Liam Clarke - A Matter of Life and Death True North

In late 2015,

I started making a documentary with renowned journalist Liam Clarke.

In his career, Liam broke some of the biggest stories of the Troubles.

Three years ago, he was diagnosed with terminal cancer.

We were making a film about how people deal with death.

I seem to get on better with people after the Troubles,

because obviously I was writing things

that, maybe, people would be more annoyed at, and I sometimes

wonder if people are being nicer to me because I'm ill, you know.

I don't really need to be treated with kid gloves.

I'm not that far down yet.

We couldn't have known that our time working together

would be shorter than we hoped.

Liam's family wanted to help tell this story.

It has made him want to de-mystify the process,

for other people as well as himself and the family.

I thought of sending ashes up in a rocket and so on,

but I think I'll not bother with that now.

When you're young, you hear about people dying and you basically think

that's for somebody else. You don't realise the finality of it.

As you get older, you do, and I think it changes your prospective.

I think it's a very valuable thing to recognise.

The first time I met Liam,

I was struck by the vast amount of stuff that was packed into his home.

We used to travel abroad a lot

before they started weighing it on planes,

and I brought lots of things back.

For instance, can you believe that they would let you put that in your

luggage from the Dominican Republic?

Bringing back solid mahogany.

His house was full of mementos from holidays,

exotic Eastern artefacts and mountains of books.

Buddhism gives you an interest in sort of exotic things.

Those are Thai Buddhas there, dancing Buddhas.

Do you do the dusting, Liam?

Well, in Zen you're supposed to be spare

and have clean lines and all that,

but I haven't quite mastered that yet!

Liam was not what I expected, with his mix of Eastern mysticism and

Northern Ireland politics.

I would do, probably, most of my work on the phones.

So this is my normal environment, this room.

It was a tip. His office was the messiest room in the house.

Books, tapes, research papers, chewing gum stuck to the desk.

How did he get any work done?

During the Troubles, security was the main interest,

exposing abuses by the state or who was behind paramilitary campaigns.

It was a good opportunity to be a journalist,

although tragic circumstances.

Liam's 30-year career as a journalist was impressive,

and pretty intimidating.

He had personally broken some of the biggest stories of the Troubles.

I don't really go along with the idea that there are several truths

and everybody has a truth.

Something happens and I think that it is the job of the press

to tell you what happens.

He had a reputation for being fearless in pursuit of a story.

I've breached official secrecies, I've annoyed people.

When we were in the middle of a conflict,

I wanted to find out what was going on

and people didn't want you to know.

Liam persisted, even in the face of

death threats from paramilitaries and

legal threats from the state.

There's one from the Sunday Times.

There was an injunction against me writing about

material that I discovered, you know,

I'd been arrested and so on, and then they did this picture of

my hands stapled to the desks so I can't do my work.

I've always been fascinated by espionage, official secrecy, how...

you know, what makes people loyal to each other,

what makes people betray each other.

I've always been interested in that,

I think it's really essential in human nature.

Kathy, where's the evidence bags?

In the garage.

Liam wanted to show me evidence

of one of his most notorious run-ins with authority.

Liam's wife, Kathy, was also a successful journalist.

They had written a controversial biography of Martin McGuinness.

It got them into a bit of bother.

We were both arrested and put into the Serious Crime Suite

in Antrim Police Station.

This was over the tapped phone calls of Martin McGuinness,

which we published in the book.

Once you enter into a course of action like that,

you have to see it through,

and if you believe that what you're doing is right,

you just, you go ahead with it.

I wondered if Liam still had the strength

to fight those types of battles.

Has your illness affected your writing?

Well, I find my energy levels aren't quite as good now.

I've written about my illness a bit, but not particularly.

I think that it's probably...

It's probably made me a more compassionate person,

I don't know, or more...

Less, it makes me less think that I should pursue

a fight or a vendetta with somebody, that things maybe, you know,

should be let go a bit more,

though I can't say that I'm... I never snap at anyone.

One thing that's impressed me about you

is the honesty with which you've written about your condition.

I had to tell some people at work and so on,

and you create a very awkward position

where you're telling somebody

and they're having to keep it quiet and so on.

So I felt it was best just to be open,

and what's the point of keeping it quiet, anyway?

Liam fought hard for his stories.

But now he was facing his greatest battle.

He had terminal stomach cancer.

I wondered how Liam managed to cope with such a shadow hanging over him.

Liam became a Zen Buddhist when he was 50.

GONG CHIMES

Watching him meditate,

I thought that this was an odd choice for a hard-nosed journalist.

I think I've mellowed as I got older,

probably Zen has mellowed me a bit.

It's hard to tell, because I don't know what I would be like

if I hadn't done it.

Quite often, for a lot of people, it brings about

a softening of the attitude.

As a journalist, I have to fight against that,

cos you can't be too soft as a journalist, but...

..you have to find a medium in life.

Liam brought me to visit his father.

He asked me to be careful with what I said.

-What's he called, Liam?

-Bill.

His dad had dementia.

When it came to his own illness,

Liam decided to protect his father from the facts.

I didn't want to tell him because I knew that

he wouldn't remember it properly,

and he has always had an absolute horror of cancer,

because I suppose the period when he was growing up,

nobody ever got cured of it and

it was an immediate sort of death sentence.

Right, mission accomplished!

I'll give you the vodka and Coke!

Liam had a religious upbringing.

His dad was a Presbyterian minister.

I don't know that we discussed religion much.

I went to Sunday school and you told me

about the Bible and so on and I learnt that.

-You went to church, too.

-I did, I went to communion class and so on.

-That's right, you did.

-But then I ended up taking up

Zen meditation after it. Did that annoy you at all?

No, I never thought.

I mean, sure you've your life to live and...

..Christianity is meditation too.

Well, some do both.

Thanks very much, indeed.

My view in God is, I don't find it useful

to think of a personality ruling the universe.

I don't find it helps me,

but I do believe that there's something uniting everything.

That it's... You know, reality is of a piece.

Do you find that difficult that I think that?

No, no, that's an area that you haven't properly got through yet.

-So you think I'll learn?

-I do, because we all do.

Are you not confused with many things...

I'm all over the place.

I'm all over the place.

I was beginning to see Liam as more than just a journalist.

There's one you'll like of me!

Oh, yeah!

LAUGHTER

Oh, my God.

Kathy, what age were you when you met Liam?

20.

-Just a child.

-Just a child.

-Been together now for 40 years and it doesn't seem a day too long...

-That's what you say.

..you know, if I wasn't so croaky, I'd sing it!

I couldn't say we've never had

-a cross word, could you?

-No, I couldn't.

Some of us huff and some of us don't!

I pretty much knew I was going to stick with you, actually.

So you were romantic?

No, but I really liked Kathy.

I liked the look of her. I liked her personality.

After all those years together,

Liam's cancer meant that their future could be cut short.

We always want to know exactly what is going to happen

and exactly when it's going to happen,

and uncertainty, I think,

is one of the most difficult things of all to deal with.

You want to prepare yourself, and especially the kids,

for what might lie in front of you.

It's not something that you can map out,

but I suppose you do want to know

what you're prepared for as much as possible.

Liam had been hoping that his cancer was slowing down.

But now his oncologist had asked to see him.

It sounded like bad news.

It is a little alarming when you get something that says,

"No, you still have got this. It's still moving."

-TANNOY:

-First floor. Doors opening.

I think it's worse for the relatives of the sufferer

than the person who's got the disease.

The relationship to the person changes.

They maybe feel they're walking on eggshells,

they shouldn't be saying things.

I think it's difficult for relatives, they can get pushed

into the role of carer later on if it lingers on too long,

and, you know,

it's quite hard to deal with that.

Liam's cancer had spread from his stomach to his lung.

And is that quite big,

quite a lot of growth over the period or is it modest growth?

It's not a large nodule.

That's visible, all right.

I don't know what quite to make of it. It is getting bigger.

Well, if the abdomen is going to progress further,

faster, then there is not much point in worrying about this.

I suppose that's...

But it is getting bigger.

I have concerns about it.

Doors closing.

# Birds will gather at my side

# Tears will gather in my eyes

# Throw my head and cry... #

When you're young, you basically hear about

people dying and you basically

think that's for somebody else, that's on most of our minds.

Kids have fantasies, quite often,

about dying and everybody being sorry and apologising to them.

They don't realise the finality of it.

As you get older, you do and I think it changes your perspective.

I think it's a very valuable thing to recognise.

-No matter what?

-Well, no matter what.

You know, it's pointless hiding from it.

Nobody, I wouldn't pretend that

I want it to come quicker than it needs to,

but it's pointless hiding from it

or being in denial or that sort of thing.

Far from being in denial,

Liam seemed determined to find answers,

not only to my questions, but to his own.

Even over the Christmas break,

he was sending me his ideas for who we should talk to,

and what we should film next.

Just after Boxing Day, I got a call from Liam's phone,

but it was Kathy's voice on the other end.

She told me that Liam had died.

I couldn't believe it.

Kathy asked me to come to the house and keep making the film.

Boxing Day, he felt just terribly weak and sick

and said his stomach felt heavy.

He just said he would put up with it.

He was as cold as ice,

really as cold as ice, and then about ten to two,

Alice and I were sitting talking, ten to two in the morning.

Alice and I were sitting talking in the kitchen

and he called for us and we went up

and by the time we got up there it was too late

and he was lying, he was lying dead.

Liam spent his last night at home,

surrounded by his children, Alice, Adam and Daniel.

There's a picture of him on...

Christmas Eve or Christmas Day...

-Christmas Day.

-..night, dressed up as a Jedi!

We had a really, really nice night in the house.

He told us one by one how much he loved us

and what he would want us to know

if he was to "drop dead in the morning," was his term.

So it's a real comfort that we had that time.

You know, a lot of people don't get that time to hear that.

I didn't even know that, that he sat you down individually.

I think he must have...

He talked about you. About how much he loved you.

He talked about different family members.

-Our Auntie Jean.

-Auntie Jean.

Certainly over the last, uh...

month or so he'd been saying he'd never been happier in his life,

which is a strange thing to have said, but he kept emphasising this.

When he got into his Buddhism, I think he changed a lot.

Zen was a big influence.

He used to say quite frequently, "I'm not scared of death."

And I'm sure he said that to all of you.

He did.

He said he wasn't scared of death,

but the thought that distressed him

was the thought of separation from us.

It was strange to be there without Liam,

but I could still feel his presence in the house.

Liam had started to make plans for a Buddhist funeral.

Although his children aren't Buddhists,

they wanted to honour their dad's wishes as best they could.

As far as religions go, it is a pretty good one.

It's more about your own personal journey

and about bettering yourself,

rather than trying to follow a moral code.

Without believing in all the more mystical aspects of it,

it's a good practice to do.

Did he believe in reincarnation?

I'm not sure, did he or didn't he?

I don't think he told me he believed in reincarnation,

I think he did believe in the fact that

once everything goes back down in the earth,

everything is reused,

but I don't necessarily believe that he thought

that he would come back as another creature or come back again.

Where does wakes come into Buddhism?

-I'm not sure.

-I'm not sure.

I think it's just an Irish thing, so we're doing it!

I don't know if they do have wakes in Buddhism.

Kathy was also preparing for Liam's body to come home.

We're just sorting out his clothes.

And his rakusu, which he's going to wear if you want to...

I don't know if you've seen one before,

but it's got his Zen name on it, Battle-Scarred Tiger.

In zan ho mon.

The rakusu is symbolic of Buddhist robes, and you wear it...

His is too big for me, but the idea is it is like this

and you fold your arms under it.

-That goes around his body?

-Yeah, and his hands will be folded under it.

I used to say the worst thing I did in my life

was tell my mother my father had died. This is worse.

Oh, God.

He's far too tidy.

No, seriously, I want him looking like himself,

and he would have wanted it, too. That's a bit better sticking up.

His hair was always sticking up, no matter when he'd just got it done.

Thank you so much for what you wrote, Garrett.

Liam would have loved it. You just captured him.

After Liam returned home, a procession of

relatives and friends arrived to celebrate his life.

Adam, take Betty and Jean in to see your daddy.

Oh, he can't hear me.

Liam looks so peaceful.

People do.

That's him and his dad.

Aw.

-Very early ones.

-Where is that, Heather, do you know?

I don't know where that is.

That's Dundalk as well.

Yeah. Look at... He talked about that car!

I don't know whether it's a Wolseley or Morris Minor or what.

That's another little one.

That's all we had.

-They're nice.

-They are so lovely.

The Good Funeral Guide, he sent away for it.

Everything you need to know, everything you need to do.

So that's how he had planned it.

Oh.

"Are funeral directors really like..." "How much do they earn?"

"Why are they usually men?"

Oh.

I don't think there's anything for Zen ceremonies in this.

It had felt like a traditional wake.

I had almost forgotten that Liam and Kathy were Buddhists.

Now the Zen rituals that comforted Liam in life

would also mark his death.

Liam's Buddhist friends gathered in the front room to meditate.

They were preparing for the transition

from living with Liam to living without him.

GONG CHIMES

Liam Clarke.

That was kind of sudden.

But I can't help thinking...

..it is probably what you wanted.

You have entered the great crossing over.

Through countless lives, may your practice, your wisdom,

your love be forever one.

We say goodbye...

..to the Liam we knew.

And we say hello to the new Liam.

The Liam that we will meet and see...

..in the trees...

..in the grass...

..in the rain...

..and in the sun.

GONG CHIMES

GONG CHIMES

After the intimacy of the Buddhist ceremony,

it was time for Liam's family

to make the journey to what would be a very public funeral.

As the mourners squeezed into the crematorium,

it was clear that Liam had made an impact, not just on those he loved,

but on Northern Ireland as well.

Among the rows of familiar faces,

the most important person for the family was Liam's dad.

I know how they wrestled with finally telling him the truth.

They decided it was right for them all to be together.

Funerals don't only mark an ending.

For Kathy and the family, it was also a beginning...

..of a life without Liam.

Do not break into a run here!

It's been five months since Liam's funeral.

The family have come to Donegal to scatter his ashes.

That's perfect.

Aw, wow, look at that.

I quite like this place, though, I have to say.

I like it, too.

It's just, it's blowing this way.

Mam, it's a really big practicality.

We can't do anything about it.

We can't change what way the wind's blowing.

Boys, Alice, hang on a minute.

Yeah, that's the bit I saw, you could walk across that.

-What do you think?

-That's up quite high, and it's a precipice.

A precipice. It's like natural steps.

Daniel, you're definitely a glass half-empty.

Watch out for the precipice(!)

SHE LAUGHS

Not the most Buddhist of symbols.

No. I should have brought a wee Buddha out here.

Well, when are we good to go?

-Now.

-What way do you do it?

-The wind is picking up a bit.

-Alice, I've never done it before.

You know what you do, you do the best you can,

and that's...just do what feels right to you.

Liam Clarke looked death in the eye and did not blink.

I was reminded of a story he told me before he died.

There is a well-known Zen teacher, I believe it was Kodo Sawaki.

One lady went up to him and said,

"Through this, I have been worried about dying, constantly,

"as I sit in silent meditation."

And he said, "Don't worry, you will die."

There's a strange comfort in that, looking things squarely.

We all will die. We all know we will,

but it's just a question of when.

Liam's family let me into the heart of their grief,

something we will all have to face.

I started this film preparing to see darkness,

but what I witnessed was light.

# In a hell beneath the stairs

# There's someone in that room

# That frightens you when they go, "Boo!"

# Boo, boo, boo

# Boo, boo, boo... #