In an ocean of grief, can you choose not to sink? We hear from Paul Heiney on the voyage that helped him through one of life's greatest tragedies.
Paul Heiney
From grief to empowerment
Posted on: Thu 25-Feb-16 17:59:47
(19 comments )
I was talking to Terry Waite the other day backstage at a public event. A little small talk passed between us, and then Terry said, "What have you been up to?"
In that moment I realised that there were several answers to this question and that I must choose one to suit the moment. Was he really interested, or just being polite? If I'd thought it was merely a polite query I would have given my stock answer and, with a shrug, replied, "oh, I've just sailed to Cape Horn and back on my own little boat. 18,000 miles. Nothing much, you know. Everyone's doing it."
But I sensed a genuine curiosity and so I said, "Terry, I've had this idea. It's about getting hold of grief by the scruff of the neck and saying to it, loud and clear, I will NOT be defeated by you!" He jumped to his feet, almost cheering, "yes, yes, YES!" he cried.
It all stems from the loss of my son to suicide at the age of 23, and in a strange way intertwines with one of the world's greatest sailing adventures, which is to sail around Cape Horn.
One of the earliest things we agreed on after his death was that neither of us would be broken by this, and that would be our tribute to him.
There was plenty of adventure, both of the body and the mind, on the way there and on the way back. But ocean sailing, particularly if you are alone as I was for 11,000 of those miles, gives you much space for the deepest of thoughts.
Within days of his death I decided I didn't want to go in for self-pity and tears. That was not for me, nor would it have been a tribute to Nicholas who would never have wished to do anyone else any harm by his action; he saw a gathering mental illness and stepped aside. It was as simple as that. It was not done to punish anyone, certainly not me or his mother. In fact, one of the earliest things we agreed on after his death was that neither of us would be broken by this, and that would be our tribute to him.
He was with me for many of the long miles of this voyage, but because I refused to allow grief to turn to misery, his was always a joyful presence. We shared jokes as much as we did when he was alive. I always thought that in his short 23 years he had gathered more wisdom that I had in certain areas of life, and so he was always there to make me snap out of any melancholy, which all single handed sailors are prone to. The time we were able to spend together, albeit with him as a figment of my imagination, led me to the conclusionwhich I shared with a delighted Terry Waite.
Nicholas wrote poetry, fine poetry appreciated by his Oxford tutors but only discovered by us after his death. One of those poems was called The Silence at the Song's End and to try and fully understand it I spent many hours under both tropical night skies and grey, stormy clouds. And that's how I came to my conclusion, through his words and my thoughts, that grief can be empowering and need not be crushing. We all have different ways of dealing with grief, but that has been mine.
Paul's book One Wild Song is published by Bloomsbury and available from Amazon.