To all my friends in America

I am so sorry about the shocking events in America. I am so sorry about everything: the causes, the effects, the horror. My anxiety for you is huge. You must all be in a surreal mind-frame. The entire world is in hypnotised by shock and grief and sympathy. Words fail me. I’m thinking of you very much as I sit here far away, cocooned at the bottom of the world. My love and condolences for this national grief.

In the strangest of ways it has been one of the greatest blessings for me, an amazing blessing born of horror.

I was in Sydney this morning, due to fly to New York at 11am for the Reading Magic tour. Of course all flights were cancelled. I came home and was able immediately to go to my dad’s side. He’s at the end of his life with Parkinson’s. Three times in the last twenty four hours he has had stuff suctioned from his lungs because he has literally been choking to death. I left him yesterday having said my goodbyes. I was in anguish about going, and last night in Sydney sobbed hysterically into my pillows, longing to be with him. He knows me. He knows my voice and touch. I calm him. I make him smile. How could I have left him? How did I do it? In fact I’m now really shocked that I found myself able to leave. I guess I thought he would perhaps live. I guess I thought that he would not wish me to miss such an important series of events. I guess I thought I was doing what he would have done in the circumstances, which is not to let other people down, no matter what.

So today, in a surreal world, I have been back beside him, by myself, for blessed hours, such a gift, as if the rest of the world did not exist, talking to him, kissing him, holding him, singing him the silly love-songs I’ve invented for him recently, reeling off all his good points, and recalling all his achievements in Africa over the forty six years that he lived there. It has been magnificent. I have not been alone all the time - other members of the family are here, thank heaven. My dad has been taken off all his medications and we now have to wait to see if he will rally or not. He breathes with groans not breaths. I’m totally at peace because I am at home and with my father. And I have terrorists to thank for this, terrorists who have caused so much mayhem, and so much endless grief to so many. It is bizarre and I am in a state of total confusion about the whole day.

All my love at this terrible time,

Mem xxx