Dealing with death at Christmas

On the darkest December day, a grim anniversary is recalled.

Jean Kabasomi

Jean is a consultant working with financial and Christian organisations. She also writes and broadcasts.

A moody sky overshadows a shingle beach on which a lone empty deckchair stands. A pier with funfair is in the middle distance.

Brighton Pier.

Nick Fewings, via Unsplash.

Thursday 17th December 2020 - a day I won’t forget.

Christmas 2020 was already proving to be a little strange. The UK was in this weird place of tiered restrictions, a sort of semi-lockdown approach. In London and the southeast, we had a bit more flexibility than folks in the north of the country, but people were not really out and about. Most people were saving their interactions for Christmas Day, so the streets were mostly quiet.

Like virtually everyone working in the financial services, I was working from home. The night before, my older brother had left the house after an argument and not come home. My younger brother and sister were concerned about his whereabouts. His phone kept going to voicemail. They were worried. There wasn’t much to do or anyone to see because everyone was regulating their behaviour and saving themselves for Christmas. I, on the other hand, was more nonchalant about his ‘disappearance’. My view was that he was an adult and had a habit of doing ‘immature things’ to get our attention. I thought, ‘He would come back home when he needed to.’ Little did I know how wrong I would be.

At about 4:50pm, as I was winding up and about to log off at work, I saw a police car in our street. My room is on the second floor of our house and my desk is positioned so that I can look directly out of the window onto the street in front of our house. The police car stopped in front of our house. The officers got out and opened our gate. I remember I went downstairs and said, ‘The police are here.’, just before the doorbell rang. I was slightly annoyed, I remember thinking, ‘What silly thing has my brother done now?’

My Mum invited them in. But they wouldn’t speak to her. They were looking for my sister. This seemed really weird at the time. Mum kept asking them what they wanted. But they wouldn’t reply. They just kept saying that they needed to speak to my sister. They wouldn’t speak to my sister in front of all the family, so they led my sister outside into the garden. It was dark outside. We couldn’t hear what they were saying because the back door was shut but we could see my sister’s reaction. She was deeply distressed. My Mum was beginning to get upset too, because she could see my sister through the window. They came back into the house. The police remained silent. It was just strange. My sister kept saying that we all needed to sit down in the living room. Mum kept asking the police what was going on but they remained silent. My younger brother and I were also frustrated and wanted to know. ‘Just tell us what is happening’, I remember saying. But my sister kept saying that we needed to sit down and go to the living room.

We finally all sat down and then one of the officers began to speak. I don’t remember his exact words but it was something to the effect of ‘A body was found this morning at Brighton Pier. From the belongings found on the body, we have identified that it is the body of your brother.’

At this point, I don’t think any of us really understood what he was saying. Someone must have asked, ‘Does that mean he is dead? Are you saying he is dead?’ ‘Yes.’, was the response. ‘How did he die?’, was the next question. Again, more weirdness. It seemed that they didn’t really want to use the word suicide, but that’s what it was. We kept asking for more details. What time? How did it happen? Was there anyone with him? But nothing was forthcoming. It all felt like a cover-up. And then it was over. They left and it was just us left to process it. It all seemed so surreal.

That evening is all a bit of a blur. I am quite a practical person - I knew I was leading a bible study meeting that evening. So, I messaged, the pastor in charge to say I wouldn’t be able to lead it that night. After that, the next feeling, I remember is annoyance towards my brother. I felt it was selfish on so many different levels. Why did he have to do this? How does it solve anything? Why is he always looking for attention? Why would anyone do something like this just before Christmas? I remember feeling he had destroyed Christmas for us forever. Why didn’t he just say something to us? We had just started playing tennis on weekday mornings before I logged into work, why didn’t he mention he was upset then? My younger brother and sister were deeply disturbed and didn’t know what to say or do. Both were blaming themselves. Mum was totally shocked. I kept thinking and saying that he didn’t mean to do it. It was just a mistake that he couldn’t undo. If we weren’t in this quasi-lockdown situation, maybe someone would have noticed him in the water sooner and he would have been rescued? Maybe someone would have been walking along the Pier that night, seen him in the water, jumped in and pulled him out? We didn’t need a hero, maybe someone would have seen him in the water and just called 999? Maybe someone would have noticed him pacing up and down, and tried to speak to him before he went over the edge?

The run-up to Christmas that year was extremely difficult. The government announced a full lockdown again and my family had to travel to the morgue in Brighton to formally identify my brother. I chose not to go with them, I felt at the time, that I wasn’t ready to see my brother’s body. We also had a tree in our garden whose roots had ruptured the sewer pipe, causing our bathroom to flood. It was all one big mess.

I am in charge of the Christmas shopping operation in our house. Christmas is my favourite time of the year. I love the carols, the weather, the darkness, the cosiness, the services at church, the Christmas TV schedule, the food and the opportunity to rest, pause and reflect. I love everything about Christmas. But now it felt weird celebrating Christmas. The delivery came. On Christmas day, I cooked, my sister baked. But it was all just so sad. We sat in silence through a lot of it just eating. Sometimes we spoke about the days leading up to my brother’s death. At different points throughout the day, one or all of us would be struggling to hold back our tears or silently sob. That period was one of the most difficult periods of my life.

I do not have to be in a state of constant mourning throughout the Christmas period. Neither do I need to pretend or ignore that I haven’t experienced death at Christmas.

Three years later, Christmas is still my favourite time of the year. Why? Despite everything, I still believe in the hope that came into the world at Christmas through Jesus Christ. It is that hope that helped me pull through that time. I held on to the comforting words I found in the Bible. I found people who supported me and worked through my grief on the Bereavement Journey. On this course, I discovered that it was okay to be angry, guilty, disappointed and sad about death. It was all part of the process. It was okay to grieve differently from my siblings and my Mum. I didn’t have to force them to feel like me, nor make myself feel like they did. As we began to piece together my brother’s final days, I slowly understood that he had his own mental struggles and sadly was unable to find the help he needed.

I learnt that grief involves the whole person – the body, soul and mind. I understood why I sometimes felt exhausted and at other times I was wide awake. It all made sense when I suddenly felt sad on my way home from my first time at Wimbledon. The body has a weird way of remembering things even when you think you are okay mentally, so I wasn’t surprised when I got a severe migraine exactly three years to the day that my brother didn’t come home. My faith does not mean that I understand everything about my experience neither does it mean that I can’t lament, question or be unhappy about the way things unfolded.

For me, Christmas is still a time to celebrate the birth of Jesus Christ, the birth of Hope. But it is also a time of solemnity, even of grief. As the years go by, this will get easier but probably won’t go away. The two feelings are not mutually exclusive. I do not have to be in a state of constant mourning throughout the Christmas period. Neither do I need to pretend or ignore that I haven’t experienced death at Christmas. Rather, the most honest thing I can do is to acknowledge both feelings and take each day as it comes.

Essay

Comment

Morality

28 July 2023

5 min read

Oppenheimer, my father, and the bomb

One week after its release, Christopher Nolan's latest blockbuster has left Luke Bretherton pondering an un-resolved disagreement with his late father and the theology of Oppenheimer's creation.

Luke Bretherton

Luke Bretherton is a Professor of Moral and Political Theology and senior fellow of the Kenan Institute for Ethics at Duke University in Durham, North Carolina.

I went to see the film Oppenheimer on its opening night at my local, community run cinema in Acton in west London. It was packed. The event felt more like going to church than to the movies. The film itself is a biopic of scientist Robert J. Oppenheimer who was a pivotal figure in leading the development of nuclear weapons during World War II.

Reflecting on the film afterwards it brought to mind a difficult and never resolved argument with my late father. In the aftermath of watching the film, I realised I was still haunted by our dispute.

Our argument centred not on whether it was right to drop the bomb. Our argument was about whether it was Christian.

My father was 18 in 1945 when atomic bombs were detonated over the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, killing over 200,000 souls. He was conscripted into the British Army that year and stationed in India. If the war had not ended, he would have been among those deployed to invade Japan.

Our argument was not just about whether it was right to drop the bomb. It was also about whether it was Christian. My father was an ardent believer who converted to Christianity in the 1950s. His Christian commitments deeply shaped every aspect of his life and work. I followed in his footsteps, and at the time of our argument I was doing a PhD in moral philosophy and theology. In part I was trying to make sense of what it meant to be a Christian in the aftermath of events like the Holocaust and the dropping of nuclear weapons over Hiroshima and Nagasaki, events in which it seemed Christian beliefs and practices played a key part. In the film, this is marked by the stark symbolism of Oppenheimer naming the first test of the prototype nuclear weapon “Trinity” – an often used and key way in which Christian name God.

I had been learning about just war theory when the argument with my father erupted. I was having dinner with my mum and dad at their house. To give a bit of context, my father and I had a long history of sometimes bitter arguments over political matters. These began in the 1980s when I was a teenager. He thought Mrs Thatcher a hero. I did not.

I was telling them about just war theory and its history in Christian thought and practice. As with most of our arguments, we stumbled into it. I made a throwaway remark about how, in the light of just war theory, nuclear weapons were immoral and that their use in 1945 was wrong. And yes, I was probably being pompous and annoying like all those possessed of a little new knowledge and a lot of self-righteous certitude and fervour.

My dad replied with anger that I did not know what I was talking about. Didn’t I realize that if the bombs hadn’t been dropped many more would have died, including him, which meant I would not exist. Something like this argument was used in the film and was often used by Oppenheimer to justify his own involvement in developing atomic weapons.

At the time, I replied with a procedural point that nuclear weapons do not distinguish between combatants and non-combatants, a key distinction in determining the morality or otherwise of targets in war. To use nuclear weapons is to deliberately intend the indiscriminate killing of the innocent. This constitutes murder and not, as the euphemism has it, unintended collateral damage. I added insult to injury by declaring that my dad’s argument was also deeply unchristian as it was a version of the ends justify the means. Was it ever right to do evil even if good might be the result? This upset my father still further. For him it was personal. It was existential. The bombs saved his life. The bombs made our life possible.

The meal, like the argument, did not end well. We had both upset my mother. She banned us from ever talking politics at the family dinner table again. It was a lifetime ban.

What dawned on me was that the question of whether it was moral to possess, let alone use, nuclear weapons was also an existential question for me.

Afterwards I thought more about our row. I replayed the script in my head, trying to think of what I should have said. In my immaturity, I never thought to consider how I should have said it.

What dawned on me was that the question of whether it was moral to possess, let alone use nuclear weapons was also an existential question for me. It was a question of what kind of existence warranted anyone possessing nuclear weapons. To use the language of the Cold War of which I was a child: was it better to be red than dead? Was it better to be invaded and taken over by Communists and see capitalism abolished and the British nation subordinated to a foreign power or to deter this possibility by possessing nuclear weapons, weapons that threatened to destroy all life on this planet? In other words, was my way of life really worth the threat of nuclear annihilation. Was any way of life or ideology or commitment or abstract principle worth that? I concluded that it was not and promptly joined the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND).

I have not attended a CND rally for many years. And what happened in 1945 is more complicated than I used to think. But I still disagree with my dad and think Oppenheimer was deeply misguided. And what happened after 1945 with the advent of the nuclear arms race is not complicated. The film portrays Oppenheimer as anticipating and trying to forestall the process of one-upmanship that developing the A-bomb and then the H-bomb set in motion. He was right to do what he could to stop the arms race, even though, as the film portrays, the authorities tried to silence and marginalize him for his efforts.

Today, if my father and I were able to have the argument again, I would approach it very differently. I hope I would be less pompous, annoying, and self-righteous. But mostly, I would be more theological. I would ask him whether he thought Jesus would drop a nuclear bomb to save a life, or whether Jesus’s own life, death, and resurrection pointed in a different direction. And then see where that conversation took us.