From the Requiem, 25 June 2011

Thank you for coming here this evening to remember David, and to support Charlie.  Thanks also to Father Yenda for his unfailing generosity and love over the past few months.   This is a very special church, with some very special people.

The Lord himself tells us that any fool can love those who love him; there is no merit at all in doing that.  The real challenge in our lives is to love those who are difficult; those who do not behave well towards us, and sometimes those who do us harm.  We have to protect ourselves, but sometimes we also have to carry on loving, not in a soppy or sentimental way, but in the much more challenging way of the cross; that is the example for us to follow.  Doing something not because we want to, or feel like it, or get a warm glow from it, but because it is the right thing to do.

Which brings us to David, who died in April.  He was 51, and in some ways he died far too soon, but he had run out of strength; his final peaceful end was a great mercy, above all to him, but also to his family and friends.  Many of you here will remember David, and I hope there are some good memories, among the difficult ones. 

I met David in 1985, in London.  We married two years later, and our daughter Charlotte was born in 1993.  Within months of Charlie being born David was diagnosed with alcoholic liver disease, and by December he had lost his job.  Charlie’s first four years were spent with her Dad intermittently at home, but also in and out of psychiatric hospital three times, and away for over a year in residential alcohol rehabilitation.  When she was four her dad got work and came back home to live.  Within months he was drinking again, so I asked him to leave.  Charlie saw her Dad regularly at his home until he moved to Gosport in 2000.  After that he visited us until he became unable to drive, and then we visited him.  It was never easy to see him, and it got harder with every passing year.

David’s last visit to our home was for Charlie’s 12th birthday in 2005.  At 1am, an hour into her birthday, he collapsed in our dining room, and was taken to hospital.  Later that day David’s dad came to the hospital and took him home.  He was so ill that Charlie and I genuinely thought we would never see him again.  In fact he lived another six years, suffering several falls and an amputation of his right leg in 2009.  He became more frail, and less capable of coping on his own.  Those were very difficult years for him, but also for Charlie and me; we thought they would never end.

In December last year Charlie had surgery in London.  I had a phone call when I was sitting beside Charlie’s bed after her operation, saying that David had been admitted to hospital with liver failure and was not expected to live.  I felt torn in two, wanting to go to David, but needing to stay with Charlie, but there really was no choice; there never was.  I stayed with Charlie. 

Amazingly, David pulled through, and six weeks later went home, but his doctors told him he had a 75% chance of dying within three months.  As Lady Bracknell says in The Importance of Being Earnest, ‘He seems to have had great confidence in the opinion of his physicians and acted under proper medical advice.’   

On 29th March David had a fall, which led to him needing an operation.  That took place on the 31^st, and that morning Fr Yenda prayed for him at Mass here, and so did Fr Steve at his church.   David only briefly came round after the operation, then went into a coma.  Next morning he was in ITU, so I rang my brother Anthony and told him, and he was superb.  Within minutes he had rearranged his day so that he could drive us to Portsmouth.  By the end of that visit the doctor told us that David had only days to live, at most, and also that he had been drinking right up to the end.  Charlie said goodbye to her dad, and he died two days later, on Mothering Sunday.

Dear Stevie took us to the funeral a week or so later.  There is a great deal more that is unsaid, but which some of you already know.  Charlie and I have had a great deal of love and support from a very few, very close friends and family; you know who you are – for one thing you are here - and I hope you also know how grateful we are. 

It is intensely difficult to know that there is nothing you can do for someone you care about, no matter how hard you try.  I have had to watch David destroy his life bit by bit over the past 20 or more years, and it has been the most heartbreaking experience. I know it is not easy to understand why I cared about him, but he was Charlie’s dad.  More importantly, divorced or not, he was my husband.  I had to put distance between us, because his version of reality was distorted, and therefore very damaging, but I couldn’t stop caring or doing what I could.  Everyone else gave up on him; I didn’t know how, without giving up something important about Charlie as well.  Not many people understood this.

When Charlie was very small I was able to protect her from the effects of David’s alcoholism, but more recently she has been very greatly hurt by it.  If she tells you she is fine that is because there are no words to describe quite how unfine she actually is. Charlie had to learn to manage without her dad a long time ago, and this has been harder for her than anyone will ever know.  Many of her friends will have no idea what she has been going through in recent years.   

It is not easy to remember the person that David was before all of this.  David as I first knew him was charming, funny, sensitive, cheerful and optimistic.  He loved motorsports, and we went to several Grand Prix and to the Le Mans 24 hour race together.  He loved Charlie very much, and was able to play with her for hours when she was small.  He always wanted the best for her, and sometimes he knew that he could not be the Dad she needed him to be.

Much as I would love to take all the credit for her, Charlie is still very much her Dad’s daughter, and the best part of David remains in her.  Gentle, placid, loving, compassionate, funny, beautiful; David and Charlie share all of these qualities.  Fortunately for her, she also has resilience, maturity, intelligence and a healthy aversion to overindulgence in alcohol. Charlie has no idea how special she is, and I am afraid that words fail me in trying to tell you; she is simply lovely, and I count myself as very blessed indeed to have such a daughter.  David was blessed as well, but he never quite knew how much; perhaps he does now. 

David was confirmed at St Luke’s, and had faith in God, although it was as confused at times as he was.  Charlie and I share that faith, and we have no fears for him; it is unthinkable for a merciful God to reject him now.  If we can forgive David, then God certainly can, because he is far better at it than we are. 

Go in peace, David.