It’s been six years since I started to talk about the effect of my mother’s suicide, sharing my story for the first time, by invitation of my now friend Angela Samata at a private audience with the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge. I sat terrified with a collective of others bereaved as part of a fact finding exercise before the Heads Together initiative was launched. 

I had approached Angela after seeing her Bafta nominated BBC documentary, Life after Suicide, offering my genuine thanks to her for a programme that resonated with me deeply. I thought I was alone in the complexity of my grief born 45 years earlier when I was just 15 months old. An evening in January 1971 when my mum, Grace put the baby to bed, and left her young family of 3 children and my father, Sid, in the worst way possible.  To find out there were many others like me took me on a voyage of self-discovery and reflection.

Our trip to Kensington Palace in 2016 was followed by a couple of invitations to speak at conferences discussing suicide prevention and bereavement support.  My keynote presentation at the International Suicide bereavement Conference in Manchester in 2021 followed a year and a couple of lockdowns after the death of my father in 2019. SId had reached an admirable 88 despite living on one lung (he had TB in his 20s and spent 6 months in a sanitorium in the 1950s) and enduring a range of illness including bowel cancer and some spinal issues that left him on a cocktail of drugs but still fiercely independent to his final day.

The official nature of invitations to speak at these events created a structure that helped me build conversations with Sid that had previously felt impossible.  In his own words “…if it helps someone to find support…”.  It would also help me untangle a lifetime of anxious thoughts and create my own narrative. A blessing.

And then Angela introduced me to Mark Storor, an “international award-winning artist”. Over a long lockdown Zoom conversation Mark told me about something called The Suicide Chronicles, a multiyear project exploring the language of suicide.

I won’t pretend I fully understood what Mark was talking about, but I had long sought a creative channel to express myself.  I had written for a while, sketches of both the darkness in my life but also the light and the joy. I had also created some litho prints and attempted to paint as well as having a passion for photography.

We met alongside the trusty guidance of Heart of Glass producer Emily over the course of a year in various community-based rooms for hire. I was introduced to the creative process and asked to trust it. 

Returning home after each session I found it almost impossible to explain what I had done and what I was creating.  We would sit painting within the silhouette of my body on more than one occasion; I lay with a pillowcase on my head for quite a while and then exploded oil paints in it. I would guide a blindfolded aerial performance artist, Chris Willoughby, through a makeshift maze using string and then write letters to loved ones. We would trawl through some words and songs I had written as a younger man and then work with them with composer Jules Maxwell.

For some months it wasn’t clear what form Chronicle 3 would take.  I remember Mark dancing around a darkened room to songs from South Pacific with a Heath Robinson projection device stuck to the wall. We also danced around my words, my feelings and untangled two griefs separated by 50 years.  Try explaining that to your family when you get home!

I tucked into a delicious cottage pie made by the fair hand of Mary, Mark’s mum after we had tried to squeeze me into a too small template for a velvet teal suit that I had jokingly suggested during one session that turned into reality thanks to the gentle hand and hushed tones of artist Tadashi Kato. We chatted about our favourite stage musicals and Mark’s impressive portfolio of work. I was incredibly touched that she would attend the live performance.

Throughout the process we did discuss some concerns. I was worried that we would start telling a specific narrative involving other people’s lives with images of people being manipulated for the sake of art.  I was treated with care and compassion, Mark and Emily listening, and reassuring me. This felt like a collaboration.

Eventually, something feeling like a plan began to form.  the team was brought together to create the final piece, which would be a film of a live performance combining incredible animation from Babis Alexiadis, music from myself and composer Jules and the beautiful aerial agility of Chris.  Together we would play with the elements we had built that would sit within something like a renaissance portrait backdrop.

It was important to Mark that this wasn’t an over rehearsed performance more than a live rendition of the pieces we had slowly pieced together.  We would have several to-and-fro conversations where I worried if I should be learning any of the words, particularly those I had written just a couple of weeks before and didn’t have a copy of. 

Trust. The. Process.

Eventually, working carefully though C19 related hurdles I found myself in a cold old Victorian warehouse turned theatre space in a vibey bohemian area of Liverpool docks. Everywhere feels a bit bohemian if you have lived in Ross on Wye for 20+ year to be fair. Working alongside 12 gentle men, all artists in their own creative discipline, I suppressed the imposter in me.  

Over the course of two days each section of the final film was put together. We recorded some spoken word under the glamour of a duvet over my head squished against a bunk bed.

Chris was then suspended behind me dripping in gloop punishing his body to represent a darkness.

Intense would be an understatement, emotionally and physically draining.  After day one a prescription of warm lager was self-prescribed. An early start for day two with a walk to Crosby beach where I sang to the Anthony Gormley statues in Another Place. A spectacular dawn clearing a very fuzzy head.

Underpinning throughout was the collective care from the arts agency Heart of Glass and their desire to protect the integrity of the work, its participants, and its audience.

Two days ago, (March 2022) I travelled north to a fantastic community cinema, Lucem House, in St Helens, the town where the Suicide Chronicles was conceived, to watch a screening of the final work.  I sat through it a total of 3 times, with a small audience for each showing. I noticed different elements on each occasion and was touched by its representation of my truth across its darkness, delicacy, complexity, hope and love

It has been an honour to work alongside Mark and Emily and everyone from the Heart of Glass arts agency. It has been a privilege to be able to explore my truth with such care from all involved.

Full of Grace is a conversation with myself but also to all that matter to me. And to those that I don’t know, those that are enduring their own journey, those that may have been bereaved by suicide or are thinking of ending their own lives, it is a hymn for them all, and a letter to the strength of carrying on. One step forward, slowly, gently.

Full of Grace is a token of the love that I pass on…

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Thankyou x 100 to all involved.

Babis Alexiadis – animation
Jake Gresham – counter balance
Ceri James – lighting
Tadashi Kato – costume
Chris Keenan – film
Stephen King – photography
Jules Maxwell – sound and music
Jamie Ogilvie – rigger
Jamie Rollinson – lighting technician
Chris Willoughby – aerial performance
Angela Samata – legend
Emily Gee – double legend
Mark Storor – treble legend and award winner

Wired Aerial Theatre
Vessel Studios.