He fucking loved his middle names

by Zannie

What is the name of your lost one and what was your relationship?

Trevor Nicholas Holden Stutely, he was my dad. You get the long version cause he fucking loved his middle names.

He was a writer, photographer, a child of adoption and an alcoholic. He left the UK at 21 never to return with a backpack of abandonment weighing him down. He acquired an American accent from his 20+ years of life there, he always said we were American and not English (?) … I learnt all 51 states in the kitchen of one of our apartments in Spain at 11 years old. He loved me deeply, but he was a very selfish man. A weird mix of hopelessness but smug superiority threaded through his aura. No money for my brother and I, but money for him to have a brown velvet fedora imported from Italy and other bits. However, he was beautiful with words and a sensitive man.

When did you find out, where were you?

The 10th of January 2020, I was living in Barcelona, waiting in line for a casting. My mum’s voice on the phone was gentler than usual when she said that my dad’s pal let himself into Pa’s flat and found him in bed—I froze. I’d celebrated my 21st birthday two days prior and was bitter my dad hadn’t called. Maybe he couldn’t have - My bitterness no longer had a backbone. He was gone.

Trevor had gotten really thin from chemo. His lack of appetite had reduced his jean size to a 25-inch waist, so it was expected that he would leave us at some point. …although I somehow thought he never would. He was always quick to say, “I’m not going anywhere just yet.”

In my frozen state, I walked outside and called my friend Clara, who lived nearby in the neighborhood of Sants. She found me between parked cars under a dusty yellow streetlight, where I cried—and then laughed at the whole situation. I had another commercial casting to do and needed to show up. I was soooo broke at the time, so I forced myself and ignored my newfound grief - thought if I just got this job I could grieve and at least pay my rent. Thankfully, my face wasn’t plastered on a cat food ad for 6 months…

But I dissociated a lot. After my five minutes of pretending to feed an imaginary cat, I went to Clara and Eva’s place and laughed about the whole thing. I remember the awkward worry in their eyes as they attempted to chuckle along with me. The British way was to laugh at my pain; the family way was to make it all ironically hilarious. Dad’s was to be delusional and make American navy aircrafts:

What surprised you about your own response?

I felt relieved—for him, but also for myself. Hopeful that now he could be of more benefit to me as this other entity in another realm (like my own little secret super power). He no longer could fail to be the father I needed. So, for a while, I was relieved, even freed. But then came the what could have beens. The residue of doubt, the puzzle of his influence—or lack of it—on who I am and how I live and choose. Just as I lost him, I had all these questions about who actually was the person I was related to; deep down under all the defensiveness. I became hyper-analytical of how I interacted with the world, I felt a lot of the loneliness he carried through his life.

Now, in my mid-twenties, I miss him—not as a father, but as someone I’d like to chat with. Two adults, not two people bound by a family title.

Where do you think they went? How do you feel about the concept of a legacy? Reincarnation? Spirits/souls?

Well… his remains are dust in a can sitting on my mum’s balcony in Spain! The man she divorced 24 years ago on her balcony—it’s shitty that some people can never be erased from your story.

For a while, I felt like he was stuck somewhere in limbo, a waiting room of sorts. I never truly trusted that he would pass Judgment Day. However, I’d stare into lightbulbs and ask him what it was like—was there the infamous blinding white light? I talked to him a lot during my early stages of grief, but now I’ve become a little apprehensive to listen that deep.

Legacy scares me… I see it as something dirty, full of shame. His “first blood” was my brother, and his untied family history led him into an infinite spiral. Even when he did finally find his natural parents he was rejected all over again and his abandonment scar sliced back open. I realise now how much he was jail-bound by his mind.

Regarding spirits, I do believe they’re around. When I’ve met with mediums or witches of some sort, my dad hasn’t always come through (his adopted mother has!). He seems quite weak. I hope he gets some strength and moves on to another world.

However, if he is still here, I think he’s the bees I see. When I did chat to him in the beginning, a bee always appeared. He was a travel writer, and his lack of roots led him to fall in love with other lands. I think bees are their own travelers, so whenever one crosses my path, I usually think it’s him.

How did you/your family mark the death? Was there a traditional or untraditional ceremony etc and what do you remember most?

My dad was incinerated. His funeral was dotted with around 8ish members from his AA group, an old neighbour from one of the flats we lived in, my mum, her friend, my grandma and my brother on FaceTime.

Pa was not great at keeping friends, prone to pushing people away. So it was strange to receive condolences from people I’d never met who’d been affected by the very disease that dominated him while I was growing up. I dissociated and had these blurry images of random strangers with the wear and tear of addiction on their skin saying, “I’m sorry for your loss, your dad really loved you.” …The fuck they know? ( I do respect that my dad may have opened up in those meetings about his darkest thoughts more than he ever did with us)

During the ceremony one of his closest pals in AA got up to do a speech after I had said my bit and opened with, “ Hello, my name is V. I’m an alcoholic.” The grip of fear in my mum’s hand sent a shooting pain up to my shoulder - was this funeral about to be another AA meeting? …unfortunately no collective reply for V. It could have been painfully hilarious though…

What’s the most annoying or unhelpful thing someone told you when you lost someone? What was the best / most useful / most comforting?

Three days after I found out, my ex said, “You’ll get over it soon.” I like to think it was a panicky unconscious response, but it stung— I felt diminished before I even began to fathom what I was going through. There was no space for my grief in his chest, I’m grateful now that we never opened that door together, this pain is way too sacred and now 4 years later it never goes away, it gets worse. Our flatmate, who was with us, simply put his arm around my shoulder as we rode the metro. That was all I needed at the time.

The most comforting moment came when I met my friend Barbara, who had lost both her parents 2 years prior. It wasn’t any particular thing she said, it was just the experience of our encounter eased the paralysis and I finally crumbled. She knew the pain. She understood how deep it ran. And with her, I could finally cry with no guilt or shame. It wasn’t scary or too much for her. Collective crying is proper cathartic; it was freeing to mourn in the company of someone who has also lost. I knew my dad had sent her to me. (I cried with Bar last week again <3)

How do you feel grief today? Where does it manifest in your body?

In my eyes, my throat, the back right part of my brain, in many of my cells.

Losing my dad — and even the long, drawn-out phase of watching him fade while he was still alive — is something I will never get over. I carry it with me, etched into the skin between my toes every single day. He is in every cigarette I smoke, every glass of red wine I drink — ironic, given how much I begged him when I was little to stop, I now unconsciously sip and inhale as a means to be close to him.

What is one logistic related to death that surprised you?

They really seal that shit up, I genuinely tried to open his canister of ashes with a knife to take a bit of him to my brother when I went to visit in the States. Could not… Will be returning to the crematorium to get a wee passport for the urn and unseal him for when my brother and I finally go to India and pop him in the Ganges.

Do you have any rituals for your lost one? Can you share a photo?

I have a weird ritual before I perform sometimes (I don’t do it all the time). I sometimes look in the mirror and say, “I hope you enjoy the show, Pa.” He never got to see me act on stage so it’s nice to sometimes consciously invite him, in whatever form he is able to turn up in.

I’m hoping at some point, I’ll go through this box I made of all his notebooks and newspaper cuttings, and do a trip once a year to all the spots he was taking notes on to write articles about.

Has grief changed your being, your overall point of view?

I used to be a professional avoidant! Emotions? Who?!! But I hit a wall when I moved to Scotland and began studying. The context that supported my life and distracted me was gone and I was alone in a new country. Alone and in the labyrinth of my own mind. I have wailed, roared tears, had fits of pain…I’ve felt such depths since his passing. The person whose genetics make me a creative was no longer around, I felt very alone in my discovery and was confronted with so many fears. I became hopeless, felt like an imposter, even victimised myself - much like he did. I sometimes have to question what’s mine and what’s his. I wonder sometimes if I unconsciously copy and perform his traits as a way to keep him “alive”.

I don’t know, I’m a much sadder person, like a weird video game I seem to unlock new levels of pain. Insecure because he wasn’t the best dad, insecure because he is now gone, insecure and panic attacks because I notice his toxic traits in me.

A big realisation I had was that the masculine influence I have always yearned for, I now have to earn myself. I’m learning how to be my own dad.

What advice would you give someone who just lost someone important to them?

Let the anger live, give it space, it will eventually transmute into something else. Hopefully forgiveness.

I originally said “forgive them and that I’m still working on it” But Seamus (my best friend and lover who has been pffffffff words can’t describe the space he has given me to have these exorcisms of pain and held me through it all, squeezed me to remind me I was still on earth ——sorry I could write a whole love letter to him — and if you have a Seamus who is soo unafraid and willing to be there, let them in when they knock to show care) …anyway, he reminded me of when I said to him in the midst of a spiral last summer that I hadn’t been angry, so I couldn’t forgive my Pa and I couldn’t grieve or miss him, it was all very conflicting. So just feel the shit you never let yourself feel when they were here.

Forgive yourself too, for the times you couldn’t be there, you had to live your life.

Also on a more positive note, I think doing something that used to set their soul on fire is a nice way to feel like they are there with you in the backseat

Do you want to share something from your lost one? A song, a recipe, a saying, etc.

My dad was venturing into photography and heading over to India whenever he was cleared of cancer. He always said I was his finest critic, his “eagle-eyed sounding board”. Here’s an email update with a photo and two other photographs - one he took in France of the bull runs and one of a man on a train in New Delhi. Also we always ate garlic prawns together so I’ve shared a quick recipe.

Recipe for GAMBAS AL AJILLO with bread n butter....

The Mediterranean meets a Brit n his butter.

Olive Oil

Cayenne chilli - I do 4ish?

4 or more cloves of garlic - sliced

Prawns ( add them when you feel happy with how spicy and garlic-ie it is)

Salt

Bread

Butter

****I’ve started adding cherry tomatoes too at the beginning while I’m making the oil base, it’s juicier.