Losing my ex Julian Sands and brother, Kit, has meant a year of sorrow – but there has been unexpected joy too
Devastated by the deaths of her former husband Julian Sands and her brother, the lyricist, composer and performer Kit Hesketh-Harvey, Sarah Sands thought nothing would come good of 2023, but then some unexpected arrivals ushered in new hope
On Remembrance Day, 11 November, I was sitting next to my heavily pregnant niece, Augusta – or Gus as we call her – watching a cantata written by her father, my brother the composer Kit Hesketh-Harvey and his musical partner, James McConnel. An evening sea mist enveloped the church on the Norfolk coast as the requiem aeternam was sung to a packed congregation remembering those we had lost including James’s son, Freddy, who had died in 2011 and my brother Kit who died this year.
The cantana had been written by my brother for a soldier he’d met on Constantine beach in Cornwall, where Kit had built an Arcadian holiday home for his family. The soldier, an army bomb disposal expert, had also been a chorister - an unusual combination and of particular interest to Kit who had been head chorister at Canterbury Cathedral.
He was called Olaf Schmid and was killed in action in Afghanistan in 2020, aged 30. Posthumously, he was awarded the George Cross.
I had already heard the requiem from the cantata at Kit’s funeral in March; the soprano parts sung by my Cornish cousin, Naomi, an opera singer, and her daughter Morwenna. A few years before Kit’s death, he had written a funeral anthem for Naomi’s late husband, Morwenna’s father, which had been performed at my father’s funeral a year earlier in 2002.
Death and music have been interwoven this last year. When my former husband, Julian Sands, went missing in the mountains of California in January, I stayed with my daughter-in-law Anna, while my son, Henry, flew out to LA to search for his dad. Anna, who comes from a musical family, practised Tallis and Handel for her choir, Cambridge Voices.
The purpose of this sacred music is somehow to embrace both grief and joy; this too has been a recurring theme for me.
As my dad was dying in Christmas of 2021, he was introduced to his new great-grandson, Ivo, and whilst too weak to hold him, he reached for the tiny hand. My brother afterwards quoted from The Winter’s Tale: “...thou mettest with things dying, I with things newborn.”
Then, in February 2023, in the aftermath of the almighty shock of my brother’s death and just before his funeral, I had news that my younger son Rafe and his wife Charlotte had had their child – a little girl named Cressida, born in Singapore. The intensity of emotion was searing: It was the promise of John 16.22
“Ye now have sorrow, but I will see you again and your heart will rejoice and your joy no man taketh from you.”
At Kit’s funeral, the eulogy was given by his children, Rollo and Gus. They spoke of their dad’s ability to weave magic through their lives, including his annual Christmas Panto performance. Rollo remembered that when he and his sister were small children, Kit would disappear ahead on family walks to leave sweets under what they called the fairy tree. At the end of her eulogy, Gus used a poignant metaphor for her father’s death. “He has just gone ahead to the forest to do some more magic.”
A few weeks later, both Rollo’s wife Rosie and Gus discovered they were pregnant. Meanwhile, my new granddaughter was christened in the summer, at the same church in Norfolk where we had earlier in the year huddled together to say prayers for Julian while he was missing. My reading at the Christening service was the first and last verses of a lullaby that Kit had written for Gus when she was a child.
“Alright then father, now this is the deal/ Let her hear; let her smell, taste and feel/ Ten small fingers and the rest/ No abductions by crazies who have not been so blessed/ Let her not struggle too much at the start/ Spare her a hole in the heart/ Father, please let me not fail to provide/ And one last bargain, can we make?/ That she’s happy, whatever she thinks that might take/ And come the moment, which will, when we part/ Spare her the hole in my heart.”
Gus was sitting in the front row of the church and we tried hard not to look at each other in case the tears flowed. It was a day for joy, even if the sorrow was not far off. Julian’s body had been found a month earlier so hearts were full and at the front was also our son Henry, Anna and their son Billy, Julian’s three-year-old grandson.
The look that passed between Henry and Billy was one of devotion and understanding. Billy’s mischievous face was so familiar; it was that of his father and also of Julian.
Neither Julian nor Kit will see their grandsons grow up and the loss is already apparent. I have a photograph of Kit teaching his toddler grandson Ivo the piano – Kit delighted in writing little poems and lyrics for him. At this time of year, he would be entertaining audiences with his comedy villain role in pantomime at the Yvonne Arnaud Theatre in Guildford, amusing children with his rhymes and their parents with outrageous double meanings. Stephen Fry wrote of my brother: “Kit rhymed with wit and wit rhymed with Kit.”
When his second grandson Louis was born last month in October there should have been lyrics, but Kit is no longer here to write them. Then, last week Gus gave birth to picture-perfect Ernest, in her family’s old home in Norfolk, with a view of the church where Kit composed. She now plans to turn the church into an arts community project so music will be heard there once again.
The fact that Kit’s great heart gave out after all he had given felt metaphorical as well as literal. He gave his all. Sir Tim Rice contacted me recently to ask if I had Kit’s “back catalogue” of witty songs so that he could do a tribute to him at their annual Saints and Sinners gathering, which took place last Friday 1 December.
When I particularly miss Kit I look up some of his music on YouTube, just to hear his voice. A favourite of mine is his satirical ballad “Swansong”, a deadpan litany of the junk we pour into the river sung to the plaintive music from “The Swan” by Saint-Saens. Kit’s voice is still so clear, his diction so precise, it is still hard to comprehend that he is no longer with us.
As for Julian, there is his forever gloriously youthful performance in Room with a View, and there are private photographs and videos of him appearing as a kind of Gandalf figure in the woodland with his beloved grandson Billy teaching him about building sticks, reading to him about life’s adventures and finding fairies.
Julian’s final adventure, hiking in a mountain, led him to his death but as Simon Callow wrote: “The manner of his demise shocked but did not surprise anyone who knew him. He obviously threw down the gauntlet to Mount Baldy and Mount Baldy, abetted by the atrocious weather, won. No doubt Julian accepted his destiny with equanimity.”
We will look back on this year with horror over Ukraine and Israel and Gaza, so many around the world have suffered cruel personal bereavements. But there is always hope: “Thou mettest with things dying, I with things newborn.”
Sorrow and Joy.
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