Laughter, love and loss - Carys Eleri's story
In her new autobiographical book, writer, singer and comedian Carys Eleri shares a joyful insight into her upbringing in Carmarthenshire, her subsequent colourful career, before sensitively documenting the tragic diagnosis and loss of her father, David Evans to Motor Neurone Disease in 2018.
Carys was brought up
in a happy family, full of love and laughter and had a close relationship with
her father who she describes as her biggest champion and closest friend. Her
award-winning comedy-science-music-show ‘Lovecraft (not the sex shop in
Cardiff)’ was just taking off in Edinburgh Fringe festival, when she received
the tragic news of her father’s sudden death, having only been diagnosed with
the challenging condition a few months before.
She immediately
returned to Wales to her family and is still amazed and thankful to the
community for the love and care that they showed them. She said, “It was quite amazing how friends,
family and the community can surround you at a difficult time like this and
create a cocoon of love.
“I had been travelling
the country with my show discussing the neuroscience of love and loneliness,
and here in our darkest hours, true love was radiating – underlining the power
of community and our duty of love to one another – the whole message of Lovecraft.
I knew that dad would have wanted me to carry on with the show, so I returned
to Edinburgh with a new-found urgency in getting the message across.”
A month later, Carys
and her big sister, Nia embarked on a charity bike ride from London to Paris to
raise money for the Motor Neurone Disease Association – a challenge they had
booked while David was still alive. The book charts their wonderful, if
calamitous journey, and shows the raw emotions they both felt, their dynamic as
sisters and the very comical moments during the journey. “It was pretty amazing
how underprepared we were for that ride! But we did it, with our heavy as hell bikes, old
trainers, polka dot pac-a-macs and a couple of haribos.’
“We got lost, had so
many comments on how we should do things differently and stood out like sore
thumbs among the lycra and featherlight bikes!
“It was hilarious –
but by the end, having won the entire team over with hard work and
determination in the face of our very recent tragic loss, they asked us to lead
everyone into Paris to the finish line - the Eiffel Tower, in memory of our father. As
you can imagine, it was a very emotional moment.”
The following year, in
November 2019, Carys then faced another tragedy of losing one of her best
friends, Trystan Wyn Rees, to pancreatic cancer. Trystan lived in Australia, and Carys feels
that she still hasn’t had time to process this loss properly. She said, “I
think its really important to share emotions and experiences around loss – the
grieving process takes time too. The pain doesn’t end after the funeral – in
fact, it’s the beginning.
“Trystan died only a
few months before the pandemic, and so we haven’t really had time to process
that loss as a gang of friends. It was
very hard but incredibly therapeutic to then re-visit all those important moments
while writing the book.
“My heart goes out to
those who have lost someone during these times, without the opportunity to hold
funerals and pay respects in the way the person you have lost deserves, and to
celebrate them.”
While grieving her dad
and Trystan, Carys truly has reconnected to nature and says that it has helped
her make sense of life and death, anchoring her to the here and now when the
stress and pain has been too much.
She said, “Nature is
everything. We forget that we are an integral part of nature’s cycle as humans,
and sometimes think that we are superior…but we’re not, we’re part of it.
“As a Welsh speaker, I
often use the word ‘mother tongue’ to refer to Welsh as my first language,
where in many ways, our mother tongue as humans may well be nature – a
connection, a language we seem to often forget and let fade away.”