Peter Goers

See, the problem with grief too is, and it's a terrible issue with grief, and we live in a time of grief.

I don't know why, but we do.

And the problem with grief is not the immediate grief because you're surrounded by well-meaning people.

The problem with grief is 25 years, 30 years later, 40 years later, you suddenly think, I can't remember them.

What did they smell like?

What did they sound like?

What did it feel like when they hugged you or kissed you on the cheek and you can't remember?

And they've gone into this sort of vapour and that's the worst of grief, the disappearance.

Well, my Baptist grandmother remained strong in her faith and was a remarkable woman.

I was very close to her.

And she weathered it well.

She lasted another 10 years and died at 95.

And my other grandmother really was never the same.

and she developed agoraphobia and dementia and it was very hard for her, very hard.

I mean, to lose a child, to lose a parent is one thing, but to lose a child is the worst thing that can happen to a person, of course.

The worst thing is, you know, as I'm now, you know, much older and I'm surrounded by friends and I found other mothers, other fathers, of course, in my life, senior artists in the theatre mainly.

to whom I've been devoted forever.

But you watch as your contemporaries, parents who are now in their 90s, as my parents would have been, and they're sick and, you know, they have dementia or Alzheimer's and so forth, and they say to you, ridiculously, they say, in many ways, you were lucky, Peter.

You don't have to go through this.

And I say, well...