A Moment of Grace by Patrick Dillon

Author : Patrick Dillon
Title : A Moment of Grace
Published : 2018
Publisher : Ebury Press
Pages : 224
Genre : Autobiography

     Patrick Dillon and Nicola Thorold were together for twenty-eight years. Patrick was an award-winning architect and writer and Nicola a leading figure in theatre, awarded an OBE for her contribution to the arts at London’s Roundhouse. Their two children were almost grown-up. Life was good. And then, in May 2015, Nicola was diagnosed with leukaemia. After several rounds of treatment, a bone marrow transplant and many waves of recovery and decline, she died thirteen months after her diagnosis. Six months later, at Christmas, Patrick started to write.

     Patrick Dillon's A Moment of Grace was always going to be a difficult read. To go on a journey with someone when you already know the outcome is going to be one that will tear you apart is never an easy thing to do. It is also one I have experienced in my personal life far too many times. To watch someone you love slip away from you is one of the worst things you can experience. It leaves you with such a feeling of helplessness. You spend so much time trying to do the impossible to save someone who can't be. Then for me at least you become racked with guilt over wasting what time you have trying to do the impossible.   

     When you first pick up this book and skim the blurb it gives you everything you need to know about the book. But information alone is not what this book is about. The emotional trail Dillon leads you on is what this book is all about. It gives you a front-row seat to what it is like to lose a loved one. If you have not experienced this in your life I envy you.  When going through it my self the last thing I would have ever thought about is writing a book about it. But maybe this makes the author a stronger person than me. He is not one to shy away from each of these bleak moments. The very ins and outs of what happens within the NHS in final care are laid out across the pages. If you are at the begin of this journey your self I can see how this book would be a great help for you. What made this book for me is that this is not just a cold book field with the hard truths of what happens. He has chosen to fill the book with what made his wife who she was. What made her a living breathing woman. What made those who came to care deeply for her do so in the first place.

     Whether you have lived this or not, it is a very raw and honest book to come to terms with. I can't help but see in my mind's eye the author shed more than a few tears as he typed out his manuscript. How do you come to terms with everything that has happened. In some ways, there must have been a cathartic element to gritting this book. A place to put all those thoughts the fly a million miles hour around your head. Which in no way is to say we are letting go of them. We do in fact never let go, they are there every day when you see there favorite book or a smell that brings them right back to you. It just becomes easier to deal with. Hurts a little less when you see there smile in your mind. As much as this book is about death it is also about celebrating a life that has slipped away. A form of remembering them to those who did not know them and those who did. There is for me is a deep softness to this book that can only come from having truly loved someone. 

     If you do decide to pick up a copy of this, I would suggest having a box of tissues not too far away. For everything, this book is to me there is a comfort to be found within its pages. That we are not alone in this process of grief. That it is fundamentally a very human experience that at some point we will all experience.  Can I say that it is easier knowing the end is coming? I have no idea, I have witnessed first hand both and they have ripped me apart with just as much furry. This is a book that is difficult to quantify. It is touching and soft all the while being brutal and raw. But for me at least it was worth the journey.