Richard Attenborough is a deeply wounded man, says Nigel Farndale in the London Telegraph. The Oscar-winning director and actor’s eldest daughter, Jane, and his granddaughter, Lucy, were among the 225,000 victims of the tsunami that slammed into Sri Lanka, India, Thailand, and Indonesia on Dec. 26, 2004. Jane and Lucy had been vacationing in Phuket, Thailand. Three years later, Attenborough chokes up at the mere mention of the calamity. “My wife, Poppy, and I can’t even talk about it privately to each other,” he says. “I still can’t cope with it. If I stop and think about it, I just cry. It was the most terrible day of our lives.” Gazing out the window, his eyes glistening, he says, “You can’t outrun your grief. The pain doesn’t diminish.” To cope, he takes refuge in the past. “What does happen is that you assemble armor—an ability to compartmentalize your grief, put it in a place that you can revisit when you choose. Also, you learn to place it in juxtaposition with positive memories. We had 50 happy years with Jane, and 14 with Lucy. So you can suddenly recall joy. It is available. You just have to reach down into your memory to find it. I remember when Jinny—we called her Jinny—first visited the seaside. I remember the time we took her to a Picasso exhibition. I may still weep, but the box of memory no longer seems empty.”
The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.
-
Political cartoons for December 13Cartoons Saturday's political cartoons include saving healthcare, the affordability crisis, and more
-
Farage’s £9m windfall: will it smooth his path to power?In Depth The record donation has come amidst rumours of collaboration with the Conservatives and allegations of racism in Farage's school days
-
The issue dividing Israel: ultra-Orthodox draft dodgersIn the Spotlight A new bill has solidified the community’s ‘draft evasion’ stance, with this issue becoming the country’s ‘greatest internal security threat’
