A new day

Thinking about Pete's premature demise has got me thinking and made me more aware of my own mortality. I guess that I have been lucky in so many respects and have had relatively few experiences of deaths. I have only ever seen one dead person, and yet for some it is probably a daily event.

Parents like to shelter their kids from the concept of death, telling them fairy stories about how Tiddles has gone to heaven, or Granny went to sleep etc etc rather than expose them to the grim reality that it is a termination that comes to us all with absolute certainty. I recall the deaths of three of my grandparents and I also recall not being allowed to attend their funerals. The same was true of other relatives who just seemed to fade from my consciousness as I grew up.

When my brother, Mark, was killed in a stupid motor cycle accident, it was like being hit in the face with a huge blow. It was unexpected and such a total waste of a young life. He was seventeen and out with a group of friends. They were as unsual messing around as kids do and for reasons we will never know, he crossed the road, mounted a pavement (sidewalk) and then rode out into the path of an oncoming vehicle at a time when there were very few vehicles on the road.

I was at college when i heard. It was a sunday morning and the warden of the hall of residence woke me up to tell me that my Mother was on the phone with some bad news. I dragged on some clothes and he came with me in the lift. We descended in an uncomfortable silence, I guess that he knew already what had happened but it was my mother that broke the news. My parents had no phone at the time so I expect she was calling from a public phone box. She was in tears as she told me what had happened and when I hung up I was numb. I didn't know what to do, i didn't know how to feel. I took the lift back to the seventh floor and collapsed onto my bed face down, trying to block out the reality. Denial didn't last long and I remember sobbing into wet pillows for what seemed hours. I ignored people's knocking on the door and imploded into a cocoon of utter misery. At some stage i donned my army greatcoat and went for a walk along the harbour, through the municipal refuse dump and smoked the last of my cigarettes. The rain came down in stair rods but I didn't care, I wanted to be alone and I wanted this terrible reality to be washed away. Eventually I found myself back in my room where I lay, soaking wet with curtains closed until night came. My best friend Dave was the first to appear that evening. The grapevine had been at work and he had just found out what had happened. Immediately he offered to drive me home the following day and replenished my supply of cigarettes

We drove north making some conservation while dreading getting to my parent's home. My family is/was totally disfunctional. Nobody hugged anyone, nobody expressed a feeling and we discussed nothing. My father was the only one with an opinion and his word was the law.

He was sitting in his chair and mother in hers when we arrived. He, shuffling through some papers while listening to classical music at high volume. Mother sat gazing into the coal fire. She made Dave a cup of coffee but it was clear that his presence was deemed unnecessary. I was so grateful to him for his help that day and yet he was more or less ignored. Once he had gone we all sat in silence. Nobody spoke about anything for ages. My sister was in New York, and being a hysteric must have been in a terrible state but nobody mentioned her. There were no tears in that awful room, icicles could have formed in the air around us, three individuals that lived in separate bubbles.

When the day of the funeral arrived nothing had changed, we left the house together and yet apart. I remember climbing into the black limo and seeing his coffin for the first time and realising that in that wooden box lay someone that had been my brother. It was almost as if i could see through the wood and see the damage that he had done to himself, and at that point I broke down again. I remember nothing of the funeral service, very little of the burial but I do remember going back to the house knowing that there was to be no wake, nobody was invited back to the house. That didn't surprise me as so few had ever been welcome there.

And so Mark vanished into the past. I went back to college and lives carried on as they always do, but I was changed. My eyes had been opened to the reality of my so called family and if I didn't know already, at that point I knew that I would never go back.

Since then my father died and I attended his funeral too but with no sadness other than a regret that he had not been a different person. A father figure should be a role model and not someone to be feared or despised. Those who have that or have had that in their lives should forever be grateful.

"And that is all i have to say about that." Forrest Gump