What use is this barrel? It’s broken; the wood is cracked and rotting, the frame is speckled with rust. The bloated planks have lost their symmetry: they're weathered and weary. Why would you keep it? A decade is a long time by any reckoning. A month can go by, a year, without much changing, but … Continue reading Over a barrel
Tag: cancer
Faith in endings: how grief nearly killed my love of books
Not long ago my son said something that hit me like a sniper’s bullet: ‘You’ve got loads of books in this house but you never read them.’ I felt ashamed. While never a gluttonous reader, I always enjoyed books and usually had two or three on the go. In a typical year I’d get through … Continue reading Faith in endings: how grief nearly killed my love of books
Time inside
I am in a library full of writers. An exclusive audience of around 15 men, seated across from me on hard chairs, are scrutinising my memoir, All The Time We Thought We Had. There is an expectant buzz in the air but the tone on both sides is respectful throughout. They ask the kind of … Continue reading Time inside
Announcement
I'm delighted to announce that my memoir, All The Time We Thought We Had, will be published by Birlinn, provisionally in the spring of 2018. What's it about? In the first place it's the story of how Magteld died of breast cancer in 2014, within two years of first being diagnosed. It's about how our … Continue reading Announcement
Birthdays
In one of my first letters from Magteld, a couple of months after we met, she asked when my birthday was. The missive arrived on August 31st, the morning after my 19th birthday, so I was recovering from a late night in a campsite bar swilling cheap Italian lager by the bottle. She told me hers was March … Continue reading Birthdays
What would she think of us?
What would she think of us, I often wonder, as we meander through our daily routine. Get up; shower; breakfast; boys get dressed as I make the sandwiches and pack the school bags. A rota in the kitchen keeps me straight on what gym kit is needed. Then brush teeth, climb on the bikes and … Continue reading What would she think of us?
Alone
Grief is cyclical, I keep reading. The first year is the worst, a succession of broken milestones – the first birthday without her, the first anniversary without her, the first Christmas… and so on. But it doesn’t come in cycles so much as waves, building up on the horizon before crashing and surging towards you, … Continue reading Alone
Aftermath
It’s just over a month now since Magteld went away. Thirty-eight days that have gone by in such a haze that I often suspect time has gone haywire. The house that the boys and I moved in to nine weeks ago is already packed with history: the two weeks we spent going back and forth … Continue reading Aftermath
Magteld Darroch-Jansen (1976-2014)
My beautiful, dearly beloved wife passed away on Monday, less than two years after being diagnosed with breast cancer and eight weeks after our family moved to her native Netherlands. This is an edited version of the eulogy I delivered at her cremation yesterday, May 31, in The Hague, with an English translation below. Bijzondere mensen … Continue reading Magteld Darroch-Jansen (1976-2014)