And When Did You Last See Your Father?

Sooner or later we all die. And so do our parents. Blake Morrison has generously offered his insight into the experience of losing his father. This book met with critical acclaim on its publication almost 10 years ago and has inspired similar confessional memoirs. It is a testament to the quality of Morrison's writing that details of everyday family life and death, not sensational trauma or dysfunction, are what engage the reader. Between vivid descriptions of his father's death from cancer he recounts quirky, sometimes painfully funny anecdotes. His father's self centred impatience and interfering ways are tempered by true love and affection. It is this focus on ordinary details, such as a fondness for cars, practical jokes, and a series of dachshunds named Nikki, that give this book a wide appeal.

Figure 1.

Blake Morrison

Granta, £7.99, pp 224 ISBN 1 86207 093 8

Rating: ★★★★

Of course, there is no escaping the sad conclusion of this story. Dr Arthur Morrison had a good death, at home and surrounded by family. Perhaps because the author grew up with doctors as parents he has the ability to provide compassionate and rich details of scenes in hospital and at the deathbed. These unsentimental passages of a death at home are some of the most compelling in the book.

Modern life has a way of detaching us from the uncomfortable images, mixed emotions, and strange conversations of the final stage of life. Morrison writes, “I used to think the world divided between those who have children and those who don't; now I think it divides between those who've lost a parent and those whose parents are still alive.”

He cautions the reader against underestimating the strength of the grief of sons and daughters, no matter what relationships between parents and children are like. As much as I hate to, I have begun to contemplate this advice when it comes to my own mother, who in October 1998 was diagnosed as having heart failure, diabetes, and other health problems. I am grateful for this warm, nostalgic, but unsentimental book.