Book Review: If You Sit Very Still

In 1973, Marion Partington's 21 year old sister Lucy disappeared. Twenty years later they heard she had been tortured to death by Fred and Rosemary West and that finally 'they beheaded and dismembered her and stuffed her into a small hole, surrounded by leaking sewage pipes, head first, face down, still gagged…[her] flesh was trashed' (p 21).

This is about Partington's struggle to forgive the Wests in order to release herself from the murderous rages and wish for revenge for a crime most of us would consider unforgiveable. Through several chapters ranging from 'disappearance' and 'not knowing' to finally 'words of grace', she weaves the story through Lucy's poems and a series of dreams, the first when four months after disappearing Lucy returned and said 'I've been sitting in a water meadow near Grantham' adding with a smile

if you sit very still you can hear the sun move

(p 6)

Although a very particular story it does have insights that are more widely applicable and helpful. For example, the more common violent death of self-murder invariably leaves in its wake a hugely complex grieving challenge that includes the need to forgive the suicide person and oneself. The unresolved pain may continue down the generations, especially if not talked about and 'forgiven'. Realising this became one of Partington's motivations for pushing onwards – she worried about the effects on her three children of her unending grieving and stifled violent emotions.

She found help in the Quaker movement who say there is 'that of God in everyone' (p 39), and by immersion in Buddhist philosophy which sees evil as 'an enormous mistake made by the perpetrator' (p 109). She came to the view that all violence 'affects the rhythm of our shared humanity' (p 109) which resonates with Sartre's suggestion that what we do to others we do to ourselves and all humanity.

Key to gaining her freedom was facing her need to be forgiven for 'my own rotting pile of mistakes and woundings' (p 68) ranging from emotional cruelty and betrayal of loved ones to four abortions which had become a source of deep shame. She traces the antecedents of her 'violence' in the anger and dismay at her parents' divorce and later in Lucy's disappearance.

She imagines her paternal grandmother's suicide as an event that has cascaded down the family, its unspoken, unresolved pain causing further grief. Similarly her mother's stoical silence after the divorce which 'shores up pain into a solid place' and keeps everyone mute.

it is not the dead that haunt us but the gaps left within us by the secrets of others

(p 79)

She goes through this introspection to begin understanding something of what led to her sister's death – that one 'mistake' can lead to another, a cycle of furious and mindless revenge set in motion and ending in something truly awful. Rosemary West was abducted from a bus stop and raped at 15. She was abused by her father, Fred West and his brother. She was 19 when she helped abduct Lucy Partington from a bus stop.

We may say Rosemary West still had choices to make, not every abused child goes on to commit such violence, but taking this view of how events unfolded helped Partington begin to make sense of things and find a way forward, much as therapy clients often want to go back and work it all out before moving on to new perspectives. As Partington frees herself, what to do next becomes the pressing issue. She participates as a 'victim' in a workshop with violent offenders and this leads on to working in prisons with the Forgiveness Project.

The paradoxical problem with forgiveness is that it is the truly unforgivable things that are hard to forgive and this is further complicated here where the question arises whether we can forgive something done to someone else. Is it ours to forgive? Living with the unforgiveable may be the only path possible for some.

Forgiveness is giving up all hope of a better past'

(p 26)

This idea is given to Partington by a woman whose daughter was murdered. It captures how forgiveness involves letting go of any claim we feel we have on the other, allowing their freedom, accepting the limits of our power to keep loved ones safe, realising that while we may 'forgive' someone they may never admit to wrongdoing or seek forgiveness. They may not let us go and so we have to release ourselves.

Partington ends this lyrical, thoughtful book with a letter to Rosemary West saying that through facing her own potential for violence she has learned compassion for the terrible suffering West's actions have caused herself and many others, and has forgiven her. West does not reply and asks the warders to block any more letters. But Partington now feels less powerless, more energised and freer to make full use of the time she has left to make her own reparations.

Forgiveness? I can forgive too. Why won't you be forgiven?

Lucy Partington (p 152)

Diana Pringle