Richard Grant

Kate Bowler: Oh, hello. This is Everything Happens with Kate Bowler. So talking about grief, in grief, you anticipate the despair, the sleepless nights, the lack of appetite, the feeling of being deeply offended by birds singing outside. Like, do they not know my world has ended? Like, let’s have a little respect. But I think that we’re often surprised by the other side of the emotional spectrum, those moments of joy that pop up, sometimes entirely unexpectedly. That we can be in the thick of a terrible moment. And then, you know, pop, there it is, a moment of delight. And then we find ourselves laughing or a smile just creeps onto our face. Sudden lightness, levity, hilarity, absurdity. And frankly, those are the moments that help sustain us in the midst of all the grief. Moments that don’t erase the pain but make it a bit more bearable. The strange truth that joy and pain can and really do coexist. Today’s guest practices finding these pockets of happiness in the midst of grieving his beloved wife. And before I introduce him to you, we’ll take a quick break to tell you about some of the sponsors who make our show possible. Don’t go anywhere, we’ll be right back with the wonderful Richard E Grant.

Kate: I am here today with the absolutely extraordinary Richard E. Grant, and my brain is exploding because really, honestly, he is my favorite. He is my favorite actor. He came to fame with the classic Withnail and I, and he has gone on to star in Gorgeous and Funny, and he can play sort of affronted like no one I’ve ever seen. My very favorite movie I’ve seen recently is Can You Ever Forgive Me? For which he was nominated for an Oscar. And he’s also a gorgeous author. He wrote a beautiful book about grief and love and marriage, and I cannot wait to talk to him today. Richard, what a gift to me. Thank you.

Richard E. Grant: Thank you very much.

Kate: I love that the story of your career is so intertwined with the story of your marriage, when you met the absolutely spectacular Joan. If you wouldn’t mind starting at the very beginning, what did you think of her when you met her?

Richard: It was 1982, I was 26 years old, I had been unemployed for three months. So I was working as a waiter in the theater district, Covent Garden in London. And an agent said to me, there are so many dramas being made about the Northern Irish troubles at the moment, and you’re six foot tall, you have blue eyes. You could play Northern Irish, what’s your Belfast accent like? And I said debatable. And he said, right, you have to go, yes, ou have to go and get lessons young man. So I found out from another actor that I’d met, and she told me there’s a woman called Joan Washington at the Actors Center, which gives basically, next to, almost two free classes, and she would do a six-week course of regional British accents, including Belfast, if you can call Belfast British in in these times of… oof yeah. You get canceled in two and a half nanoseconds no matter what you say. So I went along and I found a very short-haired, cropped hair like, Laurie Anderson had a big hit that year with O Superman. She was in a boiler suit with a big belt, kicker, boots and a no-shit-Sherlock attitude, and she has a deep brown gravy voice. It was incredibly delicious to listen to. And she’s very charismatic. And I then at the end of the six weeks, asked if she could coach me privately to sort out my, because I grew up in Southeast Africa in what was a British protectorate called Swaziland, was now been renamed a year ago as Eswatini, if she could iron out those sounds and she said, well you sound perfectly normal to me. And I said, well, no, I, people have said that I sound like somebody speaking English in the 1950s. So can you bring me up to speed in the 1980s? So I had a couple of sessions with her and didn’t hear from her again, and thought, well, that was it. And then in January 1983, she left a voice message for me saying, would I come to her house and put a whole lot of dialog from a play that she was coaching on the Royal Shakespeare Company, which required a Swati accent. And she knew that I spoke to Swati fluently. So she said, if you do that, I’ll cook you dinner in exchange. So she did, and I didn’t go home that night. So essentially, a conversation that began in bed in January 1983 ended in bed holding each other’s hands, at 7:30 on the 2nd of September, 2021, when she died.

Kate: Oh, my.

Richard: So we had 38 years together. So that’s a very long answer to your short question.

Kate: I love that you describe love, though, as like, never ending the conversation.

Richard: Yeah. Never-ending conversation. And never not sleeping with each other in the same bed. I think that’s as simple as it is. So she had a rule that we would never go to bed on an argument, even if we have had an argument and that. I think about two months after we’d got together I took umbrage at something she said, and she said, are you sulking? She said, you’re sulking, aren’t you? And I’d learned, you know, epic sulking skills from my mother. Because it was such an effective weapon on my father. She said if you try that on me ever again, you’ll be out the door. I was so taken aback. Somebody called me on this well-honed technique. But I never tried it again. Yeah, it was brilliant.

Kate: It is so wild that when you need to just, what was the one line like? Well, I could learn you. Like when you love someone, then you start to learn them. And then maybe that you have to unlearn the other patterns of especially parental love that you’ve known.

Richard: Yeah. Yes. You’ve got it. Yeah. That’s a, I’ve never had a put quite, put quite like that, but substantively true. Yeah. So I’m still learning to unlearn.

Kate: When you’re describing loving Joan, I love how much, though, that you had these, like, amazing habits, though, of being in it with each other with, like, funny little codewords at parties to let people know, like, well, to let each other, know.

Richard: She’s to do this on her, she used to just, she would put her forefinger across the front of her nose when it meant I am bored to sobs. Get us out of here now. And if I had told or she told the same anecdote, which happens after 38 years together, the same time, she’d  just go “Banana, banana?” And that had to stop you in your tracks. You just, even if you  were mid-thinking, oh, God, I’m getting the punchline. And people are going to be overwhelmed with joy hearing this anecdote. She go on with “Banana, we’ve had it before.” And if we were at junk markets or antique fairs or things, or just anywhere on a crowded street and trying to find each other, we made bird noises. So, because you can do it without moving your mouth, you go, “do doot do do do!” And then I’d hear, she was five foot three, five, I’m six foot two, I was. And then I’d hear, “doot doot doot do doo” over there and then we’d be notified each other.

Kate: I love the love that’s like, endless learning and like, it’s just like the the the inside joke, it just gets more and more and more specific.

Richard: This is absolutely true. Yeah. And we had we had a, we heard somebody on a radio program talking about, how she, she always ended up or stopped a row kind of accumulating its snowball effect of horror so that it’s like you opened Pandora’s box and said, well, you know what you did five years ago, and you said this. And she said she used to just do dog noises. So, barking. So we got to the point where in the last three years of our marriage, if things got a bit rough, one of, one of the two of us would just go, woof! And then we knew we had to stop. If the other person was going, “Yes, but you, you said that—” “Woof!” And that just stopped it in its tracks, so I recommend it. It worked.

Kate: That’s so good. My husband and I have this horrible thing where, when both people are in a bad mood and the other person can’t rally the other, we do this thing where we sort of stand with our feet very far apart and lean our shoulder weight against each other and try to make the worst sound that’s ever been made. And just, it’s always sounds, I mean, just unlistenable, pathetic. But, but being mutually pathetic somehow feels like, if the timing’s just right, it cancels each other out.

Richard: Oh, have you ever done this other one? Where, even if you are feeling World War II level of rage towards your most beloved partner, you hold their face when they’re really angry with you and you just say “I love you.” Drives them even more insane. And then you keep saying it, “I love you no matter what you’re saying to me. You wish me dead and flayed alive. I love you.” And eventually it sort of. Yeah, it works because it’s so ludicrous. Shouting, you know, two days later you go, “What were we even arguing about?”

Kate: I like, too, that you knew each other in the before times. Like before you were famous. She was, I mean, she was the. She was the fancy one first.

Richard: Yeah, she was top dog, accent, dialect coach at the Royal Shakespeare Company. And she’d coached on Barbra Streisand’s directorial movie Yentl. And, you know, she was really, really established. And I was an out-of-work waiter in Covent Garden, so it could not have been more extreme career trajectories at this point in time.

Kate: There’s a trust in that, the like…

Richard: Yeah, I think it’s just called falling in love with somebody. And that you, you hope and believe that they’re not going to be a waiter for the rest of their lives. That day is, ’cause all her friends said, oh, watch out for him. He’s nine years younger. He’s probably a gold digger on the make. And you know, for goodness sake, if you do ever get married, you know, sign a prenup. And, you know, to her credit, she, she, she dropped all of them and stuck with me. And in a very female way. She only told me about five years later, that this had actually gone on. Yeah, she protected me.

Kate: She must have been so proud of you, though, when you just. Your career exploded on the scene.

Richard: She was. But then she also, by the same token, she found that very frustrating because having been the most visible and successful person in the relationship, then when I got public recognition, she was then treated like a pane of glass.

Kate: I see.

Richard: I remember we were at dinner in LA, sitting with very fancy people and, unbeknownst to me, a producer turned and said to her, what do you do? And so she said in a sentence. And he literally turned his entire body away from her. Didn’t speak to her for the rest of the evening. I know you’re of no consequence and no importance and no value to me, so why should I bother? So I think she found that… It culminated in her, you know, two days before flying out for the Oscar ceremony five years ago, she said, yeah, I know that you’re going to be upset with this, but I’m not coming. And I was apoplectic. I said, what do you mean? This is like the golden moment of my life? I didn’t know I was going to win, but, you know, just going in and being that room, all those people. And she said, no, I will be pushed around and people will be trying to get to speak to you and, you know, go with our daughter instead because she’ll enjoy it. And of course, she was right. But I was furious. I thought, whoa. But, I understand why she did it.

Kate: The fact that you seem to bring so much self-knowledge to love, I think, is what struck me about your description of her and funny things she would say to you. I mean, that is an incredible amount of like, this is who I truly am in the midst of…

Richard: But isn’t that what love is? That that you are, as, you are, more open and vulnerable to that person that you’re in love with than anything else imaginable? And that’s what everybody seems to want to find. Don’t you think?

Kate: Well, not if they have to be really known though, because then what if it’s, what if it’s… I mean, that’s not a very flattering thing to be that known. I just think it’s, it’s just so wonderful when I see it, though, in other people. I’m trying to think of the… It reminds me of, of course, there’s always a German word for something, but, it’s like one of the synonyms for loved that I thought, is exactly what you’re describing. It was…

Richard: The opposite of schadenfreude.

Kate: Yeah, it’s a word of, like to have been beheld and like, when you love someone, you have to have been beheld. And like that, they can see all the layers. All the colors. And I think that it’s got to be.

Richard: The full onion.

Kate: The full onion. I like that. I think that has that to me, really is the perfect definition of love.  We’ll be right back.

Kate: That sounds like you became so intimately aware of loss from such an early stage in your relationship. I wonder, how do you think that that impacted the way you handled Joan’s diagnosis later on? Because it’s one of the weirdest things. You know, sometimes people can feel like entire strangers to each other, even if they’re both experiencing the same moment, the same seasons of grief. They might be in the same room, and yet they’re exiled to entirely different planets. I wonder if you felt like you were having very different experiences, or if you felt like you could kind of, I guess come together in a shared understanding.

Richard: I think because we have been through nine months of COVID, living literally in each other’s pockets, 24-7 in a way that we never had during our entire marriage. So in hindsight, that was an unbelievable bonus and benefit to have gone through that, because it was immediately followed by the last eight months of our life. So the most challenging part, which is why I kept such a forensically detailed diary, which is the basis of the memoir Pocketful of Happiness, is that that you get to a point where, as I’m sure you have experienced, I imagine, where the carer, which was my role, no matter what you do, it’s never enough or it’s not good enough. So you’re giving 5,000% and still the person who is terminally ill, which is my wife, would be critical from a state of frustration, terror or exhaustion or a combination of all three. So that you then have to dig in the deepest reserves of your love to go, this is not what the person really feels. This is, as a result, if I was in that situation and just flailing against feeling that you have no, you have no hope of of ever recovering.

Kate: We can have such a romantic view of caregiving. I mean, from the outside, I’ve heard people say it. They say this one version of it—honestly, it drives me crazy—that goes, and it’s it’s usually if they’ve experienced a short season of caregiving and it was very meaningful. They go, “Well, everything that I put in, I got back,” as if there’s always some kind of wonderful exchange going on. And yet, any person I’ve ever talked to who’s done long-form digging deep kinds of “I will be with you,” they can testify to moments of sweetness, moments of tremendous ugliness, moments of medical fear, moments of medical disgust. Like it’s such a wide gamut of like…

Richard: It’s brutal because there’s no… You can’t varnish or soft pedal anything if you’re having to bathe somebody and change them and do all of those things which come towards the end of life. It’s as animalistic and basic as you’re ever going to get. I think. And what I found so schizophrenic about it is that a week before Joan died, when we, what we’d been told, it was probably going to happen in the next ten days, you’re having, you’re sitting with the person living and breathing, but you’re having to… Literally while I was sitting with Joan, I would I would be funeral shopping on my phone. And she would come, you know, she was in out of consciousness or sleep. And it felt so treacherous to do that. But what was the alternative? You can’t ask somebody—well, I didn’t feel that I could ask somebody to do it on my behalf. Because even that is going to require a conversation. So I found that really, really bizarre. Yet and on the one hand, you long for the person to die so that they are relieved of any more suffering. But at the same time, you know, that’s simultaneously the moment of this, the moment they die, your, your suffering really begins.

Kate: Yes.

Richard: So it’s, you know, it’s… But everybody has to face end of life. And I think that I felt a genuine sense of privilege that I was with her as she had asked me to be right up until her last breath. I was still talking to her and still stroking her hand. So, you know, when somebody says to you, as my wife said to me, I don’t want to die in hospital, and I don’t want, some gruesome chemotherapy that’s going to make what time I have left even worse. So, that, being able to feel that you could honor that promise seemed so unlikely to happen. But it did. And I’m very grateful for that and how calm it was. And, frightening when the final, her final afternoon of life happened is something that I didn’t anticipate because I’d seen from movies or, you know, sort of urban legend is that some of these, you’re going to hear the terrible death rattle or they’re going to break wind violently And she used to joke with me, and she’d say, for God’s sake, if I, if my last breath is basically a big fart—don’t write that in your diary. And it didn’t happen.

Kate: You still your pen right now, sir.

Richard: Yeah. It just didn’t happen that way. You know what I mean? It was, it was extraordinary.

Kate: Did it feel like a like an extension of that gentle, and not gentle, honesty that you’ve had the whole time? Where it was like, look at us, still loving each other?

Richard: Yeah. What was, what was curious is the undertaker when he, I spoke to him on the phone the day before because we anticipated it would it would be a day earlier than the actual day that it happened, to be the 1st of September on the second. He said to me and the, palliative care nurses, had said the same thing that hearing is the last sense to go. So talking even when the person, even after she’d stopped breathing, my daughter and I talked to her for an hour, and obviously, it was for our benefit, but I suppose in that moment you suspend your disbelief that there is nothing more. And just thought, you know, if you if you talk it it it helped us.

Kate: It makes perfect sense to me to feel like you’re being, this is how we are in relationship. Look at us. This is how we talk to each other. And then like. And then to be able to have tenderness toward her. You know, or I just…

Richard: And the Undertaker was amazing because he said he said, when he arrived, and he was really old school Englishman, and from the countryside, he said, would you mind if I, if I talk to Joan? While we’re preparing everything? And I said yes, yes, go ahead. And he said to her, “Joan, we’re now going to wrap you in the folding sheet, and then we’re going to lift you onto a stretcher, and then we’re going to put you in the car, and we’re really going to look after you. And it sounds so bonkers now when I repeat that. But, his calmness and him just speaking to her and explaining. And because she was very, very pragmatic, I thought, well, she would have she would have found this extremely amusing, but also grateful that she was being told exactly what was going to happen. So there’s no mystical, oh, we’re taking off into the ether and, you know, any of that stuff, it’s you’re going to be wrapped up and you’re going to be lifted up when they’re going to be put in the back of a car. And I’m going to take you off. I’m going to take all your jewelry off. Don’t worry about that. It’s not going to be thieved from your box.

Kate: Yes, yes. I know only one undertaker, Thomas Lynch, who’s also a poet. And he, that’s sounds exactly like how he would talk to people. It’s got a, it’s got a frankness, but also like, an acknowledgment to it like that there is no there is no body, that there is, that there is a beloved.

Richard: Yes. He came back a week later, after the cremation, which is the word that I hate more than any other in the English language. And he had a Hessian bag with a, a box of ashes, and he handed it over at my front door, the cottage where we were living in the countryside and said, he said, this weighs approximately the same as a baby when it’s born, so… And then he handed them over. And they’re the one thing that she had said to me. Oh, I’d like to my ashes to be underneath a cherry tree in our garden. And…two years and a month later, I still haven’t been able to do that, and I know, I think I’m unlikely to ever do it. Somehow, just having what is remaining of her in a box because I sort of think, well, you know, if I, if I sell this cottage or we move or, you know something, or the tree falls down, or there ‘s a storm. It’s somehow I know where she is more. But just by having her in that box.

Kate: I want you with me.

Richard: And it’s, you know, it’s completely irrational, but just sentimental.

Kate: Yeah. I mean, all all poetry has to be, right? Like, direly. It’s the only way it makes any sense is that it doesn’t make sense.

Richard: Because there’s another part of me just think, well, maybe the cat or, you know, somebody’s going to knock this box over and then I’ll have to scoop her up off the floor, which again, she would find amusing. For God’s sake, get rid of me.

Kate: You had a couple effort, like, I’m just thinking about how people experience the story of themselves. And you, I mean, people’s love poured out for her in, like, food and and and letters to her and phone calls. And it sounds like you really let her know, everybody let her know how beloved she was before she was gone.

Richard: Yeah, well, she was well, she was Scottish. From Aberdeen and so Calvinist, you know, the stoical, don’t, don’t, don’t share anything. The opposite of, of my sensibility. And that was the only real argument that she, my daughter and I had. I think three, two, 2 or 3 weeks after she was diagnosed in January 2021. And we said we have to tell people. And she said, I’m going to carry on FaceTime or Skype coaching Brendan Gleeson, Ralph Fiennes, and Javier Bardem were the three actors she was working with at the time. And we said it is an impossible burden on us not to be able to tell people what, what you’re facing. And, she was furious and she said, no, I shouldn’t speak to her, both of us for 24 hours. She went into a sulk, and so we went ahead and emailed and texted the 30 people closest to us. And the avalanche of love support, food, flowers, you know, messages, phone calls, visits that we had instantaneously completely buoyed up her spirits, and she was astonished by that. And she said, I owe you both an apology, because I had no idea that I was, that people held me in this kind of esteem. And I said, well, you know, you and I had joked, because of our age, all the memorials of funerals that we’ve gone to, we’ve always said, God, if the person in the box could only hear what everybody was saying about them. Because in real life, I’m sure they never knew they were being eulogized at this level. And so she came round to that and she was very, very grateful for that. And on days when she felt really low, somebody’s visit or flowers or food parcel or whatever would just buoy up her spirits. No end. So I think that’s really important.

Kate: I do love feeling like people we love get to be told the story of who they are because we forget. We don’t, we don’t know. Oh yeah. We only know a part of how we’re just, part of the fabric of other people’s…you know? And their own self-identity. I remember I did have one version of that that went badly because, that first year everyone thought I was going to die in June, and I was. And so people were very, very kind in wanting to let me know how much I meant to them. But there’s one guy who wrote me a letter and, it was like all in the past tense. And he was also, I think, kind of wounded my pride as he was really good-looking. And it was like, Dear Kate, you were so lovely. I’m like, damn it, Derek, I can still be pretty again. I just got in the weirdest place. Why am I arguing about this? But it’s because I needed, I needed to still feel like I had a little runway, a little more runway left. I think, too, something funny about, I mean, I don’t know if any of us even know how old we are? We’re just…but I think in those moments, I lost, I lost my youth at the same time as I got sick, I think, to other people. But then I, in being kind of, not this, you know, a 30-some-year-old anymore, just a person in people’s lives. I think people told me things that they never would have told me otherwise, and that became a great privilege. I feel like I suddenly got like the the drone view of whatever my life was.

Richard: It’s interesting, what you said about, people speaking to you or writing to you in the past tense, it’s like you’d already gone, because Prince Charles asked to come and see Joan, because we knew him—

Kate: Stop.

Richard: —and, so he came and he sat with her in the garden. And the first thing he said to her, this was three weeks before she died. He said, my dearest Joan, it has been an absolute honor and privilege to have known you. And she instantly, you know, quick as a whip, put on a Cockney accent and said, “I’m still here.” So. And of course, he had done it, you know, because people don’t know what to say. He’d done with the best intentions.

Kate: “You were great.” “Screw you!”.

Richard: But he wanted to tell herhow great she was. But chose the past tense. But it broke the ice, so, you know, it worked well. And I think it’s very difficult for people. Don’t know what to say or are fearful of saying the wrong thing. You know, I don’t, well maybe you had this, but I very regularly saw people that I knew really well or thought I did who would cross the street rather than speak to me. And some people who have never acknowledged that she’s died have literally dropped off the cliff face. 98% of people have been beyond extraordinary in their compassion response. But those that 2% that dropped off, I will never speak to ever again, and they know exactly who they are. Did you, have you experienced that?

Kate: What you said, it’s going to the place of the sliver of iron in my heart, because I yeah, I remember one person in particular. As I did have, I mean…

Richard: He’s a great friend of yours, apparently.

Kate: Yeah, great apparently. It is funny that that people’s fear of being wrong, feeling wrong, feeling awkward can create the great divide. And I bet… One in particular wrote me a note later to tell me why. And I felt like the note was so much worse than the… But the, her explanation was I was so happy and you were going to have you were going to have to, you were going to be able to have another child and then you couldn’t, and then you were dying. And then I had this other child and everything was great for me. And then when I saw your Christmas card, it made me sad. And I was like, that is the most unreflective, I mean, I’m sure those are all things that happened in her mind. And yet none of those are… Because I just would have thought that all of a beautiful things would, say, amount to what should have been grace for me and my misery. But instead it was like, well, I don’t. I didn’t want to make you feel bad. Like, no, no, no, this this little exchange, I’m afraid, is what made me feel terrible.

Richard: I saw an actor in a voiceover studio yesterday. And, she said, she went all sort of goo-goo, a little girl voice on me, little Audrey Smith style, and she said, you know, I wrote you such a long email after Joan had died, but I just never sent it. I thought, well, that’s that’s really helped me.

Kate: Thank you. Thank you. When there was a hole in my heart, I could tell it was supposed to been filled by what you didn’t bother sending.

Richard: Yeah.

Kate: When you were talking about the sort of. Emotional schizophrenia between having to live in the present with the person who you love, who’s in pain, and then imagining and then having to imagine a future beyond them, where you plan funerals and that step afterward, right? Which is, and is, would there be an eternal life and a great beyond? I think one of the hardest things I have found in grief is knowing how to toggle between those kinds of imaginations. Because like, for instance, with beliefs about the afterlife, I haven’t found it to be, for the most part, terribly comforting. To pivot to an eternal future. Except every now and then, when I feel like I’m trying to learn something about who God is. I rarely find it helpful when I’m trying to make my life more meaningful, to figure out how to love people in a grittier way, to make my life less painful. I mean, I do think people think religion is going to make their life less painful. I’ve found that to be true. Like, “Welcome to Christianity, if you’re doing it right. Our Savior suffers and dies bad.”

Richard: We may get struck by lightning in this little studio. You know, on Friday the 13th. No doubt.

Kate: So? So I guess I mean, I like to do what C.S. Lewis said when his wife who he’d dedicated his whole life to dies, and someone said, “Well, I’m sure you must find your faith to be very comforting during this times.” And he was like, “Not at all.” And I, I agree. But I do find, like when you describe, finding a pocket full of happiness in the day. I, I think it’s a more sophisticated version than when people say we’ll just live in the present. Because I think there’s the beauty of being able to reach into your gorgeous past with a woman that you never stop talking to, and then have a memory like a, like a treasure that you get to hold and recreate. And then there’s times in which you do need to switch to a future in which you imagine, like you have to—most of grief is paperwork, as far as I can tell. And then you have to not live in the present quite so much and imagine a time in which it’s less painful. But I find that there’s wisdom in toggling between them to find like where the little where the treasure of that happiness is. And when I when I read you and think about your brain, that’s that’s part of what I heard.

Richard: Thank you. Four days before Joan died, she said to my daughter and I, I know you’re going to be sad, but I challenge you both to try and find a pocketful of happiness in each day. And at the time, I didn’t really take on board what she meant. But I think that more than anything, it is, it’s been a mantra by which to navigate the abyss of grief. And most significantly, it has permission built into it to feel joy and delight without guilt. And that, I think, is so profound because, you know, if the weather’s great today or you think, well, nobody’s bombed me or, you know, the tube is not, the subway is not on strike, or the world’s not falling in, that you know, there are good things to be found in everyday and to be conscious of that and not feel guilty that Joan is no longer here to enjoy them. Much as I’d long for her to be here, but.

Kate: Yes, that that kind of love is also permission-granting.

Richard: She also did the opposite thing, where she, she she went through the 25 single, widowed or divorced women that we knew together and basically snicker snack through the entire the entire chorale of them and just say, well, I mean, her ass is far too big for your taste, and her accent would drive you insane. And the way she eats, well, I mean, honestly, her and the way she flicks her hair all the time, or this one’s neuroses… She basically was a lioness and went through everybody. Everybody who might stake a claim after she had died was you know, detonated. Been very effective.

Kate: Permission given, permission revoked.

Richard: Yeah. Yeah. No. “You must find somebody after I’m gone. But if it’s any of this lot…” This is what the deal is going to be, baby.

Kate: You have the most realistic kind of deep and abiding love, and it has been an incredible joy.

Richard: She said through teary eyes. Thank you very much, Kate. Thank you.

Kate: Oh, I like you. Thank you for this

Richard: Thank you, thank you very much and I hope that you’re spared a few more breathing moments on the planet. Just to drive all those gossips mad, “Is she still alive. Yes, I hear so.” Hahahahahahaha.

Kate: There’s a beautiful quote from the writer Frederick Buechner that describes the kind of mystery we’re talking about, the mystery of joy. He says joy is a mystery because it can happen anywhere, any time, even under the most unpromising circumstances, even in the midst of suffering with tears in its eyes. I think that’s the kind of pocket full of happiness that Richard describes looking for. Those moments of joy and delight and wonder that doesn’t erase our pain or grief, but exists, too. So, my loves. If you are missing the person you love. I thought we might bless the hope that we might learn to delight again. All right, so here we go.

Kate: Blessed are you, the pragmatic. You who have run the math and know what adds up and what doesn’t. You who have set it all down. You who don’t hope or dream or plan anymore, because what’s the point? Your world has shrunk. Pain or grief or fear has sucked up every bit of oxygen for the room, and every ounce of delight has been squeezed from your hands. Blessed are you learning to live here in this unrecognizable, unnamable place. Blessed are you who discover that even in the smallness, our attention might be compressed even more. You who pull out a magnifying glass to discover, to notice, to taste, to smell, the small joys and simple pleasures that make a life worth living. You who wear the fancy blouse because it makes you feel nice long after you thought your body wasn’t worth decorating. You who eat the over-the-top meal, because that is what today can afford. You who make the memory and plan the trip and snap a picture. Because we know that this one wild and precious life might cost us everything. So why not make it not just bearable, but beautiful?

Kate: Well, my darlings, as a reminder to you all, Lent is happening. We are in the middle of the 40 days that lead up to Easter. And if you’ve never heard of Lent before or never practiced it before, it is like, not nearly as stressful as it sounds. And consider this invitation yours. It’s not too late. What we do is these daily reflections every morning as a way to practice honesty together. To tell the truth about our days that are sometimes beautiful and sometimes terrible. It’s totally free and you’re not too late. Join us at KateBowler.com/Lent and you can sign up to get these daily meditations emailed to you. And a huge thank you, yes, I am yelling, to our generous partners who make all things possible at Everything Happens. Lilly Endowment, the Duke Endowment, and Duke Divinity School. Thank you. We love that you love theological education and faith and media projects like this one. And thank you to the team that is the super team of all teams that ever teamed Jessica Richie, Harriet Putman, Keith Weston, Gwen Heginbotham, Brenda Thompson, Hope Anderson, Kristen Balzer, Jeb Burt, Sammi Filippi, and Katherine Smith. I love making beautiful things with you, and we do it all because, and for, listeners like you. Yes, you in line at the pharmacy. Yes, you up late caregiving, or yes, you in the infusion chair. Bless you. You are our absolute favorite and we are so grateful to get to make useful things for you. Let us know who you want to hear from this season, or leave us a review on Apple Podcasts or Spotify, that helps us so much and lets other people discover us too. It only takes a few seconds and I’ll be so grateful. Or give us a call and leave us a voicemail at (919) 322-8731. Okay, big treat for you and me. Next week, I will be speaking with the indomitable Alan Alda. Yes, Alan Alda from MASH. Alan Alda from The West Wing. And we’re going to talk about how to understand people across difference, across disagreement, and what aging teaches us about how to be humans to one another. And is there anyone better to learn from? No, I don’t think so. Don’t miss it. Until then, this is Everything Happens with me, Kate Bowler.