Marilyn Imrie died in August 2020, five months and 22 days after being diagnosed with motor neurone disease. In this book written by her husband, James Runcie, we are given an intimate, generous glimpse into who Marilyn was, what it was like to know her, fall in love with her, share a 35 year marriage with her, navigate a terminal illness and impending death with her, and ultimately to lose her. In spite of this – no, because of this – the book is packed with lively dialogue, comedy, colour and scent, hopefulness and cheerfulness, heartbreak, honesty and realism.
Runcie and his producer wife met “on a sofa in a BBC script meeting” and their shared love for the arts runs through the book. They honeymooned in Venice, where Marilyn uttered the words that every spouse wants to hear: “I’ve never been so happy.” Marilyn had been married before and wore red to the blessing of their civil marriage in Lambeth Palace Chapel, but to dwell on that would be to miss the point. This book is a love letter, not a sermon.
That said, Runcie could give a good sermon. Not because his father, Robert, was Archbishop of Canterbury, but because he can tell a good anecdote. Tell Me Good Things is, in part, an unlikely comedy. You’re repeatedly drawn in as a fellow party guest, grasping at each word and wanting to know what happens next, and then the punchline is delivered and it’s better than you thought it would be and you are, unexpectedly, in hysterics.
One such memorable anecdote, about Ken Dodd, was a favourite of Marilyn’s, and she encouraged their friend Bill to tell it “to get the party going”. She did so because “she loved shared laughter”, Runcie explains, “and encouraging people to be their best selves. She knew the liberating freedom of true companionship where the cares of the world can disappear, if only for a while.”
Their best selves. The liberating freedom of true companionship. It was with those words, on page 52, that I was sold: Marilyn was A Good Thing.
Echoes of this sentiment, of Marilyn’s contagious positivity and awareness of the intrinsic value of people, returns again later in the book when Runcie writes that “throwing yourself into things and being an enthusiast lay at the heart of her personality. The idea of delight, of being in the moment, and a true supporter, lay behind Marylin’s idea of parenting, friendship, direction and love.” What a marvellous way to exist.
And it wasn’t just her personality, by Runcie’s account, that was full of delight, it was Marilyn’s approach to aesthetics too. She wore bright jewellery, long floating silks, and her outfits were frequently so “statement” that she was, he jokes, constantly at risk of being robbed. When Runcie faced the cruel, inevitable task of sorting through Marilyn’s belongings and doing housework alone after she died, he took care to light scented candles and keep the place tidy, as she would have wanted.
Which brings us to the final, difficult theme: Marilyn’s death and James’s grief. Marilyn died in the middle of a global lockdown to a neurodegenerative disorder for which there is no treatment. The enormity of that emotionally and practically is beyond words and the chapter entitled “What Not to Say” demands attention. Somehow, Runcie describes the last words he said to his wife, and the last minutes he spent awake in her company.
But perhaps most touching is that, as well as describing Marilyn’s death and his subsequent grief, Runcie is able to go beyond this; he is able to see his grief with all its pain, purpose and potential for transfiguration.
We can perhaps take holidays from grief, allow simple pleasures; “be kind to ourselves and acknowledge that while those we have loved were not saints, they were people just like us, and we loved them for all of their flaws and all of their glories… That’s the aim. But it’s still hard.”
Reflecting on this, it struck me that perhaps this book is all, in fact, about Marilyn. “Death is, of course, the Great Subject,” Runcie reminds us in the chapter headed “Shouting at Television”. But not, perhaps, The Greatest; at least not for Runcie. Tell Me Good Things is here to convince us, in the most gripping way, that the greatest subject is Marilyn herself.
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