KimElliott.net

For a long time I was part of a writing group. We met once a week to read our novels to each other and offer feedback. It was an open group, advertised on the internet and because of that we got a lot of different people. Stories of the freakish Londoners who turned up are still rolled out at every social gathering. Generally these weirder characters would appear once or twice and then just drop out. You didn’t expect phone calls, email or any courtesy. No one asked questions. It was part of the deal.

For a while a young, wiry guy came to the group. My strongest memory of him is watching his body shrink when I mentioned Christianity. He had all the hallmarks of someone raised by the Church who had then grown up and left it all behind. He knew a lot about faith and spoke articulately but aggressively about why he felt all organised religion was wrong. I asked if I could make a guess - that he was raised Catholic and had abandoned his faith during his teens. He nodded that I was right. The hatred of his upbringing consumed him and once I’d acknowledged it, he spoke more and more about why he couldn’t stand the Church and less about his book.

The regular members of the group discussed if this was a problem and we decided just to let it run it’s course. He came for a few more weeks, then stopped. We didn’t think anything of it when he left without warning, writing groups tend to have members for either years or weeks. In many ways it was a relief.

Six months later, I got a mail from his sister. She’d found our address in his contacts and she was informing us he had died. At first I couldn’t connect the name to my memory of him - I only realised who it was when I saw the invite to the funeral at the local Catholic Church.

The fact that his funeral service was somewhere he disliked almost seemed sadder to me than the knowledge that he’d died. The only thing I knew about him, other than his writing, was his feelings about his faith.

Shortly after that I stopped going to the writing group and I hadn’t thought of him until a news item reminded me about it today. I think it’s important to remember that not only do we have no control over our own deaths, there’s nothing we can do about what happens to us afterward either.