The Last Act of Love

by Cathy Rentzenbrink

  Cathy Rentzenbrink

  London, May 2016

  Acknowledgements

  The art of memoir-writing means that you leave a lot of people out and I want my first words here to be for everyone who loved Matty – I hope you think I’ve done a good job of putting him on the page. I’m also extremely grateful to all my friends, to those who mopped up tears in the time when I could talk about nothing else, and to more recent friends who suffered the disorienting experience of realizing there was rather a lot they didn’t know about me. This reticence was no lack of love on my part, more a worry that if I started I wouldn’t be able to stop. I’m truly grateful for every bit of kindness.

  Work has often proved to be my salvation, and I’d like to give a wave to everyone who has ever stood with me behind a bar or a counter and to the many people who were both kind and interesting when I served them booze or books. I feel a special love for the customers at the Bell and Crown and for all my colleagues at Waterstones and Hatchards. I don’t think it’s much of an exaggeration to say that bookselling saved my life and I will always remember the joyous feeling that I had found my tribe. More recently, I’m indebted to Gail Rebuck for telling me to get some bigger dreams, to Julia Kingsford, Lisa Milton and Janine Giovanni for encouraging me to believe in myself, and to Claire de Boursac and Jo Dawson for being the lights of my Quick Reads life. Thanks to Nigel Roby, Philip Jones and Benedicte Page for making me so welcome at the Bookseller.

  My husband Erwyn has always navigated my changes of mind with kindness and good humour, and was convinced long before I was that I would write a book, as were my dear friends John and Lizzie Waterhouse and Jo Dawson. I’m grateful to Tom Palmer for telling me to write it down and then making sure that I did it, with a wonderful blend of generosity, encouragement and bullying.

  I still can’t quite believe I’m allowed to use the word ‘my’ in relation to my agent Jo Unwin and my editor Francesca Main, who are pearls past price. I will be forever grateful for the skill and kindness with which they got this story out of me and onto the page. Heartfelt thanks to all at Picador and Pan Macmillan, especially Geoff Duffield, Anna Bond, Paul Baggaley, Camilla Elworthy, Justine Anweiler, Jon Mitchell, Claire Gatzen and Nuzha Nuseibeh, and to Juliet Van Oss for her copy-edit.

  Finding the report on ‘Prolonged disorders of consciousness’ was transformative, as was getting to know Jenny Kitzinger and Julie Latchem. You can find out more about their work, including fascinating papers on media representations of coma, at www.cdoc.org.uk.

  I’m not sure that the twenty-first-century woman does need a room of her own to write a book – I haven’t got one – but really good childcare is essential so I’m grateful beyond measure to my wonderful child-minder Lynette Elske. Massive thanks also to my parents, to my aunt, Marion Bowyer, and my mother-in-law, Ada Rentzenbrink, for so regularly descending to look after Matt and liberate me from the tyranny of the laundry basket.

  Thank you once more to my parents for travelling this hard road with me again. This book, and I, would not exist without their courage.

  The last word goes to my little dude, Matthew Jan Rentzen-brink, who is both a joy and an inspiration and completely his own person. He is also a memory catalyst, and as I sing him the songs my dad sang to us, I feel surrounded by love.

  Don’t know what’s comin’ tomorrow

  Maybe it’s trouble and sorrow

  But we’ll travel the road, sharin’ our load, side by side.

  ‘Beautifully written . . . Rentzenbrink unearths the profound truths of human experience: how we love, intensely, bravely, even though doing so can destroy us; how we must face what has damaged us and seek a way to live with it; how we can survive unthinkable pain and eventually, slowly, mend . . . She emerges from this unflinching memoir with dignity, strength and an enormous heart’

  Sunday Times

  ‘Heartbreaking . . . inspiring’

  Damian Barr, Guardian Books of the Year

  ‘Extraordinary . . . beautifully written . . . Rentzenbrink brings an authenticity to the genre’

  The Times

  ‘Searingly honest . . . a book in which love and hope shine through’

  Independent

  ‘Profoundly moving . . . It is a great achievement to transform such a terrible story – one of a kind with which, as a neurosurgeon, I am painfully familiar – into something rather beautiful and uplifting . . . This book should be read by everybody who has either personal or professional experience of severe head injury and, indeed, by anybody who is concerned by the way our society has such difficulty in accepting that meaningful life is about more than just a beating heart’

  Henry Marsh, New Statesman

  ‘Brilliant, moving . . . heartening and funny . . . Rentzenbrink writes beautifully’

  Daily Mail

  ‘Unflinchingly honest, deeply moving . . . What makes The Last Act of Love so special, so readable and ultimately so uplifting is that it is a book as much about courage and hope as it is about loss . . . leaving you with an undeniable sense of the indomitability of the human spirit’

  Hannah Beckerman, Sunday Express

  ‘Although there is pain on every page, this love letter to a beloved sibling is richly rewarding’

  Sunday Mirror

  ‘Her tone is warm and the book brims with insight. Grief, anger and guilt loom large, certainly – but the dominant emotion is love’

  Financial Times

  ‘How do you cope when a fate worse than death befalls the person you love most in the world? . . . Cathy tells a devastating tale in clear-eyed, matter-of-fact prose. There is no melodrama and no self-pity as she struggles to live with a catastrophe that could befall any of us . . . The Last Act of Love is surely the bravest, most moving book you will read this year’

  Daily Express

  ‘I put down Cathy Rentzenbrink’s heartbreaking memoir about love, grief, denial and courage a different person than when I started it’

  Sam Baker, The Pool

  ‘A beautiful and brave exploration of the complex heartbreak of a long goodbye’

  Good Housekeeping

  ‘The non-fiction book of the year’

  Sarra Manning, Red

  ‘This is not only an unflinching and powerfully told account of an unimaginably painful family tragedy. It is also an unforgettable meditation on a close sibling relationship, on growing up with grief, on life, love and everything in between. I am in awe of how Cathy has managed to write so bravely and beautifully’

  The Bookseller

  ‘A gobsmacking memoir about family and love. Truly, it will inspire you to be your very best self for a long time after the final page’

  Alexandra Heminsley, The Debrief

  ‘This is a touching and brave book, heartbreaking yet beautiful’

  S. J. Watson, author of Before I Go To Sleep

  ‘Incredibly powerful . . . The love that wraps itself around the pain and never goes away is what kept me turning the pages so quickly’

  Rebecca Wait, author of The View on the Way Down

  ‘Beautiful, devastating and ultimately uplifting, intimate and universal all at once . . . Cathy Rentzenbrink has found a way to express the things that all of us wrestle with at times – knowing how to live and taking the risk to love; facing what has damaged us, and owning it as much as a person can’

  Jessie Burton, author of The Miniaturist

  First published 2015 by Picador

  This electronic edition published 2016 by Picador

  an imprint of Pan Macmillan

  20 New Wharf Road, London N1 9RR

  Associated companies throughout the world

  www.panmacmillan.com

  ISBN 978-1-4472-8640-0

  Copyright © Cathy Rentzenbrink, 2015

  Cover Design by Justine Anweiler, Picador Art Department

  The right of Cathy Rentzenbrink to be identified as the author of this work has been asserted by her in accordance with the Copyright,
Designs and Patents Act 1988.

  ‘Side by Side’, lyrics and music by Harry Woods © 1927 Shapiro Bernstein & Co Ltd, USA.

  Lyrics reproduced by permission of Faber Music Ltd. All rights reserved.

  Pan Macmillan does not have any control over, or any responsibility for, any author or third-party websites referred to in or on this book.

  You may not copy, store, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

  A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library.

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