We keep an old shoebox, Gill and I, nestled in a drawer in our room.
In many ways, it has been the most amazing time of my life..
It’s about what it feels like to confront the fact that my family will persist through time with only a memory of me.
It’s about love and fatherhood, about the precious experience of observing my last moments with this body, surrounded by the people who matter most.
To Tom and Jimmy.
A Short History of Falling is about the sadness (and the anger, and the fear), but it’s about what’s beautiful too.
To Gill, my wife.
To this world, as I play less of a part in it and find myself floating off into unlighted territory.
To my body, as I journey from unexpected clumsiness to a wheelchair that resembles a spacecraft, with rods and pads and dials and bleeps.
I wrote them because, since the end of 2017, I’ve been living with – and dying from – motor neurone disease.
This book is about the process of saying goodbye.
It’s filled with thirty-three birthday cards for our two young sons: one for every year I’ll miss until they’re twenty-one.
We keep an old shoebox, Gill and I, nestled in a drawer in our room
