Host: Meg Bowles
[overture music]
Meg: [00:00:12] From PRX, this is The Moth Radio Hour. I'm Meg Bowles. And in this hour, we explore the many ways we say goodbye to that someone or something we've met along the way.
I've recently been doing one of those deep cleans, the clearing out of stuff, it seems to be all the rage at the moment, paring down, living more simply. In Sweden, where I live, there's a word, lagom, that means not too much, not too little, just enough. Something about when Vikings shared one cup. But anyway, I've been saying goodbye to a lot of stuff, a lot of things that are connected to memories, but I find I don't actually need the reminder anymore.
When you think about it, we say goodbye countless times a day, a simple parting phrase at the end of a phone call, people have waxed poetic for centuries about saying goodbye to a love or a place. There are special rituals and prayers, because we want to commemorate these occasions, these moments that leave us changed.
Our first story comes from travel journalist, filmmaker and adventurer, Ash Bhardwaj. Ash has trekked the River Nile. He's waded through crocodile infested waters in Uganda and has experienced the magnificence of Everest. He shared this story at an evening we produced at the Union Chapel in London. The theme of the night was Don't look back. Here's Ash Bhardwaj live at The Moth.
[applause]
Ash Bhardwaj: [00:01:37] The whole family was there in the living room of my uncle's house in Manchester. My mum was there, my sister was there, cousins and uncles. It was only when they brought my father's casket in that people started to cry. It was only when they opened it that people started to wail. I was 21 years old and all I could think about was trying to do the funeral ritual correctly.
My father was a Hindu and the ceremony was conducted by a Hindu priest in Sanskrit, which is a bit like the Indian version of Latin for Roman Catholicism. So, the priest would explain to my cousin what he was doing in Hindi, my cousin would explain to me in English and I would be confused. [audience laughter] There was some throwing of flower petals, I had to light a candle, had to pour some Ganges water and walk around the coffin a few times and touch it at the end of my father's feet.
My dad, as I said, was a Hindu, but he wasn't really a typical Indian. He was the white sheep of the family. He was the only one of all of his brothers or sisters to marry a white woman, my mum, who's English and Scottish. When we were kids, he had no interest at all introducing us to our Indian heritage. It's only because of my mum regularly taking us to see my family in Maidenhead that I had any understanding of my Indian heritage at all. I can remember every time went to the family house of having to ask them what the food was, I have no idea today what Diwali really means and I know the names of none of the 330 million Hindu Gods. [audience laughter]
Back in the afternoon of the funeral, we were back in my uncle's house. It was quiet now. There were a few family members tidying up, moving things around and the mood was quiet, but it wasn't particularly somber. I remember a cousin telling me about a story of dad trying to get the Rolling Stones to play at Slough College. My eldest uncle who sat at the table with his hands folded and he asked me to sit down and he said, “Son--” He always called me son. He said, “Son, you have to take your father's ashes to India.”
This is a ritual called tarpan. And tarpan is part of the Indian metaphysics and part of the philosophy and the religion that you take the ashes to this place called Haridwar, which is where the river Ganges comes out of the mountains and flows across the plains. You put the ashes in the river and this helps the soul of the deceased person move on into the afterlife so they can be reborn.
Now, this didn't mean a lot to me. The idea of being Indian felt about as true to me as being French or Greek. I also didn't feel particularly obliged to do anything for my father. I didn't really feel any duty towards him. There had been a time when I would have done anything to spend time with my dad. In fact, when I was a kid, I started to play cricket, just because my father had played cricket in India, and I thought that we could go and spend some time together in the nets. But I think that only happened once. I did spend time with my father going around the pubs and restaurants of Windsor. My dad had been a pub landlord and he owned some wine bars and he was well known. He was a well-liked character around the town.
One time, I was about 13 or 14. Dad had actually lost the restaurants by this point through bankruptcy, and he was still managing them, although he didn't own them. It was only really through the efforts of my mother that the bars and restaurants were still going at all. She was also working a second job as a cleaner to try and get enough money for us to get the things we needed for school. My dad was playing pool, and by this time, I was starting to get a bit of an understanding of what an alcoholic was. And even though I could recognize his frailties, I still believed in him. But he decided to bet with the guy he was playing with. Because I still believed in him. I crossed my fingers and I willed the number eight ball into the pocket. He missed. In doing so, he squandered an afternoon of my mother's hard work. And I never respected or trusted him again.
I was supposed to have taken the ashes back within one year. And six years later, my family were insistently calling me and telling me that I had to go back and take them now. They said, “Look, you've taken your time, you've done the things you wanted to do, you've enjoyed the things you wanted to do, so now you have to do this duty.” So, I went to Manchester, picked up the ashes, and I went to India to go and do the ritual. But I'd actually gone via an expedition. My younger sister came to meet me in Delhi from Heathrow and I'd come from Nepal. We met together at the airport and we drove to my cousin's house on the outskirts of Delhi.
When we got there, my cousin told me that I would have to leave my father's ashes outside the house. It's bad luck to bring them into a house. The next morning, my cousin told me I had to shave. I had a beard from the expedition. She told me to put on a long white shirt, a kurta. This felt quite significant. It felt like I was preparing for some significant and important ritual. When we left the house, it was early in the morning and the streets of Delhi were quiet. I'd never seen them quiet before. They're normally full of cows and traffic and pollution and cars and motorbikes. But on this morning, it was one of those amazing dawns that you only ever find in the subcontinent. The only things on the road were a few cows munching at the roadside and people on bicycles. It was really quite magical.
As we carried north and left the city behind, I saw the green of the Indian countryside and rivers, and it felt like the India of myth and legend. And then, when we got to Haridwar, our journey ended in a municipal car park. We got out and we started to make our way down towards the River Ganges. And on either side of the road, there were shops and stalls selling trinkets and holiday tats and pictures and postcards of Haridwar. All the paraphernalia of ritual, because Haridwar is a place that people go to on holiday. They don't just go there for these funeral rites, they go there for pilgrimages and for blessings.
We went past these stalls and we got to the edge of the River Ganges. And bizarrely, the first thing I thought about was Henley Royal Regatta, because the river runs very straight here and there's steps leading down to it for people to go into the river for the rituals. There's loudspeakers blaring prayers and security announcements, and all the temples on the other side are covered in bunting. We crossed over the river and we went down to a place called Har Ki Pauri. This is where God or one of the 330 million Gods had stepped onto earth from heaven. My cousin pointed to a stool. She pointed at the stool and she said, “Bhardwaj,” which is my family name. I looked at it and realized she was pointing at the writing on the stool. I realized that I couldn't read my own name in Hindi. I looked at it, trying to see some familiarity or recognition in it, but there was nothing. It was just Hindi scribbles.
Now, every time someone goes to Haridwar to get their ritual done, the family is always looked after by a single priest. So, my uncle had already called ahead to get the priest to be ready for us. My cousin rang him on the mobile phone when we got there. He came down and he was wearing all white and he was quite small. He had a moustache and he had glasses and he didn't speak English. So, he spoke to my cousin and shook my hand, nodded at me and then they immediately began ferociously haggling over the price.
Now, I'd heard about the mercantile nature of Hindu priests, but my understanding of religious men is based on the doddery old vicars of Anglican tradition. So, this was still something of a surprise. It was all very dramatic. There was head tossing and flare and, oh, looks of dismay. Eventually, they settled on a price for spiritual peace for my father and we made our way down to the river. [audience laughter] We sat on a small square of marble that projected into the river. I was closest to the river, and my sister was on my right-hand side and the priest was opposite us. And we immediately began the ritual.
He was saying words in Sanskrit that I had to repeat and I didn't know what the words were, so I asked him to translate through my cousin, who he spoke to in Hindi, she spoke to me in English and I was confused. And then, the ritual continued. There was lighting of candles and there was throwing of petals. We got to this point where we had to hold a coconut. And this coconut represented the temporary carriage of my father's soul. It was taken out of limbo and prepared to be sent on its journey into the afterlife. And then, the priest asked for more money.
Apparently, because I'd taken six years to do this, it was much harder for him to pull Dad's soul out of limbo, [audience laughter] put it in this coconut and send it on this journey again. So, my cousin and he eventually agreed to a price 2,000 rupees is the cost of bringing a soul out of limbo after six years. And the ritual continued. And then, we got to the final part where we had to pour the ashes in. This is the moment that I'd been hanging over me for six years. This was the mission that my uncle had set for me six years beforehand. This was the culmination of all of that.
I was expecting a sense of closure, a sense of satisfaction, a sense of even though my father hadn't been a great dad to me, I'd done something for him. I wanted to take this moment in. I wanted to feel very present in it. I wanted to share it with my sister. I looked at her and I could see a tear running down her cheek. I felt very present in this moment, and then all I got was “Jaldi, jaldi, jaldi,” from the priest. The only reason I knew what he meant was because from watching cricket, this is what the Indian cricket team say to their bowlers when they want them to go faster. [audience laughter] So, whilst I was trying to absorb this spiritual moment, I was being hurried up by this Indian priest. My sister and I both put our hands on the urn and chucked dad's ashes into the river. And that was it. It was done. I felt no closure and I felt no satisfaction and I felt no completion.
And then, the priest got up, nodded to my cousin and walked off into the streets of Haridwar. My sister and I sat there bemused. We looked at each other and we hugged each other and we looked around scared, just as we had the first time we'd gone to India when we were kids. We followed my cousin through the streets of Haridwar. We followed her through to a courtyard. And in the courtyard, there was a cow munching some grass and a plastic bag. And the courtyard was surrounded by rooms. And inside one of these rooms, we found our priest. He was sat on the floor and he had a scroll open in front of him. He was all smiles and friendly and he offered us tea and he asked us to come in and sit down and he pointed at the scroll.
It was long and it was thin and it was bound along the top. And on it there was Hindi writing. And on the walls, all around us there were shelves with hundreds more of these scrolls bound in really incongruous cloth, like Burberry tartan prints. They looked like snails curled up on the wall, hundreds of them. He started to talk to him about the one on the ground translated through my cousin, of course. Every time somebody goes to Haridwar to take their loved one to ashes back, they go and do this ceremony afterwards. We wrote down all the names of all the people who'd come to do the ceremony, me, my cousin, my sister and we wrote down the dates and we wrote down the story of how my father died and we wrote down a bit about him, and then we wrote down the entire family tree.
And then, the priest showed me the first time my name had appeared in this book. He showed me the first time my dad's name had appeared in this book. He showed me my grandfather's signature when he'd come to bring his father's ashes back, and my great grandfather's signature. The family tree in this place goes back 13 generations. That's 350 years. In other parts of India, my family tree is recorded back to two and a half thousand years. And all of a sudden, I felt connected to this long tribe of Indians, all of whom had done exactly the same thing as me. They brought a loved one to Haridwar, poured the ashes in the river and then, nervous and bemused and scared, they'd come to this room and done this same ritual and written their names down.
[00:14:09] I felt connected to them. I felt connected to my heritage. The priest said to me, he said, “You know, it's a good thing you've come on this day.” I asked him why. Apparently, it was a solar eclipse, and astrology is very important to Hinduism. By doing the ritual on the day of a solar eclipse, it'd been extra powerful and been very good for dad in his afterlife. So, the irony was that by delaying it by six years, I'd actually done a good job for my dad. [audience laughter] As I sat there taking all this in, I just imagined this connection to my family, this lineage of people that I'd come from. And so, even though my dad hadn't been a good father in life, in death, he finally helped me feel a little bit Indian.
[cheers and applause]
Meg: [00:14:59] That was Ash Bhardwaj. Ash said, “Once he had finally done the ritual, his family was happy and relieved. Delaying it for so long had bothered them more than he understood.”
In 2015, Ash returned to Haridwar and saw the priest again. This time, the priest brought down all the scrolls and showed him the entire family tree dating back over 300 years. In addition to being more connected to his heritage, Ash says he now feels a sense of ownership, a newfound humility that comes from knowing he's one tiny branch on that vast family tree. He credits the trip to Haridwar as his most memorable adventure and one that set him on a path to becoming a travel writer and filmmaker.
Coming up, a woman says goodbye to a future she once dreamed of, when The Moth Radio Hour continues.
Female Speaker: [00:15:50] Support for The Moth comes from HomeAdvisor, matching homeowners with home improvement professionals for a variety of home projects, from minor repairs to major remodels. Homeowners can read reviews about local pros and book appointments online at homeadvisor.com.
Jay: [00:16:07] The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. And presented by PRX.
Meg: [00:16:17] This is The Moth Radio Hour from PRX. I'm Meg Bowles.
When you do something for the last time, it feels like you're marking a moment. The last time you closed the door of your old house, the last day at a job or summer camp. For our next storyteller, Courtney Antonioli, the moment was marked in a Waterbury, Connecticut courtroom.
[cheers and applause]
She shared her story at a Moth StorySLAM we produced in New York City. Here's Courtney Antonioli, live at The Moth.
Courtney: [00:16:47] It's Tuesday in December. By 08:00 AM, I've been up for four hours and I've traveled 150 miles. I'm standing in line now waiting for the courtroom to open. I'm feeling pretty self-conscious, because like everybody else in Waterbury, courtroom is dressed in jeans and a T-shirt and I'm wearing a suit, and Peter is because Peter says that “No matter when you go to court, you dress in a suit, even if you are getting divorced, like we are today.”
When I arrive there, Peter's already there, because he's still living in our apartment. He gives me a really big hug and he tells me, “It's going to be okay.” And I say “Okay.” We wait in line for a little while and court opens and you get ushered through a series of courtrooms and-- Because I live in Connecticut and it is super white Anglo-Saxon Protestant, you get to get divorced in front of a judge and a room of strangers. So, we wait in the outside room for the pre divorce room to be open. I've been crying, because I cried on the train and I cried in the car and I try to not cry in front of Peter.
He doesn't really know what to do with me anymore, because we're in that weird in between phase of like lasts. It's the last day we're going to be married and it's the last day that he's going to be my Peter. He wants to give me another hug. We get lucky, because the courtroom opens and 15 other couples go in with us and we sit down. I notice that Peter and I are the only couple sitting next to each other. Everybody else is sitting very far apart. [audience laughter]
But that makes me really happy, because Peter and I don't hate each other. There's not that kind of anger that everybody else has. I'm really glad for that, even though I'm really sad. Peter and I, he called me the funniest person that he ever knew. And so, throughout the times the other people are going up, they're being called by the judge, I'm making little jokes and he's whispering and he offers me some gum and he asks me how is my life now. I get him to laugh.
When Peter laughs, it's like I've accomplished something. He laughs like his whole body. I feel so good that I can make him laugh. And at the same time, I think he's going to start telling people that I'm the funniest person he used to know, that's if he keeps talking about me after today. That's a hard thing to think about that Peter might not talk about me anymore and eight years is going to end today. After three hours of sitting together, other 14 couples have gone. We finally get called by the judge. I really want to cry. I want to cry so bad.
Peter gives me another hug and he says it's of kind going to be okay, because he knows I need that. And he tells me, “Just answer the questions and always remember to call them, Your Honor,” because Peter's a lawyer and it's very important that I remember that. Peter's the plaintiff and he has to go into the witness box. Peter is tall and big and he wears these Coke bottle room glasses and he takes them off. He's a grown man now crying in a box, and it breaks my heart. Because the last time I saw Peter cry, the only time I saw Peter cry was the day I told him I wanted a divorce, and that broke my heart.
I start crying. The judge sees that we're the only two people who have cried today. [audience laughter] He starts to ask a series of questions to Peter, and he says, “Mr. Brown, you came for divorce today?” And he says, “Yes, Your Honor.” And he goes, “You sure you want to get divorced today?” “Yes, Your Honor.” “Because I don't think you want to get divorced today.” “No, I do, Your Honor. I want to get divorced.” He goes, “I don't know.” “Are you sure you want to get divorced?” I know why the judge is doing this, because he has to make sure that, we're sure.
But Peter has to keep telling him that he doesn't love me anymore. I know that that kills him and it kills me too, because I do love him so much. I start to wonder as I hear the judge questioning him, like, maybe we've made a mistake. Maybe he should say that he's not sure. Maybe we didn't try hard enough. Maybe I didn't love hard. Maybe I should just scream out, “No, Your Honor, I'm not sure.” But it's not my turn. And so, I don't. Peter answers another five minutes of these questions, having to tell them he doesn't love me.
And then, I have to answer the same questions and do it in front of him. We finally finish, and we get all our belongings and we ushered into the hallway, and a bailiff comes out with a clipboard, and they just have you sign your name and then you're divorced. And then, you find yourself standing in a hallway now. I remember that when I met Peter, I met him in a hallway, and everything seemed possible and now nothing seems possible.
I want to ask Peter a bunch of questions about how he's doing, but instead, I just ask him if he hates me, because the truth is, I hate myself. I want him to say that he hates me, because then I won't be the only one who hates me right now. But he says, “Courtney, I could never hate you.” I hate him for not hating me. Peter gives me one more hug and he tells me it's going to be okay, because he's the only one that I believe. As he walks away, I think, I don't know who's going to tell me it's going to be okay. Thank you.
[cheers and applause]
Meg: [00:22:16] That was Courtney Antonioli. Peter and Courtney do not see or speak to each other much these days. Most recently, she called him when she found out his father had passed away. She worried he wouldn't pick up, but he did and it felt nice knowing that despite all the pain and sadness, he'd still answer the phone without knowing why she was calling. She said she'll always do the same for him.
These days, Courtney lives in Brooklyn. She's a writer and she hosts Golden Girls Bingo once a month in New York City. She also produces a YouTube channel called Stay Golden. To find out more about Courtney, you can visit our website, themoth.org.
As I mentioned, Courtney told this story at one of our open-mic StorySLAM nights. If you want to throw your name in a hat for a chance to tell a story, you can go to our website and find out if there's a StorySLAM in your area. And while you're there, check out our radio extras, where you can see pictures and find out more about all of our storytellers.
For our next story, we travel down to Nashville, Tennessee, where we're supported by Nashville Public Radio WPLN. The story comes from Becca Stevens. When we first produced at Mainstage down in Nashville, I was researching potential local storytellers, and Becca was the person that everyone seemed to mention. You can hear by the audience reaction that she is beloved in the music city.
Male Moderator: [00:23:43] Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome your next storyteller, Becca Stevens.
[cheers and applause]
Becca: [00:24:01] For the past 25 years, I have participated in the annual endurance sport known as The Family Vacation. [audience laughter] And our family has been pretty adventurous. We've gone to Egypt and Rome. We've gone to Botswana. Last year, we hiked in Northern Canada for three days.
In 2007, we rented an RV and we decided to take all our kids and go cross country. And on the second morning, when my husband overestimated the height of the underpass [audience laughter] at the fast-food restaurant and knocked off part of the top of the RV, including the air conditioning unit, we decided weren't RV people. [audience laughter] So, the next year we decide we're going to play it safe, set the bar low and we get in our minivan and we decide to go to Seaside, Florida.
Now, packing a minivan with three kids at that time, 8,12 and 16 years old, is really an undervalued skill in my opinion. We had to pack everything. They needed drawing pads, paper, they wanted Nintendo Game Boys, they wanted the portable DVD player, they wanted pillows and blankets. I needed my crocheting. My husband needed a whole pile of CDs from the demos he had made all year, so he could check out the work he had done and the pitches he could make. We packed it all. That does not even include the floats that I packed because they charge you an arm and a leg if you wait to the beach to buy your floats.
We had to pack fishing gear. We had to pack goggles and fins and beach chairs. We needed to pack all the staples for the week and the snacks. That doesn't even start with the clothing. So, we over packed, and we started out on a blistering global warming peak day in July in Nashville, Tennessee, to drive eight hours south to where it's hotter and more humid. [audience laughter] We made the eight-hour drive. And for us, what was a world record of 12 hours. [audience laughter] Because we needed to stop for every individual child's bathroom time. We had to stop halfway through Alabama for the sign that said fresh Georgia peaches.
At the border, when you get to Alabama and Florida, it says the world's best burgers. And who can't stop for that? So, it's after dark when we get there. And the first thing I unload is my favorite thing, the arts and crafts. I lay them all on the table. The two older kids are rolling their eyes and think, God, another year of us having to do beach tie dyes, art journals, hook potholders. [audience laughter] My all-time favorite, the beach terrarium. [audience laughter] We're putting all that. I'm laying it all out. My husband is popping two beers, just as he's getting ready to start dinner after he drives all day. The kids are laughing.
And despite all the stress, I promise you, the first day of vacation is one of my favorites. I love everybody laughing. I can hear boys laughing and I'm like, “Are they wrestling? Are they going to beat each other up?” It's always that way with kids. It's just this activity and energy. I loved it. Next morning, I get up and we're getting ready for the second leg of this endurance sport, which is get everything to the beach. And so, I decided to take a few minutes before that and go out to the porch that's facing the beach and just take a few minutes of peace.
The sun is rising in bands of lavender. It's so beautiful it makes my jaw clench. My jaw always clenches when I see something really stunningly beautiful like yellow and purple wildflowers together. And so, I was sitting back there and my phone rings and it's the house sitter who says, “Everything is fine.” She's taking care of the pets and stuff. “Everything is fine, except in the middle of the night, Goldie died.”
Goldie was the goldfish. It was too late to ask for an autopsy, but I was very suspicious, because we'd only been gone 26 hours, but she had already flushed her down the toilet. I laughed, because I was verklempt a little bit. I just got off the phone and thanked her for all she was doing. I went in to tell my family, and I said, “Hey, everybody.” I look around. Everybody's just lounging around the living room in various forms of repose, and they look like what my mom used to called lollygaggers. [audience laughter]
You know, the older two just watching tv, the youngest one trying to put together a Star Wars Lego set. My husband with his feet hanging over the side of the couch, strumming the guitar, and I say, “Hey, you, guys, Goldie died.” And everybody's like, “Okay.” Nobody missed a beat on the guitar. [audience laughter] Nobody turned down the TV. And my youngest son, Moses, who was actually Goldie's owner, who had named her that amazing name, [audience laughter] looks at me and goes, “Hey, can we get a dog now?” [audience laughter]
Nobody was trying to be mean or insensitive. It was a goldfish. But I just took a minute, and I decided to walk back to the porch and just think about why I was having some feelings when I was feeling my feelings, and walked back out there and decided to walk on the beach. And within about five minutes, I'm crying. I could not figure out why. It's ridiculous.
Now, Moses and I had won Goldie at the Tennessee State Fair the fall before when he had thrown ping pong balls into a small bowl. He was so proud. You know, it only cost us $10 [audience laughter] worth of freaking ping pong balls to win this fish that's worth less than a dollar on the open market. [audience laughter] But he was proud. The carnival hawker put her in a bag, tied the top, this plastic bag and he walked around with her all night. I knew she was a survivor. [audience laughter]
She even did well in the container. She was in confinement in a vase until we could get her a proper home, so we could spend another $50 on a tank that was an underwater beautiful wonder world. I mean, it had pebbles, it had plastic beach trees, it had an underwater bridge that she could go in and out of, so she could have some quiet time. [audience laughter] Moses and I, in our crazy lives, in our busy, noisy lives of our family, when Goldie came and graced our lives, we started this routine at night of reading and feeding her and snuggling in the bed and watching her grow. She was growing this beautiful translucent tail. We bought a special light so it would glow at night. Because it was magical to him, it felt magical to me.
So, I'm walking by the ocean and I am now openly weeping and I am laughing at how ridiculous it is, [audience laughter] that I am walking by an ocean with a million fish in it. We have actually brought tools of destruction for those fish [audience laughter] and I'm crying over a goldfish. It feels more ridiculous, because I felt like my whole life, I had handled grief so well. I mean, my first memory is my father dying when I'm five years old by a drunk driver. My mom died when I was 30 of a terminal brain illness. My sister died of aneurysm. Not to mention the fact that I'm an episcopal priest, I've presided at probably 100 funerals.
I'm the founder and president of Thistle Farms, a community of women survivors. [audience cheers and applause]
Thank you. Thank y'all. Thank you. Thank you. I have walked with women through some horrific stories. And so, the fact that I'm being undone by a goldfish is surprising to me. [audience laughter] But in all honesty, my tears are now down my face and hitting the sand. So, I decide to sit down and I decide to take a moment and look out unto the tide, where it's the closest thing I know to where the eternal and the temporal meet.
I sit there and I realize that in addition to being the only person in the whole wide world that's ever going to grieve that goldfish. [audience laughter] And so, I am also grieving the fact that she was what helped me hang on to being a mom to young kids. That was it. I no longer had to cut my kids food up. I didn't have to carry them in the grocery store when they would get tired. And pretty soon, I wasn't going to get to pack a bunch of crafts and all the stuff they wanted for vacations. Goldie was it.
Moses wasn't going to want to buy another fish and snuggle me at night and read and look at her amazing tail. With the death of Goldie, I was saying goodbye to that. And so, I gave myself over for a minute to the great gift of grief, which says, when we truly love something, it opens those spaces in us and we are allowed to weep. We give ourselves that permission. Goldie reminded me in such a graceful way, and so less dramatically than all the other traumas in this world, how childhoods pass so quickly about how we don't get to choose what we grieve.
Our hearts will grieve what they will. And that in grieving, it is this beautiful way of saying thank you. I loved you. And so, I sat there and wept for a minute and gave thanks, as I was really saying to my children, thank you. I loved being a mom to you and I miss it and I'm so proud of you. Rest in peace, Goldie.
[cheers and applause]
Meg: [00:35:10] Becca Stevens is the author of the book, Love Heals. She's a priest, as well as the founder and president of Thistle Farms in Nashville, Tennessee. If you go to our website, you can find a link to a video about the organization. They've started several businesses, a skin care line and a local coffee shop and they are run by some seriously strong women who are changing their lives and, in the process, building a much-needed community. It's really such a beautiful thing.
Becca told me she shared her story with her son Moses before she took the stage in Nashville, and his reaction with great teenage exasperation was, “Mom, if you want another goldfish, I'll get you one.”
Coming up, a man plans for his own last day. That's when The Moth Radio Hour continues.
[pleasant violin music]
Jay: [00:36:17] The Moth Radio Hour is produced by Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. And presented by the Public Radio Exchange, prx.org.
Meg: [00:36:30] This is The Moth Radio Hour from PRX. I'm Meg Bowles. And our last story comes from Michael Such.
I just want to note here that Michael's story deals with some sensitive material concerning thoughts of suicide and may not be appropriate for all listeners. Michael was raised in rural Suffolk and moved to London to study physics at Imperial College. He shared this story at an evening we produced at the Union Chapel in London.
[applause]
Michael: [00:36:56] I was standing on the Millennium Bridge in the center of London. It was 02:00 AM, it was quiet. I could hear the water sloshing below me and the traffic in the distance. It was dark. It's never really dark in London. I see the lights, the buildings beside the river, and St. Paul's to my right, grand and majestic, and the Tate to my left. It was summer, but it was getting cold. I was anxious, agitated and leaning against the railing of the bridge. I remember this moment. It's frozen in my mind, because I wanted it to be my last moment. I thought I had just completely failed my exams at the end of the first year of university. I was feeling isolated, not part of the crowd. I was still a virgin, and I thought my whole life had just been a failure.
I was always anxious and unhappy as a child. I remember crying in the playground at some simple game, because someone might possibly get hurt. I remember after they showed one of those child safety videos, being terrified of child snatchers and anxious to walk around my friend's house in our small rural Suffolk village and I remember lying on my bed on Saturday afternoons feeling listless and lost in low mood, but not knowing how to get out of it. I remember being picked on and called out for being awkward and ill-fitting and unable to stand up for myself at school.
My escape from that was always the approval of the teachers. For all my frailties of mind and scattered decision making, I was always intelligent and obedient enough to draw praise from adults. Maybe that's what damned me. And so, at 18, I moved to London to study physics, Imperial College, to understand the universe even as I little understood my own mind and my own emotions. I was hopeful for a change, for the new setting to break my old habits. Things did improve that year. I made a new set of friends. I went out and partied more. I learned a lot, gained a larger measure of independence. But the borders of my anxiety still remained jagged, and they still held me back from things, big and small, like finding love and stupid simple stuff.
Like, I remember lying on my bed in halls, and hearing my sink gurgle and a strange sewer smell fill the room, and thinking I should really go and tell someone and get that fixed. And then, being maddeningly terrified about the idea of that conversation and then thinking I'll do it next week, then the next and then never. Delay had always been my way of dealing with my anxiety and it leached into the other areas of my life. But delay isn't a very good response. The first year studying physics with theoretical physics, you've got a lot of problems to do and no one to tell you to do them. And with that delay came a tide of self-hatred which gradually swallowed me whole.
And as I got towards the end of the year, I couldn't see a way out and I started to think about killing myself. And as I got closer to the exams, that feeling grew of dread and I started planning and I decided I would jump. I thought it would be simple, quick, clean. I picked the Millennium Bridge, because I knew it would be quiet and I was embarrassed and afraid of getting caught in the moment, more embarrassed and afraid somehow than the dying itself. And the exams came and I thought they didn't go well. My friends began to drift off at the end of the year and I didn't plan any big farewells, maybe there was some more poise in my goodbyes and maybe they knew something was up.
I would occasionally drop out of social events or seem down, but I never reached out and asked for help. And so, I finally reached what I planned to be my last day. It was a Sunday. I don't remember a lot about it. I remember cleaning my room, and trying to leave things neat and tidy for when I was gone. I remember procrastinating on cleaning my room and playing video games. I think it's very difficult to really live any day as your last, because your mind can't really comprehend the idea of not existing, of nothingness and you catch yourself thinking, I'll do that next week. And finally, I closed up my room, I walked from my halls near Edgware Road to Imperial College, to the Millennium Bridge in the center of London. And I picked a route, which was self-consciously poetic. Past Hyde Park, past Buckingham palace, lit up in lights, past St. James'.
As I walked, I was filled with a mix of abject terror and determination. I felt I had the unique knowledge that I was a terrible, inhuman, destructive figure, even though other people couldn't see it. I was almost pleased with myself that was somehow eliminating a problem as I saw it then. But beneath that, there were doubts still bubbling. So, I reached the bridge, I walked onto the bridge and then I delayed, growing anxious, my stomach turning between living and dying, holding onto the railing, looking out when people passed, trying to look normal and casual. And then, eventually, I walked to one side of the bridge, across the short width.
And then, I ran across the width of the bridge. I remember my boots clanking on the metal. I pushed myself up on the railing. My hips hit the railing. I remember tipping over and the feeling of my feet kicking [unintelligible [00:44:05]. And then, a frozen moment, which I can still see. I am airborne and feeling a strange sensation of weightlessness. I'm looking down at the water, I'm thinking, [beep], I've really done it. That weird stomach feeling, something you imagined, seen on TV or thought about is really happening to you right now. I had an almost resigned acceptance of it. Maybe this was the wrong decision, but it was happening. I hit the water with a hard slap. I plunged deep down into the Thames and I found myself kicking up and swimming.
I'd learned to swim from an early age. Saturday morning lessons followed by greasy spoon sessions with my parents. I wasn't supposed to do this. I was supposed to hold tight. But my body made another decision. And then, I was floating on my back down the Thames. Another frozen moment. I could see the light peeking over the embankment. I was very cold, I was wet through into my boots and I was trying to decide what to do next. I thought about letting go and trying to drown, but I realized I didn't have the commitment of that. And a thought passes through my mind, [beep], I'll just live. [audience laughter]
I roll onto my front and I see as the current pushes me, another bridge coming up Blackfriars. I managed to catch myself on the support and see a ladder further down in the water and catch onto that as I push past it and haul myself out of the muddy water. I'm standing on the embankment. It's 03:00 AM. I'm soaked through. I'm feeling angry that I'm still alive. I'm feeling kind of lost what to do next, and the shock of what's just happened. And I decide the only thing I know to do is to walk back to halls. So, I take off, back through London.
As I walk, I try and process what's just happened and decide what to do next. And the specter of dying seems to have resized the idea of failing exams. I'm thinking maybe I'll stick around for a while longer. And suddenly, I'm confronting the idea of having a future, of having to deal with the next year of living and maybe even 60 years of living, I might likely have. I'm still embarrassed I've done this and I'm still alive. I'm comforted to discover that London is exactly the kind of city which you can walk through in the middle of the night, soaking wet, dressed in all black and no one will pay attention to you. [audience laughter]
I sneak back into halls and I go to bed. It's been 11 years since that night, and if I'm being honest, I'm still anxious, still lonely, I still struggle with stupid stuff like phoning the council to order more liners for your food waste bin. There's still a part of me which tells me that I'm a terrible person and didn't deserve to survive. But when I look back on that night, I realized my suicidal, depressed brain made a load of predictions, which my life has varied from immensely, in good and bad ways. Four years later, I graduated from Imperial with a first in physics. Maybe I shouldn't have listened to that voice. I watched Waiting for Godot recently and reflecting on this story, these lines stick with me. Estragon says to Vladimir, “I can't go on like this,” to which Vladimir replies, “That's what you think.”
[cheers and applause]
Meg: [00:49:02] That was Michael Such. After Michael graduated from Imperial College at the top of his class, he undertook the unusual challenge of traveling from London to Milan by foot. These days, he works as a data analyst. He says when he looks back on that day, he sees a foolish, silly and desperate act done by a young man in too deep with not enough coping skills. He also says he still occasionally walks across the Millennium Bridge in London, and if he's honest, he still thinks about jumping.
If you or someone you know is suffering from depression or suicidal thoughts, we've listed some links to resources and organizations that might be able to help. That's on our website, themoth.org.
That's it for this episode. We hope you'll join us again next time for The Moth Radio Hour.
[overture music]
Jay: [00:49:58] Your host this hour was Meg Bowles. Meg also directed the stories in the show. The rest of The Moth’s directorial staff includes Catherine Burns, Sarah Haberman, Sarah Austin Jenness and Jenifer Hixson. Production support from Timothy Lou Ly.
Moth Stories are true, as remembered and affirmed by the storytellers. Our theme music is by the Drift. Other music in this hour from Freddi Price, the Michael Hayes Quartet, Bill Frisell and The Batteries Duo. You can find links to all the music we use at our website.
The Moth Radio Hour is produced by me, Jay Allison, with Viki Merrick, at Atlantic Public Media in Woods Hole, Massachusetts. This hour was produced with funds from the National Endowment for the Arts. The Moth Radio Hour is presented by PRX. For more about our podcast, for information on pitching us your own story and everything else, go to our website, themoth.org.