I promised my beautiful boy I’d write him a book – how could I let him down now?
A labour of love for Michael – ‘When I have Christopher
IT was a promise he knew he just had to keep.
To complete a children’s book, sure to delight with its tales of fun and adventure.
But seeing the novel launched yesterday was the most bittersweet of moments for dad Michael Angus, 53.
The youngster the Helensburgh architect would most have wanted to share it with was his son, Christopher.
However, the bright and bubbly little boy who “laughed at everything” died suddenly, aged just six, from a rare genetic mutation which caused a critical heart condition.
Before Christopher’s death, Michael, a keen bedtime storyteller like parents all across the country, had already penned a debut novel for his daughter Katie, now 12.
With her fun-loving little brother having asked for a book to be written for him, too, Michael has battled through the grief that devastated himself, wife Angela, 41, and little Katie, to honour his vow.
And Christopher’s thoughts and inspiration and Katie’s illustrations have – finally – resulted in The Pointless Rose. Now the book will help raise funds for the Glasgow Children’s Hospital Charity as Christopher spent so much of his early days in and out of thethen Yorkhill Hospital.
“The gene mutation caused a heart rate and rhythm problem,” said Michael, speaking exclusively to The Sunday Post.
“We knew it was very serious, but never that it was likely to be fatal and certainly not so young. It was so rare there wasn’t any single drug treatment.
“It was a case of trial and error until they came up with a combination, when he was about three, that seemed to keep things stable.”
Life settled down into some normality and his health problems never held Christopher back, from his energetic Taekwondo lessons to playing a full part in daily life at Garelochhead Primary School.
“Even when we had him in hospital the doctors would ask to see him and he’d be running up and down the corridor,” smiles Michael, a lecturer at Strathclyde University.
“Nothing fazed him at all. He had a freshness and openness to him.
“There wasn’t a bad bone in his body. His big, brown eyes said it all. While I’d have all the worries of the world, he just loved life and loved everybody.”
Shockingly, out of the blue on October 27, 2014, Christopher’s heart gave out.
“It basically went in to meltdown,” says Michael.
The agonies that followed were like nothing Michael could ever have imagined.
“Grief is not what you think. Losing a child is the horror of horrors. It’s a bit of a taboo subject for others, they don’t know what to say to you.
“And I suppose I was a bit old-school, thinking I had to be strong. That was something I knew I had to change though, as it’s important men share their feelings, too.”
When they were still the loving family of four they imagined they would always be, Michael loved Katie’s beaming smile as he sat by her bedside reading stories.
He self-published a book of 15 short stories with her help and her drawings, called The Beautiful Coat.
“It had a faith theme running through it and when Christopher said, ‘Can you write me a book, Dad?’ I thought about a hope theme,” says Michael.
In the wake of Christopher’s devastating death, the book was understandably put to the side.
But Michael knew the promise he’d made to Christopher just had to be kept. It was a labour of both love and loss. What he thought may be something he could do within a year, took more than two.
“It would be nice to think Christopher would be there in every word, but you wouldn’t be able to do that,” he confides.
“When I have Christopher in my head I slightly crumble.