Ten plus one

Eleven Years

A decade plus one.

We still remember you dear sweet John.

Ever- present in the myriad conversations

And comments.

Your trace remains

Your imprint on us

Who we are

Who we have become

Always here

In some way

In some form

The Flowering

"Love is the flower of life, and blossoms unexpectedly and without law, and must be plucked where it is found, and enjoyed for the brief hour of its duration."

So said D H Lawrence - and he was right

Assuagement

An interesting word and one which I have been contemplating of late.

The process of mitigation
To relieve a burden or stress
To render something less painful
To ease or remove guilt

Literally, from the old Latin, to sweeten.

Interesting!

I have come to see that our burden of loss has somehow been assuaged by all those external agents which affect us: life, time, friendships, family, and dare I say it, work.

It is then something to be grateful for, all those distractions and demonstrations of affection and more which ease the burden of loss and the sense of pain.

What is certain, is, that through all this mitigation, it is still there. I guess we just carry it better now; as though we have learned to wear it well, after a fashion.

I wish yours could have been assuaged in some way.

Feet and Hearts

An áit a bhuil do chroí is ann a thabharfas do chosa thú.

From the Gaelic, which means: "Your feet will bring you to where your heart is."

It makes me think, sweet man, how and why your feet brought you to where they did and where ours might take us now your space is empty.

I said this to a friend recently who has his own existential dilemnas to contend with - the usual; inner chaos, overt and mismanaged direction through work, unfinished business with a woman he once loved and might still love while he had begun to weave his magic and charms on another; bizarre inability to see his own strengths......as I said, the usual.

I got to thinking about how men, in particular, seem to be very very bad at finishing things, ending them, putting ghosts to rest and starting afresh.

I read a theory recently that men, when relationships begin to fail, have a tendency to ignore what is happening until it is too late, until time has been called in one way or another, and then they react - effectively when it is way past salvation. They wrestle and tussle with the erstwhile object of their affection and then don't seem to be able to let go, one way or the other. It is likely that they still maintain some kind of physical relationship, however infrequent, because they think it is the right thing to do, justifying it as some kind of old habit that dies hard, so what the heck - and it just confuses them further.

Women, on the other hand, do their fighting and grieving before the end comes; they battle and tussle with the deaf mute male and eventually, when all their energy is expended, bring things to a close. Generally speaking, then they move on - maybe while reflecting on what they left behind and how it could have been saved but for a minimal communication; and how it might have changed them, educated them, informed them. And of course all those physical overtures left them thinking there might still be something there to salvage; never quite managing to understand the mixed messages from he who could not let go.......

When I read this, and thought about my friend A, I thought about you also - because although your circumstances were different, you both acted in a textbook manner - at least according to the theory:- letting your feet bring you to those familiar places without considering whether your return to those very spots was measured, managed or meditated.
Embroiling yourself again with a person you had left behind; drawn back by obligation and guilt and the belief that the flattery of words of the desperate equated somehow to love. That this futile declaration of need, born out of laziness, fear and fatigue could render you, the man, bigger, taller, more masculine, more of a rescuing hero!! Swoon bloody swoon, and bring on the clowns I say!!
Maybe it and they did - not in my book. I always thought that love was and is a sign of courage and strength; not the manifest forlorn and well-timed looks of one who seeks to depend on you because it is easy, and who seeks to keep you from another whatever the cost simply because they can.

And in both your situations, there was the collusion of family - to engineer a return; through coercion, persuasion, or sheer guilt mongering. And again, you both took the bait, convinced that the manoeuvring was entirely genuine, unplanned and wholly serendipitous.

For smart guys, you certainly showed how naive you both were!

I marvel at how powerful guilt is, and how it renders even the most intelligent and strong amongst the male population weak; and how susceptible it makes you to idle empty words of flattery which massage the feeble ego.
And yet, when you hear those measured assertions of one who would purport to see you as an equal, you could not and cannot reconcile yourself with them. Strange! Strength scares you and obstinacy is misconstrued as loving courage.

In some way, both you and A laboured within the same set of rules; subconsciously I guess.

It makes us that loved you, wonder why our strength and independence were and are not good enough; why our sense of love - based on respect and admiration, could somehow be cast aside so easily when surely it might have brought you more balance and honesty. How perhaps out of self preservation you could hurt those who loved you most.......

It is a conundrum of sorts; your feet can bring you to where your heart is only if you are unfettered by guilt and ego and your eyes have a clear path to navigate.

As Laura Cantrell says:

"She lent her voice, and she gave her heart
And I guess that must've been the hardest part
She figured out exactly what was going on
All the love she had given for a song
And then things unravelled as they usually do
She got her old heart busted up by......number two
Have you forgotten? Have you forgiven?
Tell me are you livin' just a little in your past every day?
Time sure has changed you; it's walked right on by you.
Does it satisfy you to have so little to say?"

And that is the point; for all the battling and railing against the obvious, you boys always have so little to say at the time - or too much, when it is way too late.

It is a futile endeavour - as you showed us dear dear heart.

And so you and your feet just go round in circles, as you well know.

At least that is how it seems.

xxx

Persistence

Sometimes, dear John, I think that the only thing that separates me from you is persistence.

I canot say that you did not try; if anything I think you tried way too hard - to engineer, to construct, to contrive, in short, to ensure that everything worked as it should.

What is clear, sweet long-gone-boy-of-mine, is that there are many things which still don't quite work as they should without you here; and it is only our persistence that allows us to keep going, to persist.

Love is a fate resigned, or so the song says and that is what I have come to understand. It is an odd place we inhabit still, that place of resignation; I know now, after much soul searching, introspection and thought that you do exist in memory form, as a part of a life I have already lived. In a sense you are suspended somewhere in between my past and my psyche; and there you shall remain. I know that I have now spent more time without you than with you and I wonder if that means the balance will tip at all, at any time.

I sense that you have deifned me in some way; which I can attest to in many ways. I resist the temptation to be defined by your death dear heart, though there are times when I wonder.

I persist in my desire to keep going, to live, to do all the things you would have done and maybe to take a little bit of you forward. I am not sure that I succeed though.

I notice that my footfall going forward is not as sure and confident as it once might have been; occassionally I feel that life is a bit more of a battle than it should be and I sense that my unfailing optimism has been forever dented by losing you how and when I did.

And that is really all, we persist in spite of these feelings and indeed because of them; fuelled in a way by the hurt we still feel. It does recede and allow us to continue on, to persist.

I guess that is enough to be going on with.

Empty

I am thinking at these times, we fall back into the zone, John, back under the spell of wondering about you, why you went and where you might be now and how we are still feeling the hurt nearly two years on.

Mr LaMontagne expresses it perfectly:-


I never learned to count my blessings, I choose instead to dwell in my disasters.
I walk on down the hill, through grass, grown tall and brown
And still its hard somehow to let go of my pain.

On past the busted back of that old and rusted Cadillac that sinks into this field, collecting rain.
Will I always feel this way ?
So empty, so estranged.

And of these cut-throat busted sunsets, these cold and damp white mornings
I have grown weary.
If through my cracked and dusted dime-store lips I spoke these words out loud
Would no one hear me ?


Well I looked my demons in the eyes,laid bare my chest, said "Do your best, destroy me.
You see, I've been to hell and back so many times, I must admit you kind of bore me."

There's a lot of things that can kill a man, there's a lot of ways to die,
Listen, some already did that walked beside me.

There's a lot of things I don't understand,
Why so many people lie.
Its the hurt I hide that fuels the fire inside me.
Will I always feel this way ?
So empty, so estranged.


Well ?

Mean Streets

Your favourite movie of all time - along with any other of Italian gangster genre populated by Pacino, Pesce et al.

It always seemed fairly evident to me having seen the movie why it should be entitled so - then I started reading around the grief and loss I felt when you left and I discovered the man: CS Lewis, a scholar and writer of note.

He tells us about the world being a "mean street replete with human squalor"; I'd like to add to that a further thought:- replete with human squalor and emotional bankrupts. Sounds about right to me.

I am back in the blog zone John, back here in the parallel universe where we spent a lot of time communing.

I think of the Mean Streets you inhabited and understand that you had a great deal to contend with; too much evidently. You sidestepped as much as you could, but every now and again you would trip over some of that paucity and unkindness. The more you encountered, the harder you tried to overcome it.

And you didn't.

You gave up on this.

We instead keep tripping through those mean streets.

Detritus

The stuff that gets left behind, the mess, the tangling, what needs to picked through and at some point swept up.

I am not sure it is that easy. How would we know where to start? I think about this legacy of sadness that you left - and how we still carry it with us.

I wonder how long it will be before we accept that we should not be defined by your death - and your suicide. At times it seems impossible - we cannot undo your passing and, certainly for me, it is almost such a large part of me and who I am that I cannot see a way forward.

I am mindful that there are few who could ever reach your benchmark - which is by definition stuck at the final point of its evolution - your death.

And so we continue John, with you in our hearts and a fear that we cannot, nor will not ever quite surmount the sad legacy of your passing.

We still miss you big man.

x

Love Life Loss

In that order I guess.

For you, maybe not sweet man. I think it might have been loss and life and then the love.

A simple summary of your existence; the compromise which continued from sometime around August 1990 - the continuial ersoion of your choices - by your own hand at times, and the clinging to the hope of some kind of new love, which arrived in the form of your only son.

And then it was not enough to sustain you; try as you might there was no easy exit from that impasse; and so you persisited. At that point you knew, as you atested to more than just me, that you were done. Your hopes for an improvement did not bear fruit and your attempts at bringing things to a better place just met with more resistence.


In summary, at this point you were lost. In too deep to make extrication easy and not strong enough to face what you knew would be the onslaught from she who would see this as a betrayal.

And your efforts at forming a new and love-filled relationship further exacerbated the pain and hurt; for all concerend I would say now.

You lost. We lost.

Endgame.

Freewheeling

This is like freewheeling.

If you allow yourself some respite, you gain momentum, and in some way are able to pick up again where you left off.

I wish somebody had told you that - given you a sense of permission, so you could have given yourself some space; instead of always punishing yourself; albeit in silence.

I wanted to tell you, that as we predicted, the monstrous spectacle of your estranged spouse's behaviour rears its ugly head once again: she has now taken to claiming that your closest family members lie in wait for her as she goes to the supermarket and unleash torrents of abuse at her when she walks past.

This is intriguing to say the least, as when you were here with us in all your glory sweet man, she indulged this fantasy with you - set you up to go to the hospital and when you arrived, her equally deranged outsize sister was there hurling abuse at you, aided and abetted by her late, mother. I remember when you recounted this to me, I informed you that it sounded like a pikey sopa opera! And what surprised me was not the type of behaviour, but that you should have tolerated this for so long.
So convinced is she of her own deluded fantasies regarding this relentless imaginary abuse that she filed a police report, anticipating arrest and incarceration. Except, she forgot to check that your family were in the country at the time of the alleged incidents!

No surprises there, then, she continues to be as mad as the day you married her. My guess is that something has happened, somebody in authority has questioned perhaps her parenting skills, your son's ever increasing obesity, something; and now she needs a scapegoat.
If there is one thing we learned from your own story, it is how she never ever takes responsibility for her actions, and why should this be any different? I imagine she never stopped to think when she harassed and harangued you into submission, that she would need a replacement - that you fulfilled that need in some way, always shouldering the responsibility like the naive dutiful and frankly idiotic husband that you were; easier than fighting it all the time I guess!

Oh, and the story she fabricated to the officers in question - unbelievable! Like you had never left. How tragic your death was and how this cruelty would surely send her over the edge. Let's hope not, or the whole of Merseyside will be engulfed in a seismic wave of tsunami like proportions.

So I just wish, dear man, that you had learned to freewheel more, to not pedal so hard like your life depended on it. I wish you had come to understand that you were just one man with one will and one life, and for all that others say and do, we are only responsible for the officially dependent ones, not those who believe that there is a moral or emotional deficiency on their part that you have to prop up.

In the meantime, we try to allow ourselves a little space and time to freewheel, as the date of the first anniversary draws nearer.

And our sadness stays the same.

Half A World Away

And so we still survive you John.

Somebody asked me how I feel now that you are gone; I guess anticipating that I must have accepted your demise by now.

The answer is simple - the same! You are still dead and we are still waiting, to see if in some way you will ever return to us.

It is true to say that the legacy you left is great and all encompassing. We talk about you often and think about you more so; all for one thing: - to fill the void, to bridge the gap, to circumvent the abyss.

As they all told us, things are easier, life is easier. The struggle for control has in some way diminished, because in the end, our own sense of survival has guided us to the point where we can function again, on a daily basis; making the right noises, interjecting, interrupting, concurring, dissenting, assenting - all the interactions of life are there in place again. There is though, one thing missing: you dear man.

I want to tell you that the loss doesn't lessen, it takes its place in your psyche and reminds you now and again to think about the man who went before us and before his time.

In cliched style, I can tell you that there is not a day goes by when I don't think of you and all that you were and all that you gave us; and all that you took away.
And I doubt that will ever change.

Your death and you have changed me. I am not the same girl. I am not the same person. Difficult to articulate, let me tell you.

Sometimes I think I walk with a dead man.

Who isn't coming back.

Ever.

Levitation

There are times, sweet man , when I try and levitate so I cannot miss you so much. I take a step outside myself to see if I can fathom this reality.


You are still here in my head: undenied and real.

I HAVE RETRIEVED YOU.

I still miss you.
I still love you.
I am still without you.

In the words of Atonement:" come back to me! " - she said jokingly - but with spirits in her mind.

My grief is like the sky: it covers everything and uncovers nothing.

You cloud my days and leave my nights so clear. And empty.

Without you.

Dead boy.

Silent soul.

No man Atheist.


I love and miss you Johnny still.

The Girl You Left Behind.
xxx

Happy Birthday

Happy Birthday wherever you are.

I am a day early sweet man, but I am sure that in the heavenly realms of Paradise, time is irrelevant - so you will be thankful for the wishes.

You spent your last birthday with me - hard to believe that it is a year ago. There are times when all this seems so far away and moments when it feels like you just left us yesterday; the yo-yo effect of grief, sadness and the receding shock.

I can only hope that you are somewhere; it feels somehow wrong to imagine that you ceased to exist - certainly not for the small circle of those who held you dear and loved you unconditionally. We still remember you every day. You have become the backdrop to our lives, the constant in your absence - strange how that can work, but let me assure you it does.

I hope you hear us when we mention you, think of you and recall you. Just wish we could have you back.

So the missing goes on - we still love and laugh when we think of you; it's just the living part that has ceased.

Anyway, big man - you are still here in spirit and our birthday gift to you is remembrance and love.

In infinite amounts.

Rehabilitation

Welcome back to rehab.

This is how it feels to be rehabilitating.

Like you have to pick up your life again and live it. Even though you are not quite sure why you should or how you will.

I've taken this long break to work out where to go next.
There have been interesting conversations about bereavement and emotion. Apparently, John, just like you must have done, I am postponing the heavy duty hurt - or so believes the counsellor.

Another interesting observation is that I have been over-analysing every aspect of your life and death; trying to understand what drove you to take your own life and abandon all that you had in this life.

Too right! I wonder how else you can manage this. Losing you was the biggest shock - not so much how you died, though if you were here now, I would kill you all over again for doing what you did - and passing on the pain to us to live.

I have in my possession the last note that you wrote, and how sad it is. Your first words were those asking us to please forgive you - so you had a complete sense of what you were doing and how "wrong" it must be - and I guess it also means that you knew you would leave some kind of devastation behind you. If only you knew, sweet silly man. I am not sure it would make you think twice about what you have done and how it has left us.

So, sometimes John, I think about you and how your legacy to us is very much what you yourself must have been experiencing - this feeling of swimming in a mire of uncertainly - of getting why and what keeps us here, but not really having a guide to pull you through to the medium and long term. In essence then, we live in our present and reflect on the past. Perhaps we don't think much about the future, because a crucial element is missing: you. Not much fun to look forward any more.

Only in short bursts anyway. For now.

We miss you as much as the first day - be sure of that wherever you are.

Summer solstice

23.06.07

And so time takes its toll.

No John, no love, no fun.

No summer sun to look forward to.

No long nights.

No breathless mornings.

No sighs of relief.

No sighs of summer love.

Full stop.

Wish You Were Here

14.06.07

This is my cyber-postcard to you John.

I am in Greece, as you should well know, given that we planned to take this holiday together. In fact, this was one of the last things we talked about and the last leave entry you made in your work diary - just a day before you killed yourself.

So I am with the same people who sat with me through the aftermath of your death - my frinds Sandra and Marija - and with whom I waited until my twin brother was able to come and collect me. It's good to see them - a welcome distraction from my thoughts of you, which, if left unchecked, consume most of my waking hours.

They see a change in me since we last met - how could they not? I am more focused and balanced, as every day I remember that you are no longer here- the shock has receded.

And that is all; we talk about you endlessly, analyse the why and how, cite experts on suicide and self-death and begin to make sense of the fact that all the promises you made and all the plans we had are part of that same past and not a future of anticipation.

So this is, I guess, the first step in redirection. This is the first time since you died that I have slept every consecutive night at normal times, without waking or spending the night reading and thinking. My body is taking back some control at last.

So outwardly, things are better. Inwardly, it is still the same battle to understand and come to terms with your untimely death.

Your choice lovely man, and ours is now to wonder why.

As I said, wish you were here.

Disconnection

03.06.07

Every day I think of you and every night.

I tried this new approach, John - not writing - but it doesn't work.

I thought, as I am now in counselling, that somehow the sadness would lessen, and that I would find an alternative place for it.

To some degree, it has worked - but after three sleepless days and nights, I realise that this disconnection is not so easy. Would that it were. And that you were still here.

And so , we try to pad the wound you left behind. It is a difficult task. I read and read to try and find an answer. But, as any good psychoanalyst will tell you, we can only ever offer conjectural hypotheses - I think that may be a tautology, but I will let it rest for fear of breaking my stride.

So, I got to reading and thinking and realised that the word of others in a similar situation not only buoy us up, but they give us hope for the future, and right now, I am all out of that.


Let's see:-

"After he died, there were moments of total blackness when I felt I was trudging through a tunnel with no escape. I felt so heavy with depression.........let alone imagine being able to make a new life.

At first I felt a sort of despairing anger at the gods for dealing me this lousy hand. Until then, I had always thought of myself as lucky, so this was a terrible blow....."

"At times, I had to fight hard against self-pity.......And I missed terribly having someone to hug me.

Some of the best advice was also the gloomiest from friends who said 'This is a black time, but you will survive it. It is possibly the worst thing that will ever happen to you, but you will get better.'

Those words were so realistic about the emotions that go with bereavement that it was like being given permission to hit bottom."

AF



"I think was anaesthetised by shock at first,......I keep expecting him to walk in and I still have moments of disbelief. And I talk to him all the time.....You cannot bypass the stages of bereavement.....I began to believe that nothing mattered any more. I was scared that I would never get out of bed again. I might have looked as if I was coping, but it was touch and go. I was angry too.

I cannot imagine meeting a man like him again. I would not even try. I just know that I have been incredibly fortunate to spend my life with someone whose company I adored....."

SB



Enough said great man.

I cannot disconnect.

Solitude

26.05.07

Pão duro da solidão
Ē somente que nos dão
O que nos dão a comer
Que importa que o coracão
Diga que sim ou que não
Se continua a viver

Todo o amor que nos prendera
Se quebara e desfizera
Em pavor se convertia
Ninguem fale em primavera
Quem me dera, quem nos dera
Ter morrido nesse dia

This dry bread of solitude
Is the only thing we have to consume
What matters if the heart
Says yes or says no
If it keeps on living

All the love that siezed us
Was broken
Was undone
And became fear
Do not talk of spring
That we, I might wish
To have died that day


Primavera - D Mourao Ferreira / Pedro Rodrigues

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.

From Hankering to Hurt

18.05.07

That is the spectrum on which I reside at the moment - from hankering to hurt and back.

There are days when I wonder how you could have done this to us; how you could have left us behind, with just a simple note of explanation instructing us not to mourn you. Such a sad thing to say - and a ridiculous one. You, of all people, knew how much the loss of someone you loved hurt and how learning to live with the loss was not a simple readjustment, but a painful process of assimilation and grief.

We are at the beginning of a very long road. Some days are unbelievably exhausting - just getting up, getting dressed and continuing on - t seems so bloody pointless to do anything without you here to share it; it feels like cheating or betrayal to laugh and smile without you and thinking about the future, is for the first time, something that brings dread instead of excitement. There are no plans that resonate or dreams to be constructed - just those to deconstruct and pack away.

I am not sure if I will ever really accept that you are not here. Or indeed that you are at peace. I watched a brilliant documentary in which Joan Rivers, the American comedienne, talked about her own husband's suicide 18 years ago - and how she still felt hurt, anger and fury after all this time.

Her acerbic observations really hit the spot for me: "everyone tells me he is at peace - well I hope not, the bastard, because look at the torment he left us in!"
It is no good telling us that you loved us more than life when you ran out on us - and how - what price you paid!

The other point she made, brilliantly, was how everyone feels the need, if they are not in the majority of those who simply ignore you, to tell you how you will see him again in heaven; how we will be eternally reunited. So, therein lies the tacit wishing of death upon you - that's the only chance you'll get to meet again - thanks for the sentiments, well meaning but slightly skewed!
She said that she didn't want to see her husband in heaven again, because if she did, she would fucking kill him for what he did. And that is how I feel about you, John. No matter how much I love you, I think my first reaction if we should ever meet again would be to shake you so hard and scream at you for the longest longest time.

How could you leave us here hankering for you and all that we had? - and with the enormous task of rebuilding our lives without you. And the incredible spiralling pain.

Joan said that even after 18 years she is still furious - that she accepts this as part of the package of feelings you are left with when your partner makes the decision to end his life without consulting you.

And I guess that is true for me too.

Articulation

14.05.07

What is said and left unsaid at a time like this is very poignant.

There is a clear taboo in the way that you died and we are now discovering the magnitude of human insensitivity regarding the self-death of a loved one.

I have been mulling over the various comments made to me during their last few days.

Mostly, there are a few people who stay close to you in this circumstance and do their best to help you through. But it really is like the blind leading the blind - isn't the worst possible scenario to contemplate the death of a loved one? - a partner, a spouse, a sibling, a child - that pretty much covers all eventualities because we are all one of the above. It it the unthinkable and I am sure something we only contemplate momentarily given the awful nature of such a projected occurrence and how just imagining it for an instant can make us feel.

And then it happens to you and you feel the pain, the loss, the absolute shock, the realisation that you have to come to terms with it because in his mercy, God has not been so good and he has left you here alone - and it is the most soul-destroying, life-sapping, heartbreaking situation in which to find yourself. Because you cannot change it - you can only talk about it, cry and cry some more and hope that each day that passes will bring you closer to some kind of normality; when the only normality you want is to bring the one you have lost back.

But, the worst part is knowing that literally something has died in you and you simply cannot retrieve it. It is logical that when you lose this person so close to you, so integral to your own existence, so bound to you that with their passing something in you is culled, trampled and effectively destroyed. So you deal with that loss too.

I think about this a lot, John, and I wonder how you could have contemplated leaving us behind when you knew how painful loss and death was - the death of your mother had a profound effect on you and it is clear that despite stuffing yourself with synthetic emotional inhibitors for a period subsequent to her death, you never managed to overcome losing this woman who meant so much to you in life and the sadness of her loss always lingered with you.

And then I think that knowing how low our losing you makes us feel and how I so wished initially to be with you, even if it meant dying too because I could not imagine my life without you, nor did I want to - that death was probably something you saw in two very different ways. It's this eternal conundrum that I cannot solve! Why, if you knew how much it hurt, could you subject us to the same?

However much we try not to be, we are defined by this loss - people avoid calling you, citing their belief that you are not in a good place to be taking phone calls - in reality it because they have no idea what to say to you and they are scared shitless of the same thing happening to them.

It's a selfish comment as in the aftershock of loss the one thing you pray for and crave is some kind of human contact and reassurance that this temporary madness you feel is surmountable and normal. What is not articulated leaves us deaf - we cannot hear what is not said.

Or there are those that deign to comment on your state of mind - as if you do not know that this temporary insanity you feel is not normal in some way - and what you wouldn't give to revert to the used-to-be, when the person you so loved was here. And how your struggle is simply to sidestep the tears and sadness and not be a bother to those around you - because you see how they suffer with you and how sad your pain makes them feel. Sadness engenders sadness.

The very nature of non-articulation is that it leaves us disjointed and isolated; just like you sweet John. Silent and alone.

In reality, the inarticulate friend is no friend, because we cannot hear you, so it's like you don't exist.

Impact

11.05.07

The impact of your death and passing is something that you could never have imagined, John.

In the last words you left us, in your best handwriting, you told us how you felt that you had ruined everything; messed it all up.

And how wrong you were.

With every day that passes, the impact of your death grows.

I know that I will miss you until I myself pass, until I die, until my last breath is drawn.

And I can feel sad for myself - because there is so much to miss. On a selfish level, all the obvious things:-the physical and emotional connection, the fun, the endless conversations with you that punctuated my day, and every one of those days that we spent together; and every one of those dreams that we projected for our future.

But I am not the only one. This song of sorrow is not singular.

There are countless others to whom this grief is occasioned and for whom your death is virtually insurmountable.

I cannot quite comprehend how you thought we would not mourn your passing, nor how you believed that this world would be a better place without you. I can assure you that is not the case.

We miss you so terribly. Every conversation finds its way back to you somehow - for all that we try, you are still here in every exchange and every empty moment of the day.

I hope that you hear us when we invoke you and hope that you can understand that for us, being without you is a huge and often futile effort.

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.

Choice and Consequence

07.05.07

Choices are what define us - or rather how we make them and what we do with the consequences of our choices.

You made one bad choice John, and from that created this chain of decisions that became harder and harder to justify to yourself - in the end, instead of being able to make rational informed decisions, you were just flailing in a sea of self-doubt and confusion - so your final choice was misinformed in every way.

We often talked about your decision to marry the person you did. I could not understand after having left home and spent four years at college, how you wold return to this person who had effectively stood still in the meantime, done nothing with her life apart from continue in the same old drudge, waiting for somebody to rescue her from herself and when that failed, she formulated a plan to get you back.

During our discussions, you came to the same conclusion many times - that you were very flattered by the declarations of love and longing - which I found odd to say the least, as in the time we had been best friends at college, you had always been popular with the ladies and had plenty of admirers. Nor, in all that time do I ever remember her calling or visiting you, despite the fact that you were apparently the person she could not live without. The pattern of inertia started here. A's real tour de force was her ability to blackmail emotionally - to create a sense of guilt and owing rather than a positive sense of energy and giving.

When you expanded on your theory, it became clear that to some extent you had been duped - you were, as you pointed out to me, dealing with unfinished business after having been caught in fraganti by your prospective in-laws in an embrace with your then-girlfriend during the first round of your courtship.

The fallout was unbelievable, and when you recounted it to me, I was aghast to say the least that you even considered continuing any contact with these people. It was made clear to you, that in your youthful fumblings, you had sullied your girlfriend, defiled her and thus rendered her unfit for pairing with another. In other words, you were held to account by your father-in-law-to-be regarding the supposed damaging of his daughter. I always remember that you found this shocking and amusing in equal measure as A had always been reluctant to have any physical contact with you - majorly catholic apparently - but on that particular day, she insisted that you return to the family house and join her as her parents were absent for the day. Shortly after you engaged in what you described as heavy petting (always makes me laugh that one), initiated by her with some ardour. A short time later, her parents walked in "unexpectedly". I wonder John. I wonder!

I could not believe that after being caught in fumbling and fully clothed embrace with your girlfriend that you could bow to such ridiculous pressure and more importantly, that your adult girlfriend would even tolerate this from her father - the diatribe was laden with imagery of the virgin / Madonna / whore details and peppered with references to the abstinence of your in-laws before marriage: too much information!

And so, instead of dealing with this, it was left in the air, only to be resumed as a matter pending when you were due to return to Liverpool after finishing your college degree.

What I found strange is that your by now ex-girlfriend re-initiated contact with you about 6 months before you were due to return home, after effectively three years of silence.

The choice you made to leave Liverpool was fuelled by many factors, one of them being that you had asked A to make yours a proper courtship, that you were not prepared to skulk around or hide in her car when out on dates - her parents, although they held you accountable, disapproved of your friendship and supposedly banned her from seeing you. After consideration, I imagine this in part, to be a lie, as they approved wholeheartedly of your marriage several years later, and I am inclined to believe that people don't really change, conversely, they revert to type when under pressure.

Which is what she did; your life together was infected with the invented conflicts that A brought to the home - work colleagues, neighbours, extended family; her raison d'etre was to engage in conflict with others and then put you to the test by demanding that you resolve it as she was too shy, too weak, too worried to deal with it herself - and let's not forget, your role was to look after her in every sense of the word, regardless of your needs or wishes. When pushed, she used her physical appearance as the basis of her theory that others were bullying her. In reality, what you both failed to see, is that she wasn't that important to anyone else but herself to feature as the focus of another's emotional outpouring. Her vindication came from issuing the edicts and getting you to follow them.

The rapprochement was initiated with declarations of love and want: you were the "thing that she most wanted in the world". Our interpretations of that were different - after three years of no success in sourcing another she turned her attentions to you, as she indicated to you thereafter, you had a pending debt to be resolved and you owed her. You, in your naivety believed this to be a declaration of true love and bought in to it.

Interestingly, her all-consuming love for you was not so great that she didn't find time to apportion her 10 stone weight gain during the interim years to you - caused apparently by her missing you so much that she turned to eating. I always wondered why, if this was true, how she didn't lose the weight once you had returned to her loving, if somewhat chubby, arms...and how when 200 miles away, you were able to force feed her.

Predictable discussions and subsequent decisions ensued for you - you didn't introduce her to your family until you were engaged, at her request - she wanted to have the deal sealed before she met your folks - it isn't hard to guess why! She pursued you with vigour, witnessed by work colleagues who remember it well and recall the lengths she would go to to get you - declaring her need of you at every turn, withholding any further favours until you promised to marry. You always found it amazing that I knew she didn't put out until you had announced the engagement to the family and there was, effectively, no going back. I always told you that I knew this because her behaviour was entirely predictable of somebody of her ilk: an underachieving emotional manipulator.

The home making and building was left to you, while she spent her savings on a new car and continued to live with her moral guardians and emotional suppressors- your job to provide for the new wife John, even though you had been a student for nearly four years! Unbelievable.

What I never understood is that you didn't really have an inkling then of just how seriously nuts she was, nor that you ever picked up the copious lies and stories she fed you.

It is strange then to understand that you were susceptible to such flattery and deception, as you were always, sweet John, a lucid and intelligent man with the ability to cut through the bullshit. But not when it came to A. Still, in part, you were aware throughout your marriage, that things were not right, as we now know that you went to great lengths to cover aspects of it, which you intuitively knew would shock or appear strange, to say the least.

You told me shortly before you died, that you realised what you mistook for love was actually a sense of duty coupled with high doses of flattery. When I asked you how you knew this, your answer was simple; that you had since leaving your marriage discovered love and come to understand that what you had before was entirely different.

Too bad you couldn't have made an entirely different choice and saved yourself so much pain and suffering.

You might still be here.

Adjustment or maladjustment

04.05.07

Depending on how you look at it, that is what we are all dealing with.

A theme in your life, without question - it is like the twins who feed off each other, some find an equilibrium whilst others get bigger to the detriment of the second one.

I am the lucky twin, literally - my brother and I were born 5 minutes apart and survived intact to support each other through life and love. We adjusted to each other.

Your whole life was actually defined by adjustment. From the moment you decided to tie your life to another, you began to adjust - continually ceding ground and adapting yourself to this person who made so many demands on you and was always willing to justify them in terms of her needs and herself.

From the outset, your needs became a secondary element in your life. You made sacrifices on every level to accommodate this person whose view on life could have been plucked from a 1950s manual on how to pin down your man: "instruct him that he is responsible for you, his role is to care for you and provide on every level, particularly material. Show weakness through feminine guile and trickery - every man loves a weak and ailing female to rescue. Make demands and create conflict with outsiders wherever possible to strengthen the bond between you - he will respond to your helplessness like a knight in shining armour. And if in doubt, resort to good old fashioned blackmail with the promise of a thrilling night of seduction if he fails to do as you wish."

In fact, John, your choice of a maladjusted person meant that you spent your entire existence on overcompensating - acting as breadwinner, confidante, counsellor, chauffeur, carer and project manager. The small amount of time you dedicated to yourself was a constant source of tension and you began to feel, particularly during the time since P was born, that your choice of partner had been erroneous; a spouse so obsessed with her own parents and siblings that she neglected her own son.

Despite her claims to the contrary, you spent an inordinate amount of time with P while she stayed in bed, sat in front of the TV or alternatively dragged P round to visit his "true family". Such was her negative take on life that you nicknamed her the "fun police" - P's aim on a Saturday morning was to escape the fun police before they vetoed the many activities you had planned for the day as too dangerous, too risky, too cold, too windy or too much fun.

In reality John, it is a very sad and simple story: you married into maladjustment and through years of conditioning it began to define you to the very point that it destroyed all your perspectives.

You over adjusted.

Future in the Past

02.05.05

In many ways, as you stated, your marriage was not about you, but about your estranged wife and her family. And this troubled you for a long time.

You once said to me that your ex-wife had promised, that (sic) once her mother died, things would be different. The implication was that you, as a family, and indeed a couple, would move away from this ridiculous dependence and interdependence ,and that somehow, you would lead the life of an independent couple with a child. This all came too late for you, as after 17 years, you decided that enough was enough.

You could never quite work out how she needed to spend at least two hours a day on the phone to her mother and sister, when you felt this should have been time together as a family. In fact, when you broached this, you were always held to account regarding the three hours a week you spent in the gym after work. Strange indeed as your wife's desire for you to be in the marital home only ever coincided with times when she was supposedly undertaking the duties as she saw as her domain - home-making; although that didn't extend to the full gamut - rather a more condensed version; microwaving food in the morning and the evening and choosing to stay at home when any degree of exercise or effort was involved. Your role was to work, care for P and run every aspect of the home in addition to your other obligations.

When you questioned this, your spouse always called into question the needs of her own clan, citing them as "true family".

And here is the gem on her soapy operatic theory - aka her inability, at the tender age of 43, to leave behind the family ( according to the psychologists)


Individuate

The fear of taking emotional and physical responsibility for ourselves can become so overwhelming that we cannot allow ourselves to let go of our family's influence, for good or bad, whatever our age. This is particularly true if we haven't been shown how to care for ourselves emotionally, because no-one has cared for us unconditionally.

That was your real beef, John. That even though she espoused family and all its glories, she was unable to take any real responsibility for herself and her actions. You felt worn and wearied by this and often told me that you believed that you had two children to care for not one.

The theory bears that out. And when you chose to leave, the kicking and screaming hit record levels.

You knew, and mentioned frequently, that A's future was in her past, as she expended the little energy she chose to waste on assuring you that any flaws she had were attributable to her own upbringing and that once her parents had passed on things would be different.

Shocking that a middle-aged woman could justify her behaviour in this way, and shocking that you fell for it for such a long time.

Prophesy

01.05.07

Reading back through the countless emails we exchanged, I found the following message I sent to you this time last year, when your delightful ex-wife had really started to crank up the blackmailing strategy to full blast:

" Our recent communications have also contributed to my current state of emotional lethargy. I certainly don't feel as though I am helping you in any way at the moment and some of your reactions would support that I think - please correct me if my assertion is wrong. I call you because I care about you and of course worry about you John - doubtless because I love you.

However, the last few conversations have left me wondering if it is at all beneficial to do so - you seem quite distant at times and certainly preoccupied with other things; understandable! I know that particularly this week, I have leaned very heavily on you as I have been pretty upset about my own situation and I imagine that there are times when you don't know how to broach things as I have been fairly strung out. I suppose what I am trying to say is that I feel somehow that this is bringing you down - and clearly you have enough to deal with at your end.

I have almost given up trying to counsel you about your own situation as I find myself repeating the same thing over and over again - almost to no avail. I understand that things are difficult, but in all honesty, unless you do something about your access to your son, you will send yourself into an early grave.

Your own feelings of sadness and depression are directly connected to this. It is also pretty evident that A will never move to change things whilst she believes there is a chance of coercing you into returning - she demonstrates this through her constant story-building; every time you see P some drama unfolds and you are at the centre of it - she chalks up another blame point and constructs her case even further. Your inertia and failure to deal with the situation are in fact exacerbating it and much more importantly having a negative effect on your son. You have clearly outlined that your relationship with A was characterised by your ability to get things done and her ability to procrastinate; what makes you think she will change now????????????

You have the power to influence your son positively and connect with him on a really positive level. It is obvious that he is subject to A's emotional priming at home - think about the soundbites he unleashes when he sees you - and that is not a good environment for a child. Very simply put, unless you deal with the access issue, you are directly contributing to your son's unhappiness and lack of stability right now.

Whatever A may profess, she certainly doesn't practice it as she is happy to indulge in the kind of dramas she has protagonised before - think Chester, think phone calls, think phantom illness, think mindless dashes to Alder Hey with suspected meningitis only to hurl abuse at you as you arrived. Aided and abetted by her revolting specimen of a sister, M, who delighted in calling you an adulterer outside a busy hospital, in which your son was supposedly dying and in fact was playing on a climbing frame, oblivious to the emotional drama his mother had prepared. She thinks nothing of dragging your son into it, John - these do not appear to be that actions of a rational human being, and what is worse is that her own family, instead of offering the voice of reason and temperance, show no dignity and collude with her. Does her sister not have two young children under two to care for?

It really does beggar belief, not to mention the damage it does to a seven-year old boy to be dragged to the hospital every couple of months with suspected meningitis. One word: Munchhausen's!

You may feel I am being very hard on you John, but I am above all things your friend and I love you enough to tell you this. If you want to start feeling better about yourself, do something. I know I am not the only one who has proffered this opinion, so we cannot all be wrong.

In terms of how we proceed, that is really up to you. I am in a very difficult place right now, as you know and have been feeling quite lonely. That is unsurprising as these situations can only be resolved by the individual, it's just a hard slog, as I am sure you will agree. You know that I miss you very much and would like to see much more of you - but the ridiculous uncertainty that hangs over you regarding access to P means that it is even impossible to hop on a train and meet you just for one evening! I don't want to call you if you feel you don't really want to talk to me; I don't want to stalk or harass you and I certainly don't want to send copious texts that remain unanswered.

We need to maintain some balance if this friendship is to survive and grow. But you also have to learn to put yourself first, and to stop worrying about every eventual outcome. Despite her protestations, your estranged wife is still the size of a house, works on a minimal basis and has an income in excess of most households where both partners work. It is ridiculous of you to believe, and of her to say that you have abandoned your family when you are still paying the mortgage, all the bills as well as the household expenses AND paying CSA dues - Jesus Johnny, she is better off than most!!

Think on - start thinking of yourself for once.

OK, that is the end of my diatribe. I hope you understand that these words come from a good place and because I love you, care about you and hope that you will be in my life for a very long time, John."

Invisbile Commodity

01.05.07

The invisible commodity: the one we all hanker after, profess to understand, aspire to, name in its various forms and with any degree of fortune we will experience at least once in our lives.

Love: the bond that ties us to those we care for, the human glue which sticks us all together. It cannot be bought or sold, even traded, though a thousand dating agencies perhaps have based their business on that very premise.

It has spawned a million sonnets, songs in abundance and fuelled entire industries of film, literature and tacky gifts.

It is the one emotion that we can all identify with in times of joy and sadness. It is, as I once said to you, what makes us selfish as well as selfless -you struggled with that because you had been told a thousand times that love was duty; that even if love was dead you should not leave. In fact, it is the selfish instinct that makes a father protect a child or a lover protect the muse - fear of losing what we most treasure.

So this love we feel is overwhelming and now you are gone, I wonder what to do with it. That's part of the hurt big man - how do we stop the love? Well, I guess we don't and haven't. I'd like them to measure my tears for love and tell me how much is in there.

We lost our love in you too John - this presence of love which filled our lives and brought us smiles and sunshine. You have disappeared and taken yours with you - so there is the double whammy; no love to have and too much left here to give.

The songs and sonnets tell us that better to have loved once than never at all; better to have experienced the physical manifestations of it; better to have known it through you.

In part they are right, I am sure. It's just that being without you is very painful and so I guess that why the same fonts of wisdom also tell us that love hurts. Something that you knew to your cost sweet man.

Stealing the Sun

29.04.07

It is like somebody has stolen the sun without you here.

It's hard to imagine a time when we will feel the same warmth again.

I was thinking about the analogy of sunshine - and it is so fitting when we think of you; this warm and bright person who brought love and light to all those whose path crossed with his. For so many of us John, you were this central, pivotal person in our lives, who gave us love, laughter, happiness and support in abundance, yet you could not see that.

Your own judgement of yourself and your worth was totally overshadowed by the negativity engendered in you by years of misery and complaint and the continuous efforts of one person to undermine you in all that you did. I still cannot quite understand when so many of us told you of your goodness, why you always deferred to the one negative opinion of you, from a person you had left behind and whose own achievements, both personal and professional were limited to say the least.

It's even more heartbreaking now we have pieced so much of your life together and we can see how thoroughly miserable your existence was and how you just kept on without a word.

There is a great paradox when we consider how much you did for others, constantly, and how little you did for yourself. I know there are all the medical factors to consider regarding your state of mind and body when you died - let's face it if the years of emotional blackmail and infected misery around you hadn't got you, the physical malaise was about to take you sweet man, and that is the shocker for us.

I am sure you knew that you were physically unwell, you had mentioned chest pains, fatigue and bouts of indigestion to me on several occasions. In the end, we attributed them to stress - fairly logical considering the continual hounding and mind games you endured. And you, sweet and foolish man that you were, could not bring yourself to call her bluff; too afraid to cause even the remotest of hurt or pain. So again, you overlooked your own well-being in favour of the one person who had a total disregard for yours!

So special man, your sun was meant to shine bright and short - it would never have burned for a longer time however much we wanted it to.

It is true then, the adage: only the good die young. Darling, it was your destiny after all.

At least the memory of your sun still casts its shadow around us. So we carry you with us in some small way.

Coronary Overload

27.04.07

I have been preoccupied with your heart for the past 12 hours or so. I haven't been able to stop thinking about it and all the stresses it had to endure.

Yesterday, the inquest into your death was held. We found out what we already knew - the details of your final moments, the notes you left, who you were, how you lived and died. But, sweet man, we also found out something we didn't know - you had advanced coronary heart disease. So bad was it, that you had a 90 per cent blockage in your main artery. In layman's terms, this means that you had a very poorly functioning heart, as there was only one tenth of the normal space for the blood to pass through.

It is hard to imagine then, that you did not have any physical symptoms - you had complained to me of feeling pains in your chest, but latterly attributed them to stress. As somebody who was so physically fit and dedicated to exercise, it was inconceivable to imagine that you had heart trouble. In fact, you did, in more ways than one.

Contributing factors to CHD are listed as the following:-

• Stress
• Lack of Physical Exercise
• Poor diet - increased levels of bad fats in the regimen
• Hereditary factors
• Smoking
• Excessive Alcohol consumption

So, there are only really two factors which count here, as you were very fit and had never been a smoker: you had made changes to your diet during the past two years, but previously had managed on a diet of oven-ready meals, convenience foods and takeaways, as administered by your morbidly obese wife. Incidentally, as you know John, your own son is now clinically, if not morbidly obese at the age of 8, weighing in at nearly 9 stone, so there is a clear pattern there. 17 years of crap food consumption would certainly leave enough fatty deposits on the heart, that is for sure.

Stress - you certainly knew about that. In fact, looking back, you were always worried about something, from the outset of married life, as in addition to your full-time job, you were the main carer for your constantly ailing wife and her moribund clan, tasked with fetching and carrying, collecting and depositing those deemed unfit to walk the 10 minutess to the supermarket or haul their overstuffed shopping bags home. Your descriptions of your daily life led me to the conclusion that you had married into this clan that saw you as some kind of fix-it-all slave, frankly!

Latterly, the whole issue of access to your son had frustrated you beyond belief. Even with court orders in place, your wife ignored them and spent her inactive days firing off text messages for you to call, and then refused to speak to you. You had the added concern of Philip's obesity as in the year since you left, you had noticed a significant weight gain, coupled with a general lack of motivation on his part and an unusual obsession with cartoons - evidently as his main form of relaxation outside school was to be plonked in front of the television of stuffed full of high fat junk foods straight from the packet or the microwave.

Work was causing you concern, as you felt your were not performing adequately, and you felt you couldn't get a handle on it. You had not really dealt with your concerns either, tending to wait until the last minute until things got on top of you and increased the sense of frustration and impotence that you seemed to be constantly feeling.

In short, your heart was historically overloaded with the residual fat incurred through a lifetime of ingesting high-fat junk foods coupled with an overload of emotional and physical stress.

Piecing together the last months we spent together, I see that you had symptoms - chest pains, nausea, insomnia - but easily attributable to the general sense of anxiety you felt. In fact, you had been uncharacteristically ill in November, with nausea and vomiting - again, put it down to a virus. You didn't visit the doctor, but felt unwell for a week or so.

I realise now that you covered it up, as you had been accustomed to in your married life. I think you knew that you had something seriously wrong, John and I am certain this further compounded your sense of desperation and woe: It added to the already heavy heart.

So, as this was undetected, you would not have taken measures to treat it, had you decided to stay here with us. In fact, the most ironic thing of all, is that you most probably would have collapsed during exercise and died suddenly. Given that it was advanced as well, although we can only ever make a conjectural assumption, it is clear that you were not destined for longevity.

And so, sweet man, your departure seems as tough to take as the day you left, except that now we know it really was your destiny to leave us sooner rather than later.

Big man, big heart, big love - and a huge gap without you here.

Sadness is a Place

25.04.07

I explained that deep grief sometimes is almost like a specific location, a coordinate on a map of time. When you are standing in that forest of grief, you cannot imagine that you could ever find your way to some better place. But if someone can assure you that they themselves have stood in that same place, and now moved on, sometimes this will bring you hope.
"So sadness is a place?" Giovanni asked.
"Sometimes people live there for years," I said.

From "Eat, Pray, Love: One Woman's Search for Everything Across Italy, India, and Indonesia" by Elizabeth Gilbert

Survivors' Tears

24.04.07

That is what we are defined by at the moment John, out survivors' tears.

In short, they bring us sweet relief when we think of how sad it is to have lost you. We remember you every single day. And I am beginning to realise that they will define us for a long time to come.

And when they come, we just let them fall, because to resist is futile. They serve to cleanse and to give us some small release from the pain we feel, when it is simply too much to bear, when we think of life without you.

I think often of how we are just standing on the other side of the mirror from you. The anguish and hurt we are experiencing are a simple reflection of your own experiences prior to your death: the constant questions to which we cannot find any real answers, the frustration at not being able to change the course of events, the sense of longing for what we cannot have, the feeling of total impotence and the constant nagging thoughts which never leave us. You experienced all of these.

I imagine that you are on one side of the mirror and we are on the other - the line which divides us and separates us from you is the invisible mark in space which signals your death and our life after it. It's hard for us to understand how completely tormented you must have been, and harder still to accept that you kept it from us, while all along you were contemplating the unthinkable. We retrace our last moments with you at every available opportunity, and we still cannot reconcile ourselves to the grim outcome. We ask repeatedly if there was something more we could have done or said; we wish that we could have you back - even just for an hour, so we could be with you again and impress upon you how loved you are still and how we miss you. I sometimes think that if you could witness these survivors' tears, then you would undo your decision and stay to comfort us.

Still, all this makes us survivors, for all the consolation that can ever bring in a world without you.

Milestones

20.04.07

Today is my 39th birthday. It is certainly the strangest and saddest one I have ever known. I could curse you sweet man, because you know how much I love celebrations.

Just a few more thoughts from Mitch Albom today to keep us going. These words seem very appropriate:

"People, they say, “find” love, as if it were an object hidden by a rock. But love takes many forms, and it is never the same for any man and woman. What people find then is a certain love. And Eddie found a certain love with Marguerite, a grateful love, a deep but quiet love, one that he knew, above all else was irreplaceable. Once she’d gone, he’d let the day go stale. He put his heart to sleep."

“ There was a reason to it all, “ she said.

"….you were the best person any of us knew and you died and you lost everything. And I lost everything."

“ No you didn’t. I was right here. And you loved me anyway.

Lost love is still love. It takes a different form, that’s all. You can’t see them smile, or bring them food, or tousle their hair or move them around a dance floor. Bu when those senses weaken, another heightens. Memory. Memory becomes your partner. You nurture it, you hold it, you dance with it.

Life has to end, “ she said. “ Love doesn’t.”

I am thinking of you today, John, just like I do every day.

Intersection

18.04.07

"There are no random acts....we are all connected....you can no more separate one life from another than you can the breeze from the wind."

I have been reading Mitch Albom's novel, "The Five People You Meet in Heaven".

It is quite a simple premise really: a man dies and goes to heaven, where instead of the paradise he anticipated, he is taken through five visions of his life, specific events and panorama which changed him. The five people he meets are those whose significance wasn't necessarily that he loved them, but that his relationship with them marked and changed the course of his life. They represent an intersection.

"Fairness does not govern life and death, if it did no god person would ever die young." We already know that John. Forty-three is far too young to die. But it was your choice to override all over wills and put an end to it all. I wonder how you would react if you knew just how many people came to your funeral, if you could see how many lives you touched - literally hundreds.

The protagonist of the book, Eddie, asks why so many people came to his funeral: "it is because the human spirit knows, deep down that all lives intersect. That death doesn't just take someone, it misses someone else, and in the small disance in being taken and being missed, lives are changed."

And we know this to our cost, sweet man. Our lives have been irrevocably altered. We spend our days listenting to the advice of those around us who love us and want the best for us, and in some part, who fear that we may meet the same fate. And so they tell us to move on, to accept, to not question why or how, but simply to assimilate this terrible blow and rebuild our lives as best we can. That death should not take us and that we should keep the happy memories close. That your life should not be marked by the one event that ended it but by the fullness of all that went before.

Good advice for sure. But not so easy to assume and follow. You are a part of us, you intersected with us and changed our lives. It is the hardest thing to continue on each day as though this is the most normal thing in the world. It isn't. You should still be here with us. There are a thousand things to remind us of you from the moment we wake to the moment we sleep again. Sometimes it feels, that to continue is in some way dishonest, you have departed and there is this empty space, the blinking void which serves to remind us of how much we miss you and how mcuh we would ive to have you back amongst us.

The perfect conundrum that we can never solve: to live without you as though it is perfectly normal and to return to how we were before that fateful day. Impossible.

And what if we don't want to? What if we are stuck at the intersection of where our lives met?

Happiness Known

16.04.07

And so, special man, here I am again. A short hiatus for rest and respite, but still I cannot shake these thoughts of you. Every spare minute is spent thinking of you, your predicament and how you have gone for good. No chance of your return.

Mrs Parker has been keeping me company - coincidentally, you share the same birthday. I am sure you remember my fascination with coincidences, names, numbers and their significance.

I got to thinking that I would like to post a piece from Mrs P, in remembrance of you, as she is such a shining wit, and I know you would appreciate a few lines from her.

Here is my choice:-

I Know I Have Been Happiest

I know I have been happiest at your side;
But what is done, is done, and all’s to be.
And small the good, to linger dolefully—
Gayly it lived, and gallantly it died.
I will not make you songs of hearts denied,
And you, being man, would have no tears of me,
And should I offer you fidelity,
You’d be, I think, a little terrified.

Yet this the need of woman, this her curse:
To range her little gifts, and give, and give,
Because the throb of giving’s sweet to bear.
To you, who never begged me vows or verse,
My gift shall be my absence, while I live;
But after that, my dear, I cannot swear.



In fact, the gift that is given is your absence, lovely man. A difficult one to bear for sure.

Disorder

13.04.07

Ultimately, when we consider all that has happened and your untimely death, we talk of tragedy.

The irony for all of us who knew and loved you is that you were a person who embodied positivity and projected that to others, so there is this real sense of a man who covered his sadness with love and humour - and his his own personal tragedy for so long.

It is clear, when assessing the entirety of your life, that you simply covered up all that pained and troubled you, unwilling to admit what you perceived to be failure or defeat - and you were not willing or able to cede the fantasy of a happy family life, which I now know from the conversations I had with some of your friends, is what you most hankered after.

Your life was very marked by family and what that meant to you.Your own childhood was a happy one and you continued to enjoy a very close and special relationship with your sisters and your parents- and so you assumed that by marrying, you would find the same happiness and stability, and of course have your own family.

However, you soon realised, as you confided in me many times, that your choice had been somewhat hasty. Within a year of marrying, you began to feel you had made a mistake. You broached the subject many times, but always had reassurances that things would change, but they never did. Your ideal of having children young was also thwarted, and try as you might, you could never really get a resolution: endless reasons associated with health problems, but no real desire to change them. And you kept it quiet. You bought in to this idea that marriage was about control and doing right by everybody - but you forgot yourself!

As Dorothy Parker observed it isn't the tragedies that kill us, it is the messes! And you, sweet man, believed you were responsible for this terrible mess. In reality, that wasn't the case at all. Your wife had told you, that once her mother passed on, things would be different. And in her desperate attempts to get you to return, she spoke of how she would change,do more around the house and spend less time with her family. You had bought that one before and knew that it was an empty promise - you felt that your marriage had been populated by your wife's family, who took precedence, your wife, latterly P and then you. Sadly, you saw this as entirely your responsibility, and were frustrated in your attempts to discuss this before your departure. My own take on this was that all relationships and their subsequent breakdown are the work, or the lack of work by two people, so to carry the burden of blame alone was ridiculous.

But, by your own admission, you had been the main provider,organiser, child carer and thinker in the marriage, so to leave that pained you as you felt a great responsibility. I reminded you that once a person is over 18, they are no longer a child, and therefore, in theory, there was only one person to feel responsibility for.

The tragedy here is that you saw the mess as too great to fix. And you allowed yourself to fall for every one-liner charged with emotion and blackmail. Your own fantasy had failed you, and you assumed that failure as your own. Which it wasn't. As Mrs Parker also said, love is a two way street.

And the traffic only moved in one direction for you.

Only Good Guys Feel Guilt

11.04.07

And that, dear John, is a fact.

According to Doctor Cecilia d'Felice, "it is generally good people who feel guilt.Guilt-free wrong doers, who should suffer from remorse, are too lacking in insight to feel accountable for themselves. So when you are feeling guilt, remind yourself that it is because you are basically a good person with a conscience, who doesn't want to hurt anyone else."

These words have been ringing around my head since I read then two days ago.

You often spoke to me about how the new life you had created for yourself made you feel guilty - but we now know that you were constantly reminded of this fact by the continuous barrage of texts and calls you received to that end. You had spent the previous seven years of your life working tirelessly, always at the call of others. Your weekends were spent with your son, Saturday and Sunday, caring for him, ensuring that he became properly socialised, did enough exercise and had enough stimulus to help him grow into the child you so adored and hoped would continue to thrive.

When you decided that you could not continue in your marriage, you stayed in the spare room, at the request of your then wife, who insisted that she would make the necessary changes to bring the relationship back to a better place - finally lose some of the weight, do more as a family, help you more, take more responsibility etc. You indeed, hoped this was true, but you saw that it wasn't and so you left.
Interestingly, her own perception was very different. She never told her family that she asked you to stay - instead fabricating a web of lies about you - adulterous affairs, drinking, drug-taking and much more. I never really understood why she would anyone else to be party to the breakdown of her marriage, but I now see that it was all about apportioning blame and creating guilt.

You recounted to me that throughout your marriage, you had made various attempts to leave, and invariably, you had always been pushed to the same threshold of guilt, you were leaving because she was obese, not as pretty as others,infertile, unable to do as much as others, not clever enough etc etc -it was always couched in terms of transferring the guilt to you, and while this frustrated you, it certainly worked, because in the end, you always stayed.

You told me that you had come to accept your lot and that your original plan was to stay until P was 12 or 13 and then you planned to leave.

Except, things got worse, your mother died and you began to reevaluate your life, feeling that as you guessed you wouldn't make it to old age that you should at least spend what was left of your life happy. And you made it clear that, as you once wrote in an email to me, that "the person who is right for you in your twenties, isn't necessarily right for you in your forties."

And then came the hard part. You couldn't live with the guilt. You mentioned that you were so used to being there for P and doing things that the weekends dragged and you felt almost useless. You wanted to be with him, spend time with him and help A in parenting him. But the door was literally closed and locked in your face. And every time you tried to have access to him she prevented you - first with lies in court and when there was no other option, she simply lied to you,claiming that P was sick and you couldn't see him.

Of the last 8 visits you were due since the court order was granted in December 2006, you saw him only 4 times; the last visit was very strained and P was very unhappy. You told me that you felt very down about that.

I see now that the guilt just piled up, and the fire was stoked every time you spoke to your ex-wife or engaged in another mindless exchange of unnecessary text messages. Always ending in the same result. you wouldn't force her hand as you should have done because you didn't want to hurt her or P. And that was the difference between you: you were incapable of willingly hurting another.

Since your death, we have received written declarations from her that she has a clear conscience. I dispute that, as she doesn't have one!

As I said, only good guys feel guilt sweet man.