Heartbreak on holiday
On a bucket-list trip, Fionn Davenport learned his father had died suddenly. He outlines what to do if an emergency strikes while you are travelling abroad
Bad news, when you hear it first, has the quality of a glancing blow delivered accidentally. There must be some kind of mistake. This wasn’t meant for you. You recognise the words but don’t fully grasp their meaning. Eight hours ago, Laura, my girlfriend of four years, had agreed to marry me. Now, my cousin is on the phone telling me that my dad had died.
It was a little after 7am, Thai time. We were in the lobby of the Four Seasons in Chiang Mai. We’d flown in the day before on what was meant to be a bucket-list 12-day holiday, the ideal way to frame a marriage proposal. There would be elephants and cooking classes; longtail boat trips on the Mekong and tuk tuk explorations of Bangkok. And, finally, a few days on the beaches of Koh Yao, because every holiday should include a bit of pure idleness.
Instead there was numbness and disbelief, followed by a measure of panic: we have to get home, now. I had phone calls to make, but in that moment, I didn’t even know where to start. I was frozen to the spot, gripping my phone and staring into space.
Laura reminded me that it was the middle of the night back home, so we would have to wait a few hours before we could get in touch with anyone. The travel agent, instance. Because this holiday had so many moving parts (multiple locations in Thailand, a bunch of different hotels and connecting internal flights) we made sure a travel agent did the heavy lifting. For this independent travel writer, it would prove to be pure dumb luck.
While we waited to address our more temporal needs, the hotel manager suggested a spiritual distraction. I was offered a krathong, a small vessel made from banana leaves topped with flowers and a stick of incense. By floating the flower ship out on the water, I would bid farewell sad thoughts and replace them with a fresh start.
My father wasn’t much of a believer in anything, let alone Thai Buddhism, but there was something profoundly moving about the experience, if only because it allowed me to graft a temporary measure of meaning onto something that made absolutely no sense.
I composed an email explaining my circumstances to my travel agent — Classic Resorts in Dublin. To heap complication upon tragedy, I needed to get to Italy rather than home, as my parents had moved to Florence after my father’s retirement.
What would be the best — fastest, most convenient and inexpensive — way to get there? I would have returned by any means possible, but my bank balance dictated a sensible approach.
The reply came within minutes of opening hours in Ireland: We’re sorry to hear the terrible news; we’ll do everything to come back to you with new flight options as soon as possible.
Thank goodness for that. Part of my job description is charting clear paths through the jungle of travel planning, but I was in no fit state to do anything. The numbness had given way to a profound feeling of sorrow and loneliness that felt crippling to the point that the smallest tasks, like going for breakfast,