Dying young preserves you in time but most of us prefer the alternative
I REALISED with a slight shock that, had my father not died of a sudden coronary at the age of 49, he would have been 90 this month. It’s dislocating when you lose a parent at a young age, particularly when their death is completely unexpected. I was 21 and on honeymoon in the West Country with my first wife. I’d last seen my father just a couple of days earlier, at my wedding in the Lake District. I remember him poring over a map to help me plan my route down to Somerset and slipping me a fiver for petrol (you could practically fill your tank with a fiver’s-worth back in 1977).
I would have been eating an ice-cream on the beach at around the time dad died. It’s funny: you think you’d get some visceral, subconscious message out of the ether when something as momentous as losing a parent is taking place. But zilch. De nada. Nothing. I was oblivious: merely concerned that my Flake was melting on to my T-shirt.
Meanwhile dad was driving home from his office after telling colleagues he felt “a bit off-colour”. He also complained of chest pains, ascribing them to “a pulled muscle” from humping heavy video equipment around the previous day at a business presentation.
By the time he got home he was short of breath and dizzy. He couldn’t get his key in the front door and my mother, hearing scratching and clicking sounds, ran to open it. “I think I’m having a heart attack,” he gasped, collapsing into her arms. One minute later he was dead.
This was long before mobile phones or the internet and it was hours before a garbled message GRIPPED: Americans love the TV series The Crown telling me to call home reached me at our holiday cottage. I trudged into the village and found a phone box. The subsequent conversation with my mother is one I shall never forget. Her calmness, her bravery… she was outstanding.
I am now 12 years older than my father was when he died. I often wonder how different my life might have been if he hadn’t been taken so young and what sort of a person he would have become, because we all change and evolve.
But it is strangely hard to visualise him at 90. My brain just won’t form the image. Dad, for me, is forever stuck in his late 40s, a bit like President Kennedy. Can you imagine JFK as an elderly man? No, me neither. Those who die young stay for ever young: I suppose early death confers a sort of immortality. Even so, I’d prefer the alternative. WE’VE been in the US during the run-up to today’s royal wedding and it’s fascinating to see what ordinary Americans make of one of their own marrying into our Royal Family. I’d say that by and large they’re thrilled. Deeply proud that as of today they have a tangible stake in the House of Windsor. Netflix series The Crown is a huge hit in the States and has inspired something close to an obsession with the royals. America’s own “royal family” – west-coast TV and movie celebrities – is now merging with our own and folks here couldn’t be happier about it. As one talk-show host said: “This is what I call a special relationship!” I DROVE past George Michael’s house the other day. You can’t miss the place. A huge, makeshift shrine sprawls across the little park opposite. To be honest it looks horrible. I know his fans’ intentions are honourable and driven by sincere grief at his passing but the combined effect of dead and dying floral bouquets, cards, posters, candlelamps and all the other paraphernalia of mourning-bymemento is tawdry, tacky and tasteless. I believe that George – who was a good friend of ours – would have hated it. Indeed his family have politely asked people to stop leaving tributes there. Campaigners also want a life-sized statue of the singer outside the property but again the family have quietly declined, saying George would have found the gesture “embarrassing”.
I believe they’re right. George was a deeply private man who took no pleasure in his enormous celebrity. He knew he owed his success to what he always described as “my gift” – that God-given voice of his. He disliked his appearance and worried constantly about his weight. So I agree with his sisters Yioda and Melanie’s polite appeal for the shrinelaying to stop. They’ve also promised to refurbish the park.
Honestly, folks – it’s what George would have wanted.