My Father Passed Away in My Embrace on My Wedding Day

On September 9th, 1989, Tim Sullivan was getting married in a small church in Bishopston Valley on the Gower peninsula. Everything leading up to the wedding day had gone smoothly, and 130 friends and family were in attendance. After the ceremony, Tim and his wife Rachel were set to process up the hill to the reception at his in-laws’ home, led by a small jazz band and followed by their guests. However, as they were leaving the church, Tim’s father suddenly collapsed and died in his arms. He was 65, the same age that Tim is now as he reflects on this tragic moment.

The memory of his father’s death on his wedding day has stayed with Tim throughout his life, shaping both what he writes about and how he writes it. The experience demonstrated how tragic events have a way of happening at unexpected times, even during what should have been the happiest day of Tim’s life.

As his father fell to the ground, the air was expelled from his lungs with a fatal wheeze, and he seemed to deflate like a punctured tire. Tim started to give him CPR, feeling that their morning suits and tails were incongruous in the moment. He remembers thinking two things: “No, this can’t be happening. Not today. Please don’t make me the guy whose dad died at his wedding.” At the same time, his subconscious was reminding him of his ambition to be a movie writer and director, and that none of it mattered because this is how it could all end. In a morning suit on a damp lane outside a small Welsh church.

Tim turned to look for Rachel and swatted something away from his face, thinking it was a fly. It turned out to be a rosary bead, which his two elderly great aunts were holding as they prayed for his father’s soul. Tim found himself thinking, “Seriously? He’s barely stopped breathing.” Meanwhile, Rachel, in her silk wedding dress, was looking on with tears flowing down her cheeks. Tim remembers thinking that she looked like a bride out of a Tim Burton movie.

As though with an unspoken agreement of what needed to be done, a number of guests sprang into action. Two of them, who happened to be doctors, took over performing CPR and administering mouth-to-mouth on my father. Another guest quickly took charge of Rachel and led her away from the distressing scene. Two more guests began to organize the others, some of whom were still unaware of what was going on, and guided them up the hill towards the house. The jazz band happened to be playing “When the Saints Go Marching In” when my father passed away. They immediately ceased playing and the dissonant confusion that followed made me realize that if I had written this scenario in a script, people simply wouldn’t have believed it.

In the emergency department of Singleton Hospital, the doctors confirmed what my sister Valerie and I already knew: our father was dead. As I looked around at the usual Saturday night crowd of rugby players, drunks, and elderly patients, I couldn’t fathom how life could just carry on as if nothing had happened. Then, an impossibly young and apologetic policeman appeared to ask me some questions. At the end of our brief interview, he inquired whose wedding it had been. When I told him it was mine, he immediately burst into tears. I found myself consoling him and offering a hug, as his helmet fell to the ground and rolled along the floor until two young children picked it up and began to play with it, unable to believe their luck.

As we drove back, I couldn’t help but wonder about the wedding reception. Were people still there or had they all left? I hoped for the former. During the ride, one of the best men made a joke about my decision to have two best men. “I guess you had one for the hospital and one for the reception,” he quipped.

Despite the tragic circumstances, the idea of canceling speeches at the wedding reception was suggested by my father-in-law. This horrified me as I had spent weeks preparing mine with great jokes that I would never have the opportunity to deliver again. Despite the uncertainty in the air, I decided to go ahead with my speech and began with the words, “My father always did have the most remarkable sense of timing.” There was a brief pause before the applause began, and my best men followed with even funnier speeches, resulting in laughter.

In the aftermath, those who had not been present at the wedding were surprised not only by the tragedy that occurred but also by the fact that we were able to continue with the celebration. That day, I learned that people have a remarkable ability to cope with even the most challenging situations. They simply carry on. Despite what had happened, we found ways to joke, laugh, eat, drink, and dance. It was how my father would have wanted it.

Death is an indiscriminate force that shows no regard for decorum or circumstance. The experience of my wedding taught me this firsthand. It also inspired me when I wrote the movie Jack & Sarah, in which the wife of Richard E Grant’s character dies in childbirth at the beginning of the film. Some financiers rejected the pitch, convinced that audiences wouldn’t be able to move past the tragedy and find humor in the story. However, my wedding had shown me that people are capable of finding humor and joy even in the face of profound loss. When the film was released, audiences laughed and cried, proving that the key to effective comedy often lies in balancing tragedy and humor. By juxtaposing these two emotions, you can create a powerful emotional experience that keeps the audience engaged and unsure whether to laugh or cry.

It is possible that Richard Curtis may have heard about the author’s wedding through their mutual agent or other shared friends, and used it as inspiration for the plot of Four Weddings and a Funeral. However, when the author reached out to Curtis about the coincidence, Curtis expressed disbelief at the story and said he had not known about it before. He also wondered if he had known, whether he would have included the scene in the film, worrying that it might have been too sensitive. Nonetheless, the author is relieved that Curtis did not include a similar scene, as it would have robbed audiences of the powerful moment in his film.

It’s a touching moment when Rachel gathers all the white lilies from the wedding to be strewn over the coffin of the author’s father, who was driven up the M4 to Surrey in a hearse. Many of the wedding guests came to the funeral even though they hadn’t known the author’s father, as if they all now had membership of some exclusive club having been there. This demonstrates how the author’s father had touched the lives of those around him, and how his passing affected many people beyond his immediate family.

In my grief, I had ordered the most absurdly grand coffin, no bells and whistles excluded. As a result, it was huge and weighed a ton. I insisted he be carried to his grave and not wheeled on a squeaky trolley which, knowing my father’s recent luck, or lack of, would doubtless have had a dodgy wheel like an abused supermarket trolley, and refused to go in the right direction. On the day of the funeral, one of the pallbearers was ill and his 16-year-old son was deputised. The grave was some distance from the road. It wasn’t long before the young man began to struggle and sag under the weight. Walking behind I imagined the coffin crashing to the ground and my father’s body falling out among a shower of splinters like something from an Ealing comedy. It would have fitted neatly into the bizarre narrative of that week, I thought. My mind was obviously in a strange place.

We gathered for tea at my parents’ house. At one point, my five-year-old nephew, Jonathan, ran in with what appeared to be a lifeless frog in his hands. “He’s dead!” he exclaimed and demanded we give him a proper burial immediately. His resentment and incomprehension at being excluded from the morning’s proceedings obviously still raw. A few of us trooped out into the garden and did the decent thing with a trowel – and held our second funeral of the day.

Half an hour later, Jonathan flew into the room again, shouting: “The frog! The frog! Quick! Come!” This time about 20 of us went out to the tiny grave. We looked down and there, unmistakably, was an outstretched hand and arm reaching out quiveringly from the frog’s premature grave. We looked on in horror, until Jonathan said what we were all secretly thinking: “Gosh, I hope Grandpa really is dead.”

A year later I went to the first wedding I’d attended since my own. It was also in Swansea. I stayed with my in-laws that night and when I got home, they asked how it had gone.

“Fine.” I replied. “No one died.”

The Monk, a DS Cross thriller, by Tim Sullivan is published by Head of Zeus