Life, Death, And Cardboard Mummy

Scriptwriter Carl Gorham talked to RACHEL BULLER about his heartrending, heartwarming book – and how his daughter’s ‘cardboard mummy’ helped them learn to grieve.

- Rachel Buller

HE HAS spent his life creating stories to be told through the voices of others – yet finding the words to tell his own tale of love, loss and life proved much harder. Carl Gorham’s memoir The Owl at the Window is an emotional, searingly honest and blackly comic account of the devastation of losing someone you love.

It is 10 years since his wife Vikki died, leaving him as a single dad to their six-year-old miracle daughter Romy.

Carl, a comedy scriptwriter and creator of BBC series Stressed Eric, tells his story in a series of snapshots – of falling in love, of finding himself a single father and of finding light and macabre humour in the most devastating, unfathomable circumstances.

“Going back writing certain scenes was like reliving them which was incredibly hard. I still have an anxiety about the book about whether it was the right thing to do. A year after she died, I tried to write something to put in Romy’s memory box but I realised I wasn’t ready to write the story down,” he says.

“For the first year or so you are living in a world of total bereavement. Gradually, it becomes a little bit of a smaller part of your life but it never goes away. It is an ongoing process, and I have given Romy her own copy of the book which she can read when she is ready. I think there are bits she will find hard – there are bits I couldn’t read back. But I am already encouraged by the way it has opened up conversations with her friends.”

The family moved to the north Norfolk coast from London after Vikki was diagnosed with breast cancer, aged just 36, having fallen in love with the area during weekend visits while she was having chemotherapy.