In memoriam.

For my father: Martin Richard Garratt - born 19/01/1946 - died 23/09/2025

I didn’t know what death was until my father died.

To begin with…this is something I need to write, not something you need to read. This is my truth, this is how I see things, and I don’t require commentary or discussion. I’m not writing this to have it criticised, I’m writing this because I have no choice, because there are no other words right now, only these, and they have to come out. I’m hurting, trying to find a way through by ripping myself apart and reforming, and with each tear, words spill out. Random, erratic, and uncontrolled, they pour out unbidden, never-ending. This won’t make sense because grief is a private matter; grief is not shared; grief is lonely, grief is a hunter, silent, dark, in the shadows. Grief doesn’t ask questions or take hostages; it switches off the lights and turns your world to darkness. But that’s my grief; yours will be different but equally terrible.

I’m sorry you have to feel that.

The sadness hits last but stays the longest. Before that shock, anger, fear… that was a surprise and laughter in the face of his death. My strongest memory of that day, that hour, is something that made me laugh because I feared what would happen if I did anything else. My father had died. A shocked consultant and his team had just left the tiny windowless room where they stored the crying relatives. My eldest sister and my nephew had left the room to make calls, and my sister and I are left staring at each other. Between the two of us is my mother. Tiny, frail and as angry at the world as ever. She’s not a good person; she said awful things to kind people, she has hurt me many times, abused us as children through bad education, bad nurturing by her father, and for a million reasons, she passed on the heirloom of family hate with blind ignorance. And now my father is dead, and we are left with this bitter, selfish woman. The wrong one died… it will be thought many times and said out loud too few.

“What will happen to me?” are the first words that leave her dry lips. A single tear rolls down her crumpled skin. For fifty-five years, they have been married, and for fifty-five years, my father has worked tirelessly to provide and care. Whilst she worked tirelessly to be cared for. Through fear, they removed themselves from a world they didn’t understand. Hiding behind a locked door, sinking into their ailments, finding solutions in daily Amazon deliveries of supplements, gadgets and footstools… why so many footstools?

“Who will care for me now?”

I looked up and caught my sister’s eye. She was crying, deep, shaking, silent tears. I was building walls, damming everything up tight, just like my father had taught me. Today is for stoic Yorkshire resolve. I can luxuriate in my queer liberal tears tomorrow. She tilted her head. We were teenagers again, sharing our collective childhood torture across a dining table, hidden in a playroom, crying quietly in a bedroom. We were adults in a new world.

A world without my father.

“What are we going to do?” she mouthed to me slowly and purposefully. As she said the words, her eyes beat out SOS in Morse code, pointing silently at the woman in the chair, who had now by default become our responsibility.

It’s something we had discussed. My sister knew it would fall to her. She lives the closest; she has a sense of duty and care for people that I am not burdened with. I have to truly love you if I’m going to care for you… I don’t expect it from anyone else either. I spent a year in therapy disentangling my hatred for this woman, and I am clear in my mind. Anything I do for her is for my father first, my sister second, and that is the end of the list. I’m not going to justify this to anyone. I’ve worked hard to make sure the anger and violence stopped with me. It’s not something my kids know - I have never told them about my childhood. I would if they asked, but why would they? Their childhoods were full of laughter, games, adventures, and endless hugs on the sofa, watching movies and eating popcorn - that's all they needed to know about life.

Pass that on, share that down. The pain stops here.

Except the pain hasn’t stopped… will not stop, because the wrong person died.

“Fuck! …We are fucked!” she mouths. I close my eyes slowly and open them again. It’s how cats smile, apparently. I do it to my two all the time; it calms them down when fireworks go off or motorbikes backfire. I’m trying to calm my sister with a cat’s smile. How quickly I’ve run out of useful tools in this situation. We stare at each other, then in perfect sync, we look toward my mother, then back at each other to a cushion perched on the sofa next to my sister. This cheap Hobbycraft cross-stitch monstrosity is proudly emblazoned with the word HERO in royal blue cotton. It’s the perfect size. We stare at the cushion, then back at each other. Sharing the same idea because that idea had been shared many times between us.

“The wrong one died… but….we could be hero’s...”

Eyes wide, our tears turned to racked laughter. Smothered and pushed down as hard as any sob ever was in that room, as my Mother looked on. Unaware how close we’d come to righting the wrong.

Everything I do and didn’t do, I do for my father. After that I’m done.