To Catch a Knife

The envelope landed on my doormat at quarter to eight on a Tuesday morning. I was already up and eating breakfast when the letterbox rattled. He’d sent it in an envelope as usual and, as usual, it was a photograph printed on card with small neat writing covering the back, a home-made postcard. The photograph was one of his, I saw that straight away. Green fields stretched away with the sun just glancing through the clouds to light up the foreign countryside. Strange how one can look at a picture and see instantly that it is not England. I sometimes think that our distinctive countryside is written in our blood. There’s nothing else quite like it.1

I turned the card over. The line at the top read: An Afternoon in the Wilderness.2

Hi Mum and Dad,3

Hope my latest note finds you well. Joe and Carole took me to the countryside for a spot of camping. Nothing like waking up in the morning to birdsong and green spaces especially after the hustle and bustle of New York. Heading over to California for some surfing next week and then onto Vegas. I’ve taken millions of photos and will email them over as soon as I get back to civilisation!4

Am thinking of trying out South America next, so I may have to extend my travels yet again. Hope you won’t mind too much. I’ll try and be home for Christmas. Carole’s feeding me up so I’ll be nice and fat, no need to worry that I’m not eating well enough out here! Some souvenirs are going in the post and should be with you in a couple of weeks, I hope you like them.5

Love to all at home. 6

Miss you and will ring soon.7

Robbie x 8

It was the usual chitchat that told me little of what he was actually getting up to or feeling, but he was too old and too busy to spare a thought for his mother’s worrying.9

Robbie’s decision to go travelling for a year had soon extended to two. My nomad son seemed to love foreign countries, meeting new people and plunging head first into everything and anything. He seemed made for the travelling life, though I did hope Vegas wouldn’t drain too much of his savings.10

I hadn’t wanted him to go, but asking him to stay would have been pointless and unfair. He was a grown man and he subscribed to the ‘life’s too short’ philosophy. I agreed to a certain extent, but took it to mean take extra care when crossing the road and don’t eat too much beef rather than trying to cram as many daredevil adventures into my day as possible.11

Robbie was something of an anomaly really compared to me and John. Neither of us had his wander-lust and thrill-seeking nature. He had always been the one to clamour to go on rollercoasters at the fair and John or I would have to grin and bear it with him. As he grew older he had a motorcycle, climbed mountains and generally did anything that was energetic. Some of the things he did would wear John and I out just by thinking about them! Even in our youth we’d never had as much energy as Robbie. The tanned, laughing man who’d stopped off to see us enroute to America from Europe had seemed almost a stranger. 12

But Robbie hadn’t always been like this. When he was younger he had been much more studious, although he loved to do anything active and exciting. It had all changed for him three years ago. Robbie had been travelling to work with his wife on the Number 30 bus when a suicide bomber destroyed the top half of the bus. It was of course 7th July 2005, or 7/7 as it was later known, and the suicide bomber on Robbie’s bus was supposed to detonate his bomb on the Underground but had been diverted. Jessica, a week away from starting maternity leave, had been killed instantly while some trick of fate had spared Robbie. 13

He changed after that, became withdrawn and quiet, giving up his well-paid London job for a succession of local jobs and moped about. He refused to use public transport and either drove or walked. 14

He drank too much and tried to commit suicide twice. He grew paler and thinner and the spark of life, the thing that made him fundamentally Robbie seemed to fade as if it had extinguished with the death of Jessica and their unborn child.15

He grew more and more solitary and the once tolerant young man seemed consumed with hate. Those were dark, difficult days when John and I despaired of ever again seeing the son we had once known. We tried to help him, but our efforts were met with aggression and anger or desolation and loss.16

And then, as so often happens, it suddenly changed. He met a man in a pub one night and whether by fate or chance, he poured out his feelings in a stream of emotion.17

“It was like pulling the plug out of the bath, Mum,” he said to me later. “It all seemed to drain out of me in one big gurgle. I didn’t realise how much hate and despair I’d been carrying around with me until it was gone.”18

The stranger turned out to be Joe, an American who had lost his mother, father, brother and fiancée in the 9/11 attacks. They had died on United Airlines Flight 93 when it crashed into the Pentagon. Joe was supposed to have been with them, but had to work and was going to follow the next day. Robbie asked him how he could bear the anger and loss and guilt that must surely besiege him every day. He seemed so calm and happy with life.19

Joe simply shrugged. “If Fate throws a knife at you, there are two ways of catching it – by the blade or by the handle.” 20

Robbie later said that this was the moment that it all changed; it was like a light going on inside his head. He realised that Jessica wouldn’t have wanted him to sit about moping and wasting his life on what might have been, or wishing himself dead. She would want him to carry on and have the best life he could, taking the good memories from their time together and having a happy life. If this man could lose his whole family in one moment and still carry on, then he could do the same.21

The change in Robbie didn’t happen overnight, but happen it did. Gradually the old Robbie began to come back. He started socialising again, took a photography course and began to enjoy life. It wasn’t long after that when he announced to John and I that he was selling the house and going to see the world.22

As I said, I didn’t try to stop him. He needed to go, he wanted to and this was his way of coping and accepting. I did ask him if he was sure this was what he really wanted to do.23

“London isn’t the same anymore Mum, I don’t think I could ever go back there to work, as much as I want to not let this affect me.”24

“There are suicide bombers all over the world,” I reminded him gently.25

“I know, but for too long now I’ve been holding the knife by the handle. I need to start holding it by the blade. Losing Jessica made me realise that life is too short. I need to see the world, I need to live a little.”26

And so he went. We receive a postcard every so often and photos of course, lots of photos. On the rare occasions that he is near a computer, Robbie’s emails will talk about plans to start up his own photography business and I’m sure that when he finally decides to settle down, he will have found something he is good at and something that will fulfil him. He’s been nearly the whole world over by now, but tries to make a stop home when he can. Joe and his new wife Carole, now lifelong friends, will always have a bed for him when he wants it. 27

I am sure that one day soon he will come home, but until then all I have of my son are the few words written on the back of photographs and the knowledge that, wherever he is, whatever he is doing, he has caught the knife by the blade and won.28