- Abi, thank you so much for joining me
for an Audible Sessions interview about your brand new book,
"This is Not a Pity Memoir".
- Thank you very much for having me.
- Can you start by just introducing it
and what you sort of cover in the book?
- Okay, so "This is Not a Pity Memoir" opens in June, 2018
when my partner, Jacob, at the time,
collapsed with the brain seizure.
And so, ensued a sort of, kind of chaotic
complete kind of a volt fast upturning of our life.
And really, the book captures the next two years
as he goes into intensive care
and then into a coma for six to seven months,
and then coming out of that coma,
his rehab and recovery, and then bringing him home.
And it's really about, it's about love, actually,
I wasn't setting out to write a love story,
I think I had quite a hate story going on
a lot of the time when I was writing it
but what I didn't realize was it was a love story
and it's a love story absolutely about Jacob,
but it's also about the family
and my children and our wider family, both mine and Jacob's,
and the way we pulled together
and the way we've had to reconfigure
and get to know Jacob again, because at the heart of it,
when Jacob woke up after, I say six to seven months
because he was going in and out for that last month,
but when he actually finally woke up,
he developed a delusion called Capgras delusion
which is the delusion
that the person close to you is an imposter.
And so, for a year,
he didn't believe that I was Abi Morgan,
his partner or wife.
- And has your idea of love changed
since that moment that Jacob had that fit,
went into that coma,
do you see love as something different now
than you did then?
- Someone recently sent me a really interesting article
about the seven kinds of love.
I think it's from a Greek perspective
and that was kind of from eros to philia to storge,
which are all these different kinds of love.
And I suddenly realized, of course,
we have different kinds of love.
We have obviously the desire, sexual desire for someone,
the passion, and then we have the kind of companionship
and friendship of a marriage or a close friendship.
And then we have the kind of, I think it's called storge,
which is the unsymmetrical love of a parent.
You know, you adore your child,
they probably find your pain in the arse, but you love them.
And so, I think it's widened my capacity
and the different kinds of love I now recognize
and experience because I think if you go through
any kind of testing time with someone
who you are very close to,
the nature of that love has to shift and change
because the dynamic of your relationship changes.
So I think it's really widened my understanding of love.
I describe it as this weird hum of love
and it sounds a bit whimsical
and kind of like some kind of Santa Fe platitude
but I can only describe it like that,
which is I just realized that love is a kind of hum.
It just vibrated through me,
even when I couldn't reach Jacob,
I just felt this incredible hum, not only coming from me,
but from this kind of community of people
who we built around him, who all helped to bring him back.
And so, yeah, that's what I sort of see it as.
- And from that moment when he was in a coma in hospital,
when you look back at that time,
are there memories that are particular
that come to mind or are there regrets?
- Gosh, that's a good question.
I mean, definitely in terms of memories,
I think it was a very vivid time, it was very adrenalized.
I mean, my fundamental feeling about the book
is I feel like if you've ever got horribly drunk
and just let out every secret of your life
and the next day you wake up going, what the hell did I say?
I have that feeling about it.
And yet, the transparency and the nature of that experience
and exposing that experience,
I kind of knew was fascinating to me
and I hoped would be fascinating to someone else.
And so, when I look back at that time,
I see it through the prism, certainly in those early months,
certainly in the sort of six, seven months
when Jake was in a coma,
it's so adrenalized that experience,
and yet there's a monotony to it.
And so, you have moments of intense action
so heartbreaking moments
where you have to tell your children
their father might not survive the night,
and then the kind of recovery from that.
And then you have the kind of weeks
where you're just going in every day
and you're making sure he's having his hair cut
and his nails are being cut and he's being talked to,
and he's being loved and he's being communicated with,
even though you are not getting anything back.
So I suppose my memory about it
is that there's this very strange ebb and flow
with the intensive care,
and I couldn't get over the kind of tenderness
and love of the nurses actually,
and the way they would just let you go
and they go, "It's okay, we've got him."
And so, that was an incredible feeling
to watch this amazing community of nurses.
I know people use platitudes
and we've all realized what heroes the NHS is now
but when you are at absolutely
at that kind of life and death end of the NHS,
I don't think there's a better place
in the world to be actually,
'cause they were just absolutely extraordinary.
- And so, when he came round
and he didn't recognize you for you,
he thought you were an imposter, how did that feel?
- I mean, at first, I mean, it slightly makes me laugh now,
I was in such disbelief, I mean,
I should preface all this by saying I'm a screenwriter.
So my job is to deal with dramatic tropes and cliche.
And I thought, this is such a dramatic cliche.
It can't really be happening
and I'd actually joked about it,
a friend had said, "What would happen
if he doesn't wake up and remember you?"
And I went, "Of course, he's gonna remember me."
You know, it didn't even cross my mind.
It was not even a fear.
So I think when he did wake up
and it was a sort of slow gathering,
I think it took a couple of weeks
for me to fully have it confirmed
that absolutely he didn't know who I was,
I mean, I talk about it in the book,
but I kept on asking people
if they could feel the underground.
And I remember walking down the stairs one day
and just having to grip the wall thinking,
what is wrong with me?
And I realized I was shaking.
I had this incredible internal shake.
And so, when people say your world is rocked,
I would say my world was rocked.
I think what I tried to do is,
you've put all these work into these children,
you've tried to give them the best
and you've tried to navigate them through the worst.
And I just felt like, okay, I can be shaking
but I need to keep them steady.
I mean, the irony was, I think they kept me steady.
So I guess it was really shocking.
And then, there was a sort of,
it went through different phases, it was funny,
then it was tiresome, then it was deeply painful.
Then it was terrifying because when I realized,
I think initially when I started to talk to people,
there was real concern that
if he still had it post three months,
then it wasn't gonna go, and three months came,
and he still was absolutely adamant I wasn't Abi Morgan,
I was someone else.
And so, I think he was the one,
he came up with the notion
that I must be being employed by the state
to help look after him and the children.
And so, that became the kind of through line
that we played with, and then we became friends
and that's really the way I describe it, you know?
And then it became, I kind of dicked around with him,
I'd do anything to get his attention
because the thing that was shocking to me
was the loss of attention.
It was the arrival of a friend and you'd say,
"Thanks very much, could you leave the room, please?
I'd like to be with my friends."
Or a family member saying,
"I need to be with my family now, could you go?"
And it was very perverse
to suddenly be on the outside of my life
looking in, I guess.
And so, I just fought to get back in.
That's the way I'd describe it.
So I would do silly things.
I knew food was his great love
so any opportunity, I mean,
I ended up horribly overfeeding him, it maybe added,
so we had to reverse that over months.
But I'd take him out for cake,
one of the things I used to do
is I used to grab a wheelchair and wheel past,
and one day I went in and just gave him a carrot
and left him and he just didn't know what I was doing.
And so, I do anything to slightly annoy him.
He'd go to go to the bathroom and I'd lie in his bed,
in the hospital room, and he'd come back and go,
"Why are you doing that?"
And I kept on, and I was trying to stir up that part of him
that was annoyed by me.
And I thought, well, if I can get him annoyed again,
if I can piss him off again in the way that I used to,
maybe it'll ricochet back, maybe it'll make sense.
- So you got to the point,
as you describe it, as a friendship.
- [Abi] Yeah.
- Is there like a time you can pinpoint
where he started to accept you
and did he decide eventually that you're Abi?
- I think one of the things that was really shocking
when Jacob first, you know,
he didn't have to learn how to talk again,
he could talk, but what he had to learn was
he had to learn how to walk again,
he had to learn how to physically move
but he also had to learn how to initiate.
And he had absolutely no agency or initiation for,
I would say a good couple of years actually,
it's taken a long time.
And so, he was very silent,
but I noticed that I could start to puncture him with humor.
And I noticed one day he was looking out for me.
I could see he was looking out for me
and he didn't see me but he asked the nurse,
"Is she here yet?"
And I thought, oh okay, something's changing here.
So there were little changes
and that was just towards the end of rehab,
and he was coming home during that summer.
But again, it would ebb and flow
and it went backwards and forwards.
And then, where I really noticed it
was when Jacob first came home,
he had a lot of sort of hallucinations,
sort of wakeful hallucinations, where he talked to people
and he'd claw the air and he'd drive or he'd drink,
and you knew that was probably low level seizuring.
And I could hear him also doing that at night.
And what was extraordinary, at night, he'd be silent all day
but at night I could hear he was talking to me.
So he used to call me, babe. And I used to hear him say,
"Yeah, babe, I'll just get the keys.
Yeah, babe, wait a minute, let's do it later."
And then, one day, I think when my children,
it was my daughter's 16th birthday
and my son's 18th birthday,
and we had a party in the January.
So it was a year, exactly a year.
And I talk about it in the book, but if I run out of ideas,
I have a party or I cook a dinner
because it's very exhausting being with a silent person.
And so, we had this ridiculous party,
it was pouring with rain
and I was realizing it was an absolute disaster,
why did I do it?
Invited lots of people to this very uptight restaurant.
And I asked them all, I remember,
we had a song which is Jack Johnson's "Better Together".
And I had this idea that everyone was gonna sing it
to the kids at the end,
not realizing that the only people who know that song
are me and my children and my friend who played the piano.
So he sort of sang along and remembered it.
And that's the funny thing, he's been brilliant on lyrics,
he loves music.
But I just remember we were sitting watching
when the kids were blowing out their candles
and he just slipped his hand in mine and squeezed it
and went, "Well done, babe."
And I looked at him and I realized he was starting to segue,
I think, the feeling for Abi Morgan to Abi
'cause he'd ended up calling me Abi
and he called her Abi Morgan.
And then it just gradually came, sort of evolved over that.
And then, one day, he was looking at a photo,
a photo popped up on an iPad, I talk about it.
And I said, I sort of did lots of stupid gags.
And he just kind of looked blank
and a bit embarrassed for me really
that I was just trying to get him to realize
that the photo was him and me, we were hugging each other.
And as I turned my back, he went,
"Yes, I'm starting to think there might be similarities."
And then it just evolved really.
But Jake's neuropsychiatrist said something interesting
and I talk about it in the book, which he said,
"I don't think the Capgras will ever go,
it'll just become less useful to him."
And I think there's a truth in that.
I think Jacob absolutely has reconnected and adores me
and that's why I think I question it
because I used to piss him off a lot more.
But I think he started to realize
that it was okay to start to inhabit this life.
He had a shattering experience, he seizured for six months.
I use a lot of metaphor in the book,
I talk about being in a spaceship
or deep underwater or through the woods,
I was constantly trying to find where Jake was
because I know he went somewhere
and I still don't know quite where he went.
What I should add is, in the last six months,
Jacob has made the most extraordinary recovery
that none of us, none of us expected would happen.
I'd given up, certainly this time last year,
I'd sort of accepted that
this was as good as it was gonna get.
And in the last six to eight months,
Jake's just gone off the chart.
So I'm sort of very committed to continuing that
and ensuring that he gets the adventures
and we get the adventures again
in our life together, I suppose.
- Well, thank you so much, Abi,
it's been such a pleasure to talk to you.
- So nice, thank you.
(bright music)