Borrowing Stories

Chris Bowlby considers the nature of legacy and grief as he reflects on preparing his son Ewan’s work for publication after his death.

It felt like the worst writing assignment I’d ever been given, but also the most important.

When my son Ewan’s brain cancer was diagnosed as an aggressive glioblastoma in autumn 2022, we knew he had only months to live. Even though we had lived within the shadow of his severe illness for many years, there was, of course, initial despair for Ewan and all of us on hearing this devastating news. He had, however, always remained capable of remarkable courage and calm, focusing now on making final plans—including plans for the writing and research he would leave with us. As we now talked, the priority was to use precious moments to try to articulate the most personal of bonds, which included future commitment to furthering his work.  

Throughout his decade or so of life with first a brain tumour and then cancer, as we travelled to or waited for medical appointments, or sat with him during punishing periods of treatment, there had been a kind of running conversation. Sometimes it was pure diversion, talking about anything other than his illness as we sought distraction from its burden and implications. But often it was about considering and facing what he was going through, as Ewan was never one to hide away from that reality. And in his academic research, he chose to address it head on, working towards a St Andrews doctorate on ‘Using the Arts to Meet Cancer Patients’ Need and Desire for Spiritual Care’.

When he received that 2022 diagnosis, he was close to submitting his thesis, and St Andrews fast-tracked it in time for him to be awarded his PhD. That brought academic satisfaction. There was however another project on his mind. It was about how his work and legacy could be moved beyond the academic into the realm of practical help for anyone facing such challenging illness.

Witnessing Something Remarkable

During his research he had always wanted to test his ideas, not only in seminars and among fellow researchers, but also with anyone who was sharing his experience. He travelled regularly to a cancer patients’ discussion group at the Maggie’s centre in Dundee, a place which aims to offer emotional and practical support to all those facing such severe illness. He also worked with the Northumberland Cancer Support Group during the Covid pandemic.

Ewan wanted to explore how cultural materials of all kinds—everything from novels, films and poetry to hit TV shows like Breaking Bad and Cold Feet—could offer a route into the vital conversations prompted by severe illness. They were conversations that could be so difficult to start but so enriching to sustain. And their focus was not clinical diagnosis but rather the ‘bigger questions’ a potentially life-threatening diagnosis might prompt. Such materials, Ewan found, could lead to ‘powerful, passionate storytelling…with any sense of inhibition set aside.’

Ewan wanted his research to help start such conversations and encourage all those involved in the care of such patients to provide the necessary materials. He wanted his doctorate, written with the style requirements of academic convention, to be adapted into part of a more popular book. And he had drafted two autobiographical chapters to explain how he personally had come to value this perspective.

Continuing a conversation

Now that Ewan himself faced imminent death, we discussed how his work, his legacy, could be furthered even though he would not be able to complete his project. He asked me to work on his text, preparing his new chapters for publication, and adapting his academic research to try to create an accessible, coherent whole. He knew I had spent my professional life as a broadcaster and writer, attempting to bring ideas—including academic ideas—into an accessible public space. That, we hoped, would give me the right instincts.

However other instincts—above all, of a father losing his son—initially came to the fore. There were times of daunting despair when I thought about needing to do this. For a while I felt paralysed by raw grief following the final shock of Ewan’s death at the end of 2022.  The idea of taking on his work could seem at first part of a preposterous pretence that he was still “there”; and I could not bring myself to face it.

But after a while I found myself living with that grief partly by continuing a kind of conversation with Ewan in my mind. The idea of working on his thoughts could begin to seem like a natural extension of this consoling mental presence. And I reminded myself that he had told me how much he wished for his work to find as broad a future audience as possible. Bringing his project to publication would give us as a family a landmark with which to renew his memory, to feel that he would not fade from view but continue to make his mark. His courage in believing in his legacy while facing death encouraged me to think grief could defiantly spark creative energy.

My overall approach in preparing this text was governed by the desire to stand back as much as possible, to apply the lightest of touches, especially to the autobiographical work in which his unique voice is so audible. When it came to sections more academic in style, I was conscious of continuing to do justice to the researchers on whom Ewan had drawn while making the text as readable as possible. The aim was simply to try to put myself in the position of any of the many cancer patients and carers we had come across and try to think about what would help most in making Ewan’s thoughts accessible.

In the few instances where I thought some new words were essential for context or flow (something I was well used to from my broadcasting career) the sense of that continuing conversation with him seemed most acute. “What would Ewan have said – or thought” has been a common impulse for me and my family learning to live alongside his memory. Often that would prompt deep sorrow, but sometimes smiling and gratitude too, an unexpected emotion amidst the intensity of grief.

Loss brings a gift

One of the many original and, I suspect, surprising aspects of Ewan’s work was on the role of humour. A chapter of his thesis and book, focused on the Hollywood film The Bucket List, was subtitled: ‘Levity, Laughter and Living with Cancer’.

We are working now with Maggie’s centres and others to try to ensure that both his book, and the practical set of materials Ewan designed to accompany his research, can be made available as widely as possible to those facing cancer or severe illness, and to those who care for them.

Grief confronts you with an overwhelming sense of what has been taken away. The extraordinary thing about Ewan’s instincts was that, even as he faced the imminent end of his own life, he found time to focus on what he could still offer.  The former Archbishop of Canterbury, Rowan Williams, who knew Ewan, wrote this after reading his book, which resonated greatly with me too: ‘Nothing takes the loss away or makes it anything but what it is. But that loss brings a gift, not one that anyone would ever choose at the hand of someone they love, yet perhaps the only thing that makes the loss capable of being lived with; a new depth of resource for others to find how to tell their story; a new opening up of the possibility of grace’.’

The title of Ewan’s book, Borrowed Stories, reflected that, at heart, it was intended to challenge what could be the extreme loneliness of death and grief. The book, he wrote, was ‘about how we cannot search for meaning alone but must look for the rich resources that fellow humans offer us as we face our mortality’.

That, I believe, is what the publication of his book, and the way we hope to use it to provide practical help, will achieve.

‘I imagine’ Ewan concluded powerfully ‘rich, fulfilling futures flowing out of my ending’.

Ewan Bowlby’s Borrowed Stories: Facing Cancer with Culture from Breaking Bad to The Divine Comedy is published by Darton, Longman and Todd

About the author

Chris Bowlby was educated at the universities of Cambridge and Harvard. He worked for many years at the BBC, making radio documentaries. He has also been a regular columnist for the BBC History magazine, a foreign correspondent for the Independent, and writes obituaries for the Times.

Ewan Bowlby was born in Oxford in 1995. He was educated there and at the universities of Cambridge and St Andrews. He drew on personal experience to research and implement ways that fiction, film and TV can provide emotional and spiritual support for cancer patients. Ewan was awarded his doctorate weeks before his death from brain cancer in 2022.