What am I going to do now

The recurring question “What am I going to do now?” is a verbal thread through Bunny Munro’s bereavement and his son’s efforts to keep hold of his mother. First it names Bunny’s immediate loss of direction; as the story develops, related questions and imagined encounters shift its meaning from practical bewilderment toward grief, apology, and the search for connection.

Bunny Munro’s Immediate Disorientation

After an ambulance and police officers have drawn residents outside, Bunny holds the railing during an attack of vertigo and feels unmoored. The question follows his sense that events are moving too quickly and that he has no idea what to do. Looking down, he notices women gathered below, including Cynthia, whose wave briefly draws his attention back to sexual desire. The contrast leaves his uncertainty unresolved: he considers that he may know what to do, then that he may not, and cannot bring himself to work it out. He goes back inside feeling sad and lonely.

Grief Breaks into Speech

The question returns during a meeting with Jennifer, who is recommending grief counsellors, twelve-step meetings, and support groups. Bunny’s attention keeps straying, but remembering what has happened to his wife brings on a sudden emotional collapse. He asks twice what he is going to do, then releases Jennifer and repeats the question more quietly. His discovery that his face is wet with real tears makes the moment more than a performance of distress; he apologizes, while the question remains unanswered. Its repetition registers grief as something he cannot yet turn into a plan.

Bunny Junior’s Related Uncertainties

The phrase also resonates with Bunny Junior’s separate struggle to live with his mother’s absence. In the Punto, he can recall facts such as the year construction of the Eiffel Tower began, but finds it increasingly difficult to picture his mother. He tries to preserve their shared experiences as if they were exhibits in the Booth Museum; in one memory, he can see himself on a swing at St Ann’s Well Gardens but can no longer clearly see who is pushing him. The scene gives the question an intergenerational dimension: the child, too, faces a future made uncertain by loss, though the evidence presents this through fading memory rather than the exact words.

At another point in Newhaven, Bunny Junior believes that if he stays in the Punto, his mother will eventually find him. He imagines her presence and hears a voice tell him that he is the most luminous object in the universe. Later, surrounded by mist, he sees her in her orange nightdress, sits beside her, and apologizes. He asks whether that was what she wanted to tell him, but she says she is there to tell him something else. The exchange does not make the loss disappear; it gives the boy a moment of imagined contact in which uncertainty can be spoken between mother and son.

From Unanswerable Question to Apology

Near the end, Bunny’s encounter with Libby Munro reframes the emotional problem that the recurring question has carried. Amid a crowd forgiving him, he sees his wife and asks her to forgive him, explaining that he went a bit crazy and missed her. When he asks whether she has been haunting him, she replies that she never did. The scene does not repeat the original question, and it does not supply a practical answer to it. Instead, its movement from helplessness toward direct address and apology suggests a changed relation to grief: Bunny can speak to Libby, while her brief response leaves their imagined reunion open rather than resolving it into certainty.