it transpired there was no way to open the urn. There was no lid; it was solid brass all the way around. We’d taken a five-hour train journey, booked hotel rooms and climbed a small mountain only to find we couldn’t get it open. The only solution was to try to smash it open against a rock. So Holly repeatedly banged the sealed-shut container against the largest rock she could find. After a period of denting, she finally broke through at a moment that coincided with a large gust of wind, which blew my father’s ashes all over her face and hair. She was covered in grey soot, she could barely get her eyes open. Another Scottish dog-walker passed saying, ‘Good morning’, before noticing Holly’s appearance and scuttling off encouraging her dog to follow: ‘Come along, boy, hurry up.’
‘Your dad would find this hilarious,’ Holly said as she shook his remains out of her hair.
We all laughed at the absurdity of the situation.
Holly then changed her position, the ashes caught the wind once more and now flew freely along the hilltop, billowing in the cold morning air and then disappearing.
Goodbye.
The sudden nature of my dad’s death was shocking, and made it especially hard to deal with. One day I was chatting to him on the phone, the next he was gone. Little things freak you out, like his voice on the answerphone or his unmistakable smell on his clothes. I kept replaying our final goodbye at his borrowed flat in Maida Vale over and over in my head. I drove there in my Spitfire and sat outside. I drove to our old house in Hampstead and walked around the block, a walk I used to do with him as a child. He had just gone. Vanished.
But a few weeks later, the most extraordinary thing happened. I received a letter from him, seemingly from beyond the grave. My dad had been on a turbulent plane journey on which the captain made the passengers sit in the crash position amidst panic and praying. It made him think about his mortality and the possibility of dying without being able to say goodbye to his family. So he wrote letters to his children that he planned to update over the years. It’s an extraordinarily thoughtful thing to do. Most people avoid the subject of death altogether, not wanting to tempt fate. Maybe my dad had this foresight because his own father also died young and suddenly, also in his early fifties. Or maybe he knew somewhere deep down that he was nearing the end. Whatever made him write it, I was so grateful. This letter was the most wonderful and thoughtful gift I have ever received. I have cherished it and kept it in my desk ever since.
The letter starts with: ‘If you are reading this, it means the worst has happened.’
It was like he spoke to me one last time. He apologized for the time we spent apart and advised me as best he could. It was poignant and from the heart and helped me to move on.
He ended it with:
You’ve got good stuff in you, so go get ’em! You’ve got your whole life ahead of you, and I want it to be as full of happiness as possible.
I believe in you, Michael, always be the best you can be.
I’ll love you always.
I had experienced a terrible loss. There were things left unsaid, but my dad addressed them and left nothing unresolved between us and me in no doubt of his love for me, allowing me, in his words, to ‘go get ’em’.
14
I returned to Woodhouse to find that just when I thought things couldn’t get any worse, Tina had had a breast reduction. I had never even heard of such a procedure. That