The Madness of Grief: A Memoir of Love and Loss

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Add into the story that Richard has 5 dachshunds (I have one) and I just couldn't help drawing an affinity for his journey. I was ultimately left feeling very touched, and not quite alone. Coles at the vicarage where he lives with his dachshunds Daisy and Pongo. Photograph: Fabio De Paola/The Guardian

In this memoir, Coles shares his truth, stays kind, and, when possible, brings a smile . . . By reflecting the hurts of others' losses with such beauty and integrity, he confirms that it is his open humanity that is priestly. It gives me yet another reason to admire him— CHURCH TIMES In the book, he takes care to capture as well many of the quieter, less dramatic, sillier moments that defined the experience for him. David’s insistence, when the paramedics wheeled him away, that Coles remember to bring his sewing, not his knitting, to the hospital. Those squeamishness selfies he took with Strictly fans in A&E (“Do us a twirl, Rev!”) and, later, the cheerless McDonald’s breakfasts and Costa coffees consumed while waiting on the ward. He had an incongruous conversation about, of all things, the Liverpool manager Jürgen Klopp with an administrator while he was registering David’s death. The importance of language is something Coles knows so well, and he says it always surprises him that in a society that prides itself on being so open-minded and liberated, so prepared to discuss anything and everything, we use euphemisms like “passed away” when it comes to death. “It’s a fate we all share, but we’re uneasy to share it. Aristocrats and Irish Roman Catholics handle death the best, the English middle class not so well. The language intimidates us, as though using it will put us in danger, and makes death more real.”If you have read enough Cacoyannis, you will already suspect that all is not as it seems, and that there are secrets that have other secrets, and that the book is actually an onion. You know, layers, and layers, and every time you peel off a layer, your eyes tear up. However, what really kept me reading was the way that the characters responded to everything that life threw at them. I was drawn in by their humanness. Their rawness. He attempted suicide and was diagnosed with clinical depression; he was admitted to St Andrews psychiatric hospital in Northampton. “Life seemed to be pretty futile, and I just couldn’t see why you would want to do it.” Whether it is pastoral care for the bereaved, discussions about the afterlife, or being called out to perform the last rites, death is part of the Reverend Richard Coles's life and work. But when his partner the Reverend David Coles died, shortly before Christmas in 2019, much about death took Coles by surprise. For one thing, David's death at the early age of forty-three was unexpected.

Dad eventually takes up with a classy lady, Mia-Mia, who moves in, mostly, cleans and cooks and takes care of the two of them in their tiny house next to the magic shop, displacing Aunty Ada, who had been doing that for them, and whose nose was now a bit out of joint about it. I am not going to tell you any of the secrets, because that would spoil the whole thing for you. But remember that it is a book about secrets and identity, and realness and fantasy, grief and recovery, and what masquerades as fantasy often is a disguise for despair. Again, I feel spoiled, having read such a wonderful piece of art. As I read the book, the words seemed to melt into my mind and put me in the place as Jane. The author somehow can put himself in the place of Jane, as well... even as a 16 year old girl. He can, seemingly magically, grasp the most inward feelings of all the characters and lead you through a maze of grief, surprise, unrest, fright, and happiness. Beautifully written, moving and gut-wrenching, but also at times very funny, each smile and laugh a candle in the dark— IAN RANKIN A perfect mix of intenseness and humour the writer is a truly funny women. Writing about what is often quite a dark subject the humour too is often dark or taboo but it is written so cleverly and with such finesse that I couldn’t help but be put into fits of laughter multiple times.Does being a vicar make it any easier to handle death? “Christianity doesn’t get you out of death,” says Coles. “It just says there’s something beyond it. But it doesn’t get you out of loss or grief, or bereavement. It doesn’t spare you any of that. On the contrary, I think it probably intensifies it.” The Madness of Grief covers the period of David's death from the evening when he first became ill to just after the funeral. A few short weeks over the festive period that David loved so much. How does one carry on when the one you love so much has died? What would they have liked at their funeral? What do you do with all their stuff? These are all questions Coles faced following David's death and with the help of friends and family he strode on. Moving and candid, this book will resonate with anyone who has lost a loved one, or has had to cope with someone they love whom they just cannot help— I NEWSPAPER

From the minute we met – boom!” Coles says. “I never for a minute thought – no matter what happened – we would ever part.” Also set in modern-day London, Bowl of Fruit tells the story of a man with a fantastical talent, and of his epic, twenty-four hour journey with a beautiful ghost-writer who knows more about his past than he does. IndieReader named Bowl of Fruit one of its "Best Indie Books of 2015", calling it "a magically original story" and "an incredible read". I had to laugh out loud when Richard likened David to Imelda in the shoe department - that was how Steve referred to me. Relating all this, Coles dredges up a memory of the bizarre and unprompted thought that skipped through his mind as he bent to kiss David’s body one last time. “The cliché says, oh, they’re going to be icy cold. But they’re not, they’re room temperature actually; they’re just cooler than you would expect them to be. And I remember kissing David and thinking, ‘Ooh. He’s chambré.’ Which, um, is some sort of word from a sommelier’s lexicon. I mean! What a peculiar thing to say about your just-departed partner. But I think it was the fact of Dead David. I could only glance at that fact. It was too much.”Set in 1969, sixteen year old Jane is our central character. Her story - the loss of her mum at a young age, finding out more than she should about her fathers ‘unusual’ girlfriend and her own feelings for her friend Karl. Coles lost many friends during the HIV epidemic, including the gay activist Mark Ashton, who was portrayed in the 2014 film Pride. “Half the people you knew died,” he says. “They’d be dead in a week. It was just so traumatic. We were so young. I really still miss some of the people. Mark Ashton – what would he have become? So many men were in their 20s and 30s. God knows what they would have been. I just wish they hadn’t died.” The epidemic brought Coles closer to God, in a similar way, he says, to the spike in the number of men who sought ordination after the second world war. He spent much of his youth as an atheist (even setting up an atheist society at school), but after the years of fame, drugs and grief, he consulted a psychiatrist, who suggested he see a priest. I loved this book. It was so honest and the way Coles spoke about his life with David, it is like you could get to know him.