Truth and Lies

09.05.07

I counted today and it is just over 10 weeks sine you died. I had to think and count it because otherwise I really couldn't say - my sense of time and timing is shot to pieces. I have to check that date and how far we are from that terrible day.

It is exactly three months since I last saw you in person, and little did I know then that I would never share another moment with you, that indeed it was our last together. It saddens me to think that. As does thinking about you in general.

Apparently, we will reach a stage when we can think about you without feeling so sad. Well, we are not there yet.

I was thinking last night about all the things people say and do in a situation like this, when the person you love dies, and I started to make mental lists of what is true and what is not: the truth and lies of love, life and death if you like.

1. Time is a great healer - this is clearly a lie. Three months on and it still hurts just the same as it did when we discovered the revolting truth - all time does is put more distance between you and the fateful day.

2. A friend in need is a friend indeed. This is an interesting one. You can divide those you know into the pragmatists, who come and help and pull you through, and those who are so self absorbed that they begin to tell you how much this is hurting them too. Now, far be it from me to cast doubts on the validity of the feelings of another, but all I can say is what I wouldn't give to be able to not feel like this - to be able to say that you were still here with us.

3. Suicide infects those you leave behind - in every way, sweet man.
We think about you every day - your life, tour death, your suffering and how you chose to end it all rather than stick it out. You gave up. Your time was up, your energy drained. That is what a lifetime of negativity does for you. The laws of physics tell us that when a negative and a positive force combine, the negative will usurp the positive, taking its energy with it and leaving it in greater deficit.

It is remarkable how some people cannot even mention suicide; how you died, and more so how some people choose not to speak to you at all, rather than ask how you are; so the choice to ostracise is made above a simple greeting of "how are you?" Incredible, but true.

4. Life after death gets easier. It doesn't. Or maybe I should say it hasn't so far. There are days when I wake up and feel as wretched as I did the day after you died. As though somebody has tipped me upside down and emptied me out completely.

5. Love will conquer all. It won't and it didn't for you. We loved you almost beyond measure John, yet for some reason, that wasn't enough.

Love helps, but it doesn't vanquish all foes, particularly the emotional demons.

6. A problem shared is a problem halved - not true in your case; for all your attempts to discuss your worries, both at work and with the person who purported to love you above all else, it didn't seem to make a jot of difference - in reality, most people think of their own selfish needs first; the pending deadline, the bill to be paid, the comfortable lifestyle afforded by another, and they make their judgement in that way. When you shared your problem, somehow it seemed to double in size instead of reduce by half. So that adage is unfounded and facile.

7. The end of life is death. Well that is a fairly obvious one, a truism. But it's fair to say that it extends to all of us that loved you. Something has died for us and now we have to continue with life. That is the difficult one.