A TIME TO REFLECT

This week Heather and I are going to Florida and on Saturday 12 June we shall be present at the wedding of our son, Marcus Charles Winfield, to Aki Kuwahata. We are looking forward to it hugely. Marcus is our second son, born 15 December 1972. We are going to look so damned smart for this great event in our lives!

We had another son, our first, Piers Winfield, who was born on 29 August 1970. He died on 20 October 1970. It is impossible for us to have a clear impression of this little baby who seemed to have been surrounded by doctors and nurses from within such a short time of his birth. I remember his birth – I was there – and I remember the elation Heather and I both felt when the long and painful business was over. For a long time it had looked as though we couldn’t have children and then it was quite obvious that we could (my account of this time in our lives appeared as an article – my first ever to be published in The Guardian newspaper; it was reprinted in the Guardian’s international edition and we received many letters from other couples around the world who had shared our anguish at the prospect of being childless). We had a son! A lovely little boy!

Piers suffered from pyloric stenosis, a serious but not normally fatal condition that makes it very difficult for food to be accepted into the stomach; children often grow out of it but they sometimes need an operation on the pyloric sphincter, a muscle at the top of the stomach. I do not remember for how long we waited in the hospital for the consultant to find the time to examine our son and I do not remember why he took so long before he decided to operate. Piers was getting weaker by the hour and I could see the concern on the faces of the nurses as they too waited for the man, the consultant, to act. I do remember the feeling of complete helplessness in the face of this man’s refusal … even to speak to me. He was such a grand man, such a superior being that even his decision not to make a decision had to be accepted. When he did operate it probably would have been too late but we’ll never know because baby Piers died of an embolism – air injected into a vein by accident. The post mortem was attended by many lawyers, representing every sphere of interest present in the hospital, just in case, but not at our behest. We just sat there, bereft.

Our third son was Julian Caedmon, born on 14 November 1974. Like his older brother, Marcus, he was a wonderful child. The two of them, with just a couple of years between them, grew up in an atmosphere of love and fun. They were beautiful, clever, witty, the list of good things goes on. They went to my old school, Laxton School (‘twas Laxton Grammar School when I was there) in Oundle. They matured into very different young men but were simply two sides of the same coin – a most valuable coin.

I was working in London when they were both in London. Marcus making his way in publishing and Julian at King’s College studying French. There was a blissful period when Julian was at University when we met for lunch almost every week. I remember the farewell hug he would give me, on the street in front of everyone. I remember the feel of his slightly angular body and sometimes the roughness of a not particularly well shaved cheek. I remember his smile and the dimples in his cheek – which he shared with my Father.

You will have detected the sense of the permanent and finite past in that brief recollection. Julian died of cancer on 11 June 1999. As with Piers a grand man was involved in his treatment and the grand man accepted a diagnosis of the type of cancer that was wrong. A friend, the Father of Julian’s fiancée, Lena, was a GP and he swore that this diagnosis was wrong. Eventually we persuaded the consultant to go to the one person in London whose analysis of cancer cells was almost always correct. He told our consultant what the cancer was. It was too late. Julian died at his home with Lena, Marcus, Heather and I there to love him to the end.

When a little boy Julian once said to us that he would love us ‘to the end of the counting’ and those words may be found on the plaque to his memory in Golders Green Crematorium.

You will understand why Marcus is such a special person in our lives. He has great personal qualities; intelligence, leadership, determination, courage, kindliness and a way of analysing situations that I envy. And he is our only son. I think that in Aki he has found the perfect complement to his own personality and we wish them a wonderful life together.

So this week is, for us, a time to reflect. The anniversary of Julian’s death on Friday and Marcus’ wedding on Saturday. A time to think about the family we might have had today and to be grateful for the one we do have. And sadness mixed with happiness? Oh, yes. There is always the sadness.