Sophie Calon is a new young Welsh writer, born and raised in Cardiff during the Cool Cymru era. Her writing was published in the anthology Tales of Two Londons, and has been shortlisted for the 2021 Wild Writing Prize and published by Short Fiction. She lives with her husband, daughter, and their two cats on a hilltop near Hay-on-Wye, where they are bringing nature back to their farm. Long Going is her first book.
"e;A moving and thought-provoking account of an impossible situation."e; Louis de Bernieres, author of Captain Corelli's MandolinAt 50, Sophie Calon's father was a high-flying lawyer. At 55, he was found dead in Cardiff city centre at Christmas. Meanwhile he had pinballed between tents, homeless shelters, and prison cells. His story is a lesson in how alcoholism can consume a person and a family. Long Going is a powerful, unflinching memoir that sings with Calon's love for her eccentric, witty father while recounting his drink-fuelled disintegration. In telling his story, Calon explores her family's instability and pain as well as her own survival. "e;This portrait pulls no punches profoundly life-affirming. Everyone who has an alcoholic in the family should read this book for its compassionate awareness of the damage and chaos caused by addiction, while never forgetting the humanity of the person caught in that trap. A wonderful book."e; Gwyneth Lewis, author of Nightshade Mother"e;Hugely impacting and searingly honest, Sophie Calon's work is a powerful piece of memoir: bold, bruising and yet beautiful."e; James Canton, author of Grounded"e;Sophie Calon's writing is deeply real and moving she is a talent to watch."e; Jessica Andrews, author of Milk Teeth"e;Searing and poetic, Sophie Calon's prose sparkles in this elegiac, gripping memoir. Draws you in and takes you on a journey. Calon is an immensely readable writer to watch."e; Maeve McClenaghan, author of No Fixed Abode
There was a dad with me once.
He drifted slowly, unsteady on his feet. I yearned for closure eventually. Truth is, I grieved his going before learning he had gone. Not a surprise, that news, but still a shock when it lit my phone screen. Those pixels stung like citrus on a cut.
People often speak of hiraeth. Untranslatable, they say. Is it? Split it in two, hir|aeth, and you get long|gone. And that’s the crux of it, if you ask me. A longing for someone, something, sometime, someplace long gone. A heave in the gut for the no longer reachable.
Where we truly lack the words is a more searing sensation: the longing for what’s fading just beyond reach. Within sight, between here and gone, like ink greying in cold sunlight. Hir|mynd, long|going.
My dad’s long going was dark and frightening. Tiring, too. All that not knowing if, when he did come back, he might stick around this time. In Welsh, there’s no word for ‘have’. Someone or something is either with us or not with us. No possession, only presence.
Yes, there was a dad with me once.
I last heard from him two years, seven months, and twenty-five days before his death. An email to tell me of his own dad’s death. I sent a curt, kind reply, then let my dad have the last word:
Grandad
Thu 2 May 2019 1:34 PM
I’m in Barry at the moment. It’s all very sad. The conversations are about Death Certificates, the funeral, undertakers etc. I’m finding it all really tough.
Anyway, I’m determined to bounce back and I am doing everything I can to achieve that. Keep up the reading. I have been doing more of that than for some time (and getting beyond page 6). It’s been a great help recently. Love you.
Why didn’t I write back after that? Fatigue, I guess. There was too much pretence in things we said to each other. For instance, his line about doing everything he can. It felt like a lie. To himself, I suspect, as well as to me. He might have kidded himself into thinking he meant it. Bottom line, it was false, but it wasn’t his fault. I kind of get that now. Gwin, wine. Red, mainly. Could you tell? Stains like hell. Splattered across us all, his collateral.
As for how to get him bouncing back, well, I was at a loss. Might I have done more? At first I didn’t know if I should, then I didn’t know if I could. My efforts felt belated. By then his drinking had asserted itself centre stage, spotlit and erratic. The show went on, and on, and grotesquely on. The more I grew up, the more he crumpled. I’m told I shouldn’t, but even so I worry it was cause and effect. My growing up, his tumbling down. He raised me to live with joy, curiosity, confidence, while he tipped slowly into oblivion. Obliterating all that possible living.
As a child, I believed every word my dad said. He was the wisest of men, I thought. I trusted him more than anyone. Now I’m a year older than he was when my birth made him a dad aged twenty-seven. I like to think, if it had panned out differently, if he hadn’t died twenty-eight years later outside a Volkswagen dealership one night, that we’d still be good mates. I don’t know if I wish he were still here. It haunted me, that shadowy figure he was towards the end. I do wish, though, that I’d had more time to gather some wisdom of my own, anything that might have done something.
It’s confusing to love someone who’s dying from what might look like an opt-in terminal illness. And how do you square the fact that its key symptom, heavy drinking, is so socially acceptable? Let’s face it, mandated at times. Then, at some point, somehow, fatal. I assumed the end was fixed, maybe before it was so. I couldn’t bear his long going, so I went myself. I fear my absence had a role in making it certain.
I’m still figuring it out. There’s no easy cure for this, no medicine over the counter. By the time I had seen what other people’s lives looked like, that is, by the time I was better equipped, it felt like he was already beyond reach.
Oblivion for him, vivid for us. We were told to forgive it all along the way, to forget until the next time the next time the next time. Let bygones be bygones. Long gone, now. But what about this long going, is that worth remembering? I think so.
~
Where to start?
I could tell you about my dad’s change of setting. Act I: three kids, married, close-knit family home. Sought-after neighbourhood. Equity partnership, no less, in a top Welsh law firm. Act II: mostly solo missions, prison cells, homeless shelters. Underpasses, sometimes. Leaking tents in the bushes off Hope Street, worse times. Hope, the thing that weathered.
I could tell you about his change of habits. Act I: painting canvases on Saturday mornings, running marathons. Act II: roaming the city’s gutters, brawling with other addicts.
I could tell you about the way he treated people, though this is murkier in terms of earlier/later. He made us laugh a lot, even beyond the end. He could be hilarious, generous, contagiously courageous. Rude, consistently, to those he didn’t respect. More and more, he made us cry, lashing out, aggrieved at the betrayals he perceived in us reaching our limits with him.
To my sister Bee’s partner, Lloyd, our dad was The Wanderer. It suited him, this. Intrepid, free-spirited. He used to quote Ice Age, a film my brother Danny and he knew almost by heart.
‘Are you ready for adventure?’
‘Yes, sir!’
‘For danger?’
‘Yes, sir!’
‘For death?’
‘Uhh, can you repeat the question?’
My dad wasn’t ready for death. Who is at fifty-five? He wilfully swerved lawyers’ advice to make a will. To them, he was deteriorating. To him, he was invincible. Invincible!
~
The moment I hear he’s gone, gone gone, it’s grief and it’s relief, indistinguishable, truly untranslatable to the daughter I once was to him, the one who’d follow him anywhere. Up a skeletal gorge, into lightning-striking sea, through howling dunes, all the while whistling a happy tune.
The news comes while I’m at the Robin Hood pub. Just uphill from Hebden Bridge, West Yorkshire. 27 December 2021. My partner, Ash, and I moved here a year ago. We’re a good two hours northeast of Sherwood Forest, but it’s the vibe of the thing. Men here likewise took from the rich and gave to the poor. We leave coppers on the local hero’s grave in Heptonstall as a mark of respect. Pity how it all ended. Violence, betrayals, sudden death. I see resemblances.
It’s dusk. The pub’s toasty, all steamed-up glass and flushed cheeks. The smoky open fire crackles and splutters amber sparks. Christmas is still in our hearts. For the first time in years, the valley could gather merrily together.
We’re tucked in, my friends and I, at the round table by the door. I insisted they took the cushioned bench and am perched on a stool, rickety on the flagstones. I play with the beer mats while we chat. Elva, the landlady, shuffles past us to the bar, where beer is three quid a pint. Me, I’m midway through a medium house red. I regret this only in hindsight.
For now I’ve slipped my phone from my pocket to show off a photo of recent valley fog. You’d think it was the ocean, a pale expanse floating around the clifftops. Except I’ve stopped, gone AWOL mid-sentence. Staring, chest clenched, clutching a few seconds to digest this.
In my palm is a different sort of mist, a daze of missed calls and texts. At the top, just minutes back, the latest from my best friend:
Call me when you see this.
I should speak but I can’t quite breathe. There’s no mistaking what these words mean.
‘Just need to—’, I mutter to the ground as I leave.
Outside the air is dingy and the hills shiver. There is no one out here. The faded awning is folded away. I call Lisa. It’s twenty-four years since our first day of school. Two or three years, maybe, since I first sensed she’d be the one to tell me this. Intuition, call it what you like. It tends to be right.
She...
| Erscheint lt. Verlag | 19.6.2025 |
|---|---|
| Verlagsort | London |
| Sprache | englisch |
| Themenwelt | Literatur ► Biografien / Erfahrungsberichte |
| Schlagworte | Alcohol and Addiction • Daughter Father Relationships • Family • Life Writing • Memoir • stealth help |
| ISBN-13 | 9781916821255 / 9781916821255 |
| Informationen gemäß Produktsicherheitsverordnung (GPSR) | |
| Haben Sie eine Frage zum Produkt? |
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