What we leave behind

My dad, Nigel Winn, died quite suddenly of cancer in 2006 aged 56. Since his death I have been meaning to collect his writing and publish a selection of his poetry. It’s taken me ten years to make time for this, in between having a daughter, getting married, building a house, chasing and holding onto employment and also trying to come to terms with the loss, too.

Dad left behind a collection of poems, a short play and other pieces of writing. He was a bricklayer and carpenter most of his life but started writing actively during the period 1996-2006. During that time, he studied for a BA in English Literature at the University of Lincoln, where he gained a First Class degree. He went on to teach at the university, and was popular among students. Following his death, colleagues established the annual Nigel Winn Memorial Prize for Creative Writing.

His work is quite autobiographical and therefore especially meaningful to those who were close to him. I used Lulu to self-publish this selection of his poetry. It’s very satisfying for me and my family to have a physical copy of his published work and I think that people who knew Nigel may like to purchase a hardback copy of the book, too. I make £0.06p on every copy sold because Lulu won’t allow me to reduce the author’s profit to £0 for some reason. A PDF proof of the book can be downloaded here. Thank you for reading it. He was a really good man.

Eulogy for Dad

Canwick Church, June 2006.

“A couple of weeks before dad died, mum told me that Dad wanted to speak to us about his funeral.  The next day, while on day-release from hospital, sitting up in his own bed, he made a few simple but urgent requests. 

First, he said that he wanted the service to be in this church so that he could be buried in Canwick.  This was of utmost importance because he wanted to be close to mum and the house they built together.  He thought it would be good for mum to be able to walk a couple of minutes from the house when she needed to talk with him.  He wanted to stay close to her, the house and the life they had together.

Secondly, he listed the songs he wanted played.  One for mum, which he said was perfect for her, but it had to be the Johnny Cash version.  The second was Leonard Cohen’s Hallelujah, sung by Jeff Buckley.  It’s perhaps worth noting that Jeff Buckley died at a tragically young age, as did his father, Tim Buckley.  But that’s not why Dad chose the song.  He just loved it; and we love it and we hope you do too.  The final song, for when you leave the church, was left up to us to decide whether it was suitable for the day.  Dad liked the idea of it but wasn’t sure how appropriate it might be on the day so left it to us to decide.  It’s a fun song that has actually brought me some relief during the last week and we think you’ll agree that it’s very much a Nigel Winn song.

After listing the songs, he asked that Luke and I write something for today.  He’s enjoyed the things we’ve written for him in the past and thought we’d do a decent job of it.  We hope you agree. Nothing has been at once more difficult and yet so easy to write than a tribute of our Dad. 

As we talked, Dad emphasised that we should try to impress upon you the things he’d observed and learned in the last few weeks of his life.  He said it was important that the funeral be a time to reflect on the present and not the past.  Easier said than done.  Luke and I have been writing this tribute in ours minds since the day we spoke with Dad and after putting off writing it again and again, we sat down on Saturday night and had a go.  As Dad requested, I’ll come to focus on the present in a minute, but first of all, I want to start at the beginning, or at least, the beginning for me, around the time I was born, because I think it says a lot about the way Dad’s life ended, too.

In the early 1970s in Deal, Kent, mum, dad and two good friends, Bob and Polly, bought a small industrial building from Polly’s mum, previously used for their family business, for £2000 and converted it into a place for us to live.  Mum lived with Polly and her mother for six weeks and when it was safe for children, we all moved in.  Bob and Polly lived upstairs, mum and dad downstairs.  It had no garden, so for my recreation I was put outside the front of the building in my pram.  Apparently, only a couple of the neighbours had cars, and when they saw the prams outside the front door, they parked at the bottom of the street, which was nice of them.

After a couple of years, they all decided to move and Bob and Dad took off around the country looking for cheap property to renovate and move us all into.  Bear in mind that they were entirely self taught and by the sounds of it, running on enthusiasm rather than experience.  Eventually, they found a place in Billinghay, Lincolnshire and again, Bob and Dad moved up there first, renovated it into a habitable state for children and then we all moved up to see it for the first time.  They sold the house in Deal for £11000 and bought the place in Lincolnshire for £5000.  It needed a hell of a lot of work though. I was two.  Luke was a year away.

That’s how life with Dad started for Luke and I and it’s one of my proudest thoughts of him and mum.  They were in their very early twenties, full of optimism and hope that their move to Billinghay with their friends was going to be good for us all. And it was.  The move to Billinghay, was the first of a few moves we made right up until I was eighteen when they came to Canwick.  In 18 years, we’d moved five times and then I left home to go to college in London but they moved once more in 1994 to the house they now own and the house dad died in aged 56 years old. It’s the house we hope you’ll visit after this thanksgiving and I’m sure that you won’t have to look hard to see Dad everywhere. 

I’m 33 this year.  Luke is 30.  All those years, without exception, mum and dad surrounded us with optimism and gentle encouragement.  I don’t ever remember being told what to do or how to live, but it was obvious what we should do just by looking at mum and dad and the way they lived and brought us up.  For as long as I’ve had any sense, they’ve been my greatest influence, my best friends and Dad has been the only role model I needed.  He was not an over bearing influence at all and I’ve often thought that if I could be as good a man as he was, then I wouldn’t have wasted my time for a moment.

Thankfully, he was no Richard Branson, so following in his footsteps has meant a fairly modest life of laughter, hard work when necessary, sincere love and affection to those closest to us, and regular quiet reflection.

The greatest influence Dad had on me was during the brief time I returned to Canwick after living in London for a year.  He was reading books on Buddhism, something I knew absolutely nothing about but he was keen to share what he’d learned with me and so we went to a Japanese garden not far outside of Lincoln and he tried to explain the new ideas he’d been reading about through wandering about the garden.  Shortly afterwards, we went to a meditation session led by the ex-Japanese monk who owns the garden and I was hooked.  It was something completely new to me, a revelation in the way I thought and looked at life and for a few years we shared a growing interest in Eastern thought and meditation.  I had nothing better to do at the time, so I applied to study religion at University and ended up completing two degrees in Buddhism and living in a monastery in Japan for a summer in 1994.  Then, following that, I lived in Japan for three years and having made it sound so good, Luke went over there and is still living there now after four years.  I really don’t think we’d have done that without Dad picking up those books 16 years earlier and sharing his new thoughts on life with us all.

About three weeks ago, when Dad finally got out of hospital, desperately malnourished and weakened by the experience, we were sitting in the dining room, looking out of the window.  Dad was in the bed we’d been loaned by the NHS, looking onto the garden.  While in hospital, he wanted little more than to be in that room, looking out of the window onto their beautiful little garden. It’s where he spent the last two weeks of his life, mostly in quiet contemplation.  While sitting at his bedside one day, I asked him what he was thinking of and he said that he was just looking, piecing everything together.  He said that for years while meditating, he had tried to enter the state of concentration and insight he was now experiencing.  He said that his mind was unable to look into the future and that the presence of each moment was like a new revelation.  He delighted in it.  As I sat with him, it was like watching someone seeing the world for the first time. At times, there was intense pleasure on his face. He said that we should tell you all that it’s the small, transient things in life that are of real significance.  That when we meet today, we should reflect on the present, and not dwell on the past.  He said that friends and family were the things we should concentrate on and that you are all very welcome in his home. 

Dad has always been a bit of a worrier but the for the last two weeks, the only thing he worried about was having to go back into hospital and have his senses denied the pleasure that his home gave him.  In hospital, he cried often.  After returning home, he never once cried again.  He seemed peaceful and relaxed.  Of course, there was often great sadness in the house because we knew he’d be leaving us soon, but after a few days home from hospital, Dad told us that he’d said all he needed to say.  He told us he had no regrets and that we’d be OK without him. We will manage but it won’t be as easy.

When Dad was talking with Luke and I about the funeral, he said that we should emphasis the importance of the love between us all.  In particular, he spoke of his love for mum and said that despite dying so soon, he had experienced over 40 remarkable years of wonderful love with mum from the time they met at their youth club as teenagers.   He said it was still difficult for him to believe how good their relationship had been and that he was incredibly lucky.  It’s easy to emphasise the good things about someone when they are gone, but I actually find it difficult to describe the love that we saw between mum and dad over the years. It remains my greatest inspiration.  Dad said mum had always been selfless in her love for him but that she needed to look after herself now. 

Finally, Dad wanted you to all benefit from what we as a family have learned about cancer in the last few months.  I know some of you have experienced cancer first hand and that I may be going over old ground in what I have to say, but it’s very important to us that Dad’s death might help each of you live better and longer lives.

So on Dad’s behalf, I’ll finish by summarising some recent facts about cancer.  

The charity, Cancer Research state that in the UK, one in three of us are diagnosed with cancer.  And that by 2020, one in two of us will be diagnosed with cancer. Statistically, about 60% of people with cancer currently survive more than five years.  Much to my surprise, this is not really due to advances in drugs to treat cancer.  In fact, use of 5-FU, the standard chemotherapy drug for bowel cancer, only increases the five year survival rate by about 5-10% which is on the high side for chemotherapy treatments. 5-FU has been the standard treatment for bowel cancer for forty years and like all chemotherapy drugs, has miserable side effects.  Like all other cancers, the best way to beat bowel cancer is to catch it early.  Something which the doctors failed to take notice of in dad’s case.  Once bowel cancer has spread inside the body, the 60% survival rate drops to about 4 or 5 %.

The World Heath Organisation state that of the 6 million worldwide cancer cases each year, about three million are caused by poor diet, 1.5 million by infection and 1.5 million by toxins.  That is, cancer is almost always the result of the lives we lead.  Some cancers are genetic, but no more than 15% of people diagnosed with cancer are unfortunate enough to have such a genetic liability.  

Cancer is largely a disease of the industrialised and developed world.  It’s a disease that was hardly known until the 20^thcentury and still mostly affects the developed world.  In Britain, one in 8 women get breast cancer.  In China, it is one in 100,000 women.  In Britain, one in four men get prostate cancer, in China it is almost unheard of.  What we found out after Dad was diagnosed with cancer is there’s so much we can do to prevent cancer.  Making really significant changes in our diet, in the chemicals we bring in our homes and employ at work, and the pollution we pass in to the atmosphere really will mean the difference between life and death for many of us.  Dad was only 56 when he died.  Something caused him to get cancer of the bowel, despite leading a pretty careful life and he doesn’t want it to happen to you.  With up to 50% of us in this church due to be diagnosed with cancer in our lifetimes, we can’t ignore it and taking the time to learn more about this disease is the first step in preventing it.  Thank you.”

The Natural Death Centre

As dad was dying I came across a book that helped us in the last weeks of his life and in making the arrangements for his burial. Reading The Natural Death Handbook guided us in what we could do for dad prior to and following his death. It gave us the confidence and basic knowledge of what signs to look for as dad was dying, how to care for his body, and the details of a good undertaker, who allowed us to create the funeral on our terms.

After his last breaths that Spring evening, we removed the catheter and the syringe driver; we washed and dressed him in the clothes he requested and laid him out peacefully. Neighbours came to visit him and say goodbye. He remained with us overnight and the undertaker came the next day. We carried him out of the house together, into the back of the estate car. Luke and I helped dig his grave. On the day of the funeral, dad was brought back to the house in the willow coffin he had asked for and mum decorated it with flowers. Members of the family gathered at the house and then we carried his body through the village to the church which was full of his friends.

The vicar said a few words, but left the service largely to us. Afterwards, we took dad outside to the small burial ground, lowered the coffin and shovelled soil over him. Several people remained to fill the hole. It felt right. The least we could do.

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Over the years, I’ve thought about the funeral and how the Natural Death Centre and the work they do had such a profound influence at such an important moment in our lives. I’m so grateful for that.

Here’s a talk by Claire and Rupert Callender, one of the Trustees of the Natural Death Centre.