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Death and all that

20th December 2006 by Helena 1 Comment  

OliviaIt’s Frank’s funeral on Friday. I have been trying to explain to the children that he is dead and will be cremated. His wife Virginia will scatter his ashes from their house in a hamlet close to ours. Bea is very practical about it and seems to have taken events in her stride. Olivia (pictured left) on the other hand has obviously been mulling over it. At 4 am this morning she came marching into my bedroom and posed the following question:

“Does Frank know Virginia is going to burn him?”

I tried my best to explain that they probably took the decision together before he died. Then she started to ask me about going to heaven. My children have a firm belief in heaven. Their childminder is very religous and has been telling them all about it since they were born. In fact when they heard that my mother lives in Devon, Bea asked where that was and Olivia responded: “It’s where people go when they die.”

I tried to explain about the soul going to heaven and the body not really mattering. And then luckily she fell asleep. Because to be honest I have less idea of what happens when you die than I have about the plots of French films.

I suppose it is one of the great unsolved mysteries. I like to think that Frank is out there somewhere, reading some weighty biography, drinking a pression and listening to Wagner. It seems such a strange thing that his life is just over, that a light just goes out and it’s never to be seen again. But maybe that’s just a need the living have to deny death and its finality.


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Helena Frith Powell was born in Sweden to a Swedish mother and Italian father, but grew up mainly in England. She is the author of eleven books, translated into several languages including Chinese and Russian. She wrote the French Mistress column The Sunday Times about life in France for several years. She is a regular contributor to the Daily Mail, Mail on Sunday, The Times, Daily Telegraph, Tatler Magazine and Harper’s Bazaar.

Helena has been the editor of four magazines, including M Magazine, a supplement for the Abu Dhabi-based National Newspaper and FIVE, a high-end fashion glossy, also published in Abu Dhabi. Helena was also editor-in-chief of 360 Life, a quarterly glossy magazine published with the Sports 360 Newspaper in Dubai, part of the Chalhoub Group.

Helena contributes regularly to UK-based newspapers and magazines and holds a Masters in Creative Writing from the University of Cambridge. She is working on a thriller set in Sweden as well as a novel about the relationship between Virginia Woolf and Katherine Mansfield called Sense of an Echo.

In 2022 her short story The Japanese Gardener came second in the Fish Publishing Short Story Prize. One of her stories was also shortlisted for the Bridport Short Story Prize. When she’s not writing, she works as a headhunter for the media and entertainment industry for the Sucherman Group. 

Helena, who was educated at Durham University, lives in the Languedoc region of France with her husband Rupert and their three children.

Bibliography

More France Please, we’re British; Gibson Square 2004

Two Lipsticks and a Lover 2005; Gibson Square (hardback)

All You Need to be Impossibly French; (US version of above) Penguin 2006

Two Lipsticks and a Lover; Arrow Books (paperback) 2007

Ciao Bella Gibson Square; (hardback) 2006

Ciao Bella Gibson Square; (paperback) 2007

So Chic! (French version of Two Lipsticks) Leduc Editions 2008 (also translated into Chinese, Russian and Thai)

More, More France; Gibson Square 2009

To Hell in High Heels; Arrow Books 2009 (also translated into Polish)

The Viva Mayr Diet; Harper Collins 2009

Love in a Warm Climate; Gibson Square 2011

The Ex-Factor; Gibson Square 2013

Smart Women Don’t Get Wrinkles; Gibson Square 2016

The Arnolfini Marriage; Amazon Kindle December 2016

Smart Women Don’t Get Wrinkles (paperback); Gibson Square spring 2018

The Longest Night; Gibson Square spring 2019

 

 

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