Something or Nothing

22.05.07

My recent cogitations have brought me to this conclusion; that the simple choice you made was between something and nothing.

Pretty ordinary and generic terms really, but they had a great deal of significance for you in the context of your life.

The "something" was an amalgam of history, change, circumstance and a series of errors of judgement that began to undo you instead of the inverse, which is how it should have been.

We can see now that what on the surface appeared to be a life well-lived was one, at least in adulthood, that was marked and defined by the demands of another, riddled with negativity and a sense of never being good enough.
Twenty years of dysfunction and emotional battery which completely wore you down. You were careful to spare others the detail and assimilate this as part of your lot in life, though your forays into the other side of your life - work and external influences taught you that it was not normal: the constant refusals to discuss your point of view, the lies, the inertia, the constant toing and froing to the doctor with a list of mystery ailments which always seemed to be diagnosed in absentia and then never treated with anything more than a handful of pharmaceuticals- no follow-up, no suggested path of treatment- cancelled holidays, curtailed days out and constant moaning and misery about what the world owed.
This ground you down - your own philosophy was expansive and inclusive - the diametric opposite of what your internal environment provided.

The "something" you saw then, was, despite the 17 months of separation and new life, a constant and effectively infinite battle to gain access to your son - obstruction, lies and denials at every turn.
It had become like a soap opera and you were unable to see how A would ever let you live your life. You made that clear to me, reiterating your understanding of her and her modus operandi - once the seed was planted, she grew her own philosophies and stories and touted them to those who would listen - always careful to attribute their provenance to a third party so that she would take no responsibility when it all blew up in her face. Her spite and vitriol was not just reserved for the adults in your life - naturally all women you were close to fell foul of her critical and viperine tongue - but included innocents and minors; nobody escaped her misery and criticism, although extreme bile was reserved for the female of the species. This extended even to pregnancy when she clearly outlined her desperate desire to not have a daughter - citing them as wasteful and evil!! It, apparently, never occurred to you that this may be linked to her own self-loathing; super-morbidly obese and hirsute in a world which prefers the waxed, bronzed and toned variety.

This absolute misogyny continues after your death - nasty letters of denial issued to your female family, issuing edicts of responsibly to them for your demise and refuting the already documented campaign of harassment.

And your "nothing", sweet man, was exactly that.

As an atheist, you believed there was nothing after death. I guess that is the hardest part for me, aside form the gruesome details of your death, the lies you told us in order to be able to carry out your plan and the revolting prospect of out lives without you. The very fact that you didn't take your own life in the belief that you were going to a better place, where you would be free from the hassles and pressures of this world is something that is extremely hard to bear. Especially when you left us here and we had so much still to give you.

Your firm belief was that there was simply blackness, darkness, nothing; an infinite void.

I can't say that I am any wiser despite all the time I dedicate to analysing every aspect of your existence and subsequent demise. My wish is a simple one - I would have you back here in an instant and sod the suffering and complications! - I understand that the pressure you felt must have been so huge that the latter seemed preferable to the former. Your life force was spent.
No energy left to continue this battle which had begun all those years ago when you allowed yourself to be duped into marriage by a fat and lonely woman who saw you as her only hope to escape her own unhappiness and dysfunction. But instead, you became infected by it and colluded with it to such a point that it controlled you and you were unable to ever escape it.

I can't make a judgement either way now, because my own upbringing in the Catholic faith affords me this background of afterlife and eternal happiness. And should I follow the theory through to its natural conclusion, then this suffering we bear, and indeed that you experienced, is all part of the mortal cargo we carry and of which we will be freed in the next life. A very convenient theory - if life is shit, be grateful, because it will be better in the next one and you will be paid in kind. Which is all well and good - but it does lead me to the conclusion that if you are right and there is nothing, then it doesn't matter, because you are lost and gone forever sucked in to the infinite black void, feeling nothing at all.

If the prophets and preachers are right, then you are perched somewhere on your celestial cushion, looking down on us, drink in hand watching perpetual reruns of the Liverpool Cup Finals, oblivious to our pain, because there is none where you are.

I still wish you had chosen to stick with something.

We are left with nothing but emptiness and memories.