A Heart That Works

Whenever someone tells me they’re expecting their first baby and they’re nervous, I tell them the following: “Oh my goodness, that’s wonderful. I am so happy for you. Listen, of course you’re nervous but here’s the deal: you’re ready for all the bad stuff. You’ve been very tired before. You’ve been in pain before. You’ve been worried about money before. You’ve felt like an incapable moron before. So you’ll be fine with the difficult parts! You’re already a pro. What you’re NOT ready for is the wonderful parts. NOTHING can prepare you for how amazing this will be. There is no practice for that.

My favorite historical response to someone hearing about a “big” death comes from the character Henry Clerval in Mary Shelley’s masterwork, Frankenstein. When Henry learns that his best friend Victor Frankenstein’s young brother William has been murdered, he says, “I can offer you no consolation, my friend. Your disaster is irreparable. What do you intend to do?” Perfect. There is no consolation. The disaster is irreparable. I’ve read Frankenstein twice since our Henry died. It is my companion in grief. It should surprise no one who reads it that Mary Shelley was a bereaved mother.

There is no physical paradise where he’s waiting for me, and for that I’m glad. I have to imagine that would get boring after a couple of centuries, for him, for me. For you. Rather, I suspect I am a glass of water, and when I die, the contents of my glass will be poured into the same vast ocean that Henry’s glass was poured into, and we will mingle together forever. We won’t know who’s who. And you’ll get poured in there one day, too.

One thing that fucked me up badly was losing the callouses that built up on my fingers from operating his suction machine… After Henry died, those callouses began to fade away. I hated that. I hated it so much. Please let me have my little hard bumps on my fingers that I can rub and think of him. They reminded me of helping him breathe, which it was my privilege to do. I could touch them and know they were there because of him. They told me that I loved him and he needed me and that he was real.

The growing number of politicians and newspaper-owners who aim to privatise the NHS need to fuck off ten times, then gargle a big bowl of diarrhoea. I pray that Vishnu purifies your heart in a dream tonight, or, failing that, that you fall down a deep well in February.

In between Henry's birth and his death was, of course, his life. That was my favorite part.

If you’re reading this and work in private insurance or the American government, fuck off and fuck you, forever. In the words of David Lynch, “Fix your hearts or die.

I must confess I now find it difficult to truly and fully relax around people who haven’t had some significant tragedy and pain in their lives. Just another one of the many things that make me a fun hang.

Reflecting on his physical therapy reminds me that I’m not a fan of the “fighting” metaphor for cancer. I don’t think you fight it, or beat it. The effort I saw Henry expend, again and again, at the age of one, under such duress, suggests someone who could beat anything that can be beaten. Cancer’s pretty much going to do what it wants. Should it come for me, I hope I’ll just ride the wave.

Everything happens for a reason,” can fuck off to a frigid cave, I am more than willing to extend my feelings around birth on to death, the other big thing we all get to do. We don’t know what will happen and it’s not our job to know. Just go for the ride, baby! If it weren’t cool, (literally) everyone wouldn’t be doing it. Death is a bridge. And just like a little baby coming into the world brings with it a secret parcel of knowledge you can’t get anywhere else, you’ll only get to know what’s on the other side of that bridge when you’re ready (and dead).

Grandfathers are supposed to get tumors and die! That’s their job! What kind of shitty-ass grandfather isn’t walking around loaded with tumors? Not one I want to meet. Grandparent deaths are like practice deaths, a step above pet deaths, to help you have the barest preparation for a truly painful death. And this guy’s grandfather didn’t even have the decency to die! What a pair of assholes.

I felt like I was being asked to find an individual lentil in a warehouse that a tornado had just torn through

Grief drove a bus through the part of my brain where memories are stored.

Most one-year-olds can do almost everything an adult can, except use a toilet and talk. AND they haven’t yet started the phase of toddlerhood where they’re willful or even a little bit naughty. They’re genuinely very fun and interesting, but they’re still wildly needy and will allow you to cuddle them and kiss them literally all day if you need to. Nothing but nothing is more joyous than a one-year-old.

So you sit there like a decaying disused train station while freight train after freight train overloaded with pain roars through you.

I will never see Henry again. There is no physical paradise where he’s waiting for me, and for that I’m glad. I have to imagine that would get boring after a couple of centuries, for him, for me. For you. Rather, I suspect I am a glass of water, and when I die, the contents of my glass will be poured into the same vast ocean that Henry’s glass was poured into, and we will mingle together forever. We won’t know who’s who. And you’ll get poured in there one day, too.

I don’t really like tiny dogs. I can get to know and respect individual small dogs, but as a concept, they generally bum me out. I guess it’s because I know human beings had a hand in their breeding and I believe that to be wrong. Let dogs fuck each other (or not, if you spay/neuter them), and stay out of the way. Don’t decide which dogs should fuck each other so that you can wind up with a litter of miserable, shivering little abominations that will fit in a cereal bowl when fully grown. Plus, do you watch the dogs fuck each other and/or assist them? Psychos. Do you punish them if they refuse? Anyway, it’s clear my issue is with the dog breeders themselves more than their cursed progeny, but I can’t help but be reminded of their origin when I hear some yappy little shitbox barking at the heavens, knowing deep inside God has forgotten about it.

Why don't you just leave open the possibility that others love you, whether you like it or not, and that the people who'd like you to stick around aren't, to a man, wrong.

Private insurance companies work hard to preserve an opacity that demoralizes their users to the extent that they give up trying to access coverage for care, and pay out of pocket or—as in millions of cases—just forego necessary care. If you’re reading this and work in private insurance or the American government, fuck off and fuck you, forever.

I felt like a lava lamp; the bits of plastic gloop bubbling around in me were actually bits of a dark sort of peace with death, a harmony with the knowledge that my son had died and that my own death would see me walk through a door he had walked through. We would share one more thing together. And that would be fucking great.

The growing number of politicians and newspaper owners who aim to privatize the NHS need to fuck off ten times, then gargle a big bowl of diarrhea. I pray that Vishnu purifies your heart in a dream tonight, or, failing that, that you fall down a deep well in February.

Listen, of course you’re nervous but here’s the deal: you’re ready for all the bad stuff. You’ve been very tired before. You’ve been in pain before. You’ve been worried about money before. You’ve felt like an incapable moron before. So you’ll be fine with the difficult parts! You’re already a pro. What you’re NOT ready for is the wonderful parts. NOTHING can prepare you for how amazing this will be. There is no practice for that. There is no warm-up version. You are about to know joy that will blow your fucking mind apart. Happiness before this? HA HA. Mystery? LOL. Wonder? Fuck off! You are about to see something magical and new that you have no map for! None!

blow. Sit down, you fuck. You thought you knew what was going on in this world? You thought you had any idea? How dare you? How DARE you think you have anything you can grasp onto for comfort, for security, for understanding. The audacity of your ignorance. Now you know what you can count on: nothing, ever. That you have my permission to count on.

I’ll say here that we never found out what sex our kids were before they were born. Thank Christ Leah and I both agreed on that. Despite the popularity of finding out beforehand these days, the practice still boggles my mind. WHAT the fuck are you going to do with that information? Practice wiping yellow, liquidy shit off an anatomically correct doll?

Since Henry’s death, I have focused any fundraising I’ve done on both Rainbow Trust and Noah’s Ark. I have not, as some might have suspected I’d do, done any fundraising for pediatric brain cancer. The reason for this is that I saw how far a pound (or a dollar) goes in helping kids who are definitely going to die, and their families—and it is astonishing. An hour with a Fiona or a Lucinda or a Kirsty brings immeasurable peace and joy to a child who is grappling each day with pain, frustration, boredom, and fear. It gives solace and bubbling happiness to the parents who are watching their child suffer day in and day out. I’m forty-five as I write this, and so far I haven’t seen a better or more instantly effective use of money.