Victoria Mary Clarke, Irish journalist and widow of Shane MacGowan, recently posted on Instagram that she had picked up the guitar again for the first time since her husband’s death on November 30. Her social media post featured a photo of MacGowan sitting with a guitar.
“I haven’t played my guitar since [Shane MacGowan] died but last night while I was trying to watch TV I kept getting nudges from him to open the drawer of his desk,” Clarke wrote in the caption. “I kept trying to ignore the nudges and I tried to keep watching TV but something wouldn’t let me and I had to get up and open the drawer.
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“Inside the drawer was a plectrum, so I picked it up and then I picked up the guitar and played a few chords. And it genuinely felt like there was an energy that was coming through and making up a tune!!!” She concluded, “Who knows what we are capable of from the other side? I do know that it felt really good to play the guitar!”
MacGowan’s funeral was held on December 8 in Tipperary, Ireland. His widow addressed their gathered friends and family, as did longtime friend Johnny Depp. Nick Cave performed “A Rainy Night in Soho” and the remaining members of The Pogues played “The Parting Glass.” After the funeral, there was a wake held at one of MacGowan’s frequented bars, where he had requested €10,000 be left behind the bar prior to his death.
Victoria Mary Clarke Pens Emotional Eulogy for Shane MacGowan: “Love is a Complex Thing”
On December 21, The Independent published Clarke’s eulogy for MacGowan, in which she described their first meeting and subsequent decades-long relationship.
“I worshipped and adored and cherished that man, to his very last breath and beyond,” she strongly began. “I fell in love with Shane MacGowan when I was 16, in a bar in Temple Fortune in north London. He walked up to me and demanded that I buy his friend Spider a drink for his birthday and I told him to f–k off.”
From there, she saw him sing at the Wag Club and admitted she was mesmerized. “I was hooked for life and I never stopped to ask myself if it was a good idea, if he would make a suitable boyfriend. The deal was already sealed and possibly had been before I was even born,” she wrote.
“Love is a complex thing,” Clarke concluded. “If you let yourself love you automatically make yourself vulnerable to the loss of that love. But at the same time as creating room for a gaping hole in your heart you can also discover that your heart is more ingenious than you realized, and the more you stretch it, the more capacity there is for love.”
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