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.

Ad Nauseam

09.04.07

Continuing to the point of nausea; so as to disgust or nauseate.

I feel sick to my stomach with all that has happened.

Firstly, the shock - almost anticipatory, of your death. I felt it momentarily when I called your sister to check whether or not she had heard from you. When I put the phone down, I knew there was something very very wrong - and I had a premonition that you were dead.

Then the big one, that is when the nausea set in. When I knew that you had died and there was no way to retrieve you. I felt sick to my stomach for weeks. I couldn't eat or sleep and we kept going to the point of exhaustion. Unable to find any respite from the grim reality that we had discovered.

The same feeling recurs - the nervousness in the pit of your stomach; not quite able to relax, almost as if you are waiting again for some dreadful news.

And the nauseating display of hypocrisy from your ex-wife - not content that you are gone and lost to all of us forever, but now determined to assuage herself of any guilt. Committed to relieving herself of any culpability. The letters, the phone calls - and the mimicry of others' actions. She has done the rounds asking for photos of you, even though she has albums full of them. It's not about the sentiment, it's about demonstrating in the most unoriginal of ways that she can do what others do. Not an original thought in her head; no conscience, no desire for closure - just the desire to keep on going, to continue the imaginary feud in her head. Unable to accept that now she has what she wanted - she was never willing for you to make a life with another, so in part she got what she wanted. Yet still, it doesn't suffice.

The sickening behaviour of the pharisee - claiming one thing and doing another; screaming for money and determined to convince anyone who will listen that she had nothing to do with your death. Denying the continued contact, the relentless harassment, the poisonous lies and the stultifying abuse. Except, dear John, that we all know about it, and it is documented. So she is wasting her time.

The sorrow that we feel is like a sickness; unable to shake it off; unable to leave it behind; slowing us down, making every small decision so huge and time consuming; making the future seem purposeless.

How sick I feel when I think of how you left us and why.

And this story will run ad nauseam.

The Invisible Space

08.04.07

There is an invisible space between me and the rest of them.

It is the space you left behind and now it forms a barrier which I can feel, but cannot see; can sense but cannot touch; can reach but cannot pass across.

The desire of those that love you is always to hold you close to them in some way - and this is never more evident than in times of great sadness or great joy. So when you died, the first thing that friends and family wanted to do was to proffer the embrace of comfort and consolation - to let us know that they supported us and could feel, by proxy, the pain and hurt we were experiencing first hand.

Then I came to feel that there was this invisible space between me and them. It is the space you filled with your warm hugs and long embraces every time we saw each other.

Locked from hip to lip. You were the one I shared that space with and now I still feel you there - in between me and the others.

The paradox is great - I want to fold myself inside the shelter of others, but I cannot because the space belongs to you. And so I still feel you here, and am glad of that. Should I want you to free the space so those others can embrace me? - it adds to the loneliness I feel without you; so it conspires to console me and constrict me in one fell swoop.

I miss your hugs sweet man, and all that they mean to me and I cannot share them with another.

The Sweet Used to Be

06.04.07

The Sweet Used to Be - great line that one from a Dolly Parton song. Anyway, she got it right. That is what I think about a lot, the sweet-used-to be which is no longer.

It is hard every single day to be without you and what is even harder is to accept that we will never see you again - never mind the countless other things we miss, from the simple to the complicated, from the funny to the sad, from the great to the good. There is no more of any of that.

Sometimes I feel like I am stuck in time and space. I cannot move forward and I cannot move backwards. I have altered my perception of the world and its limitations. I have witnessed what the loss of life can do to those you leave behind. I am walking proof that we do survive, even if we think we cannot.

I have stooped looking to the future and started surveying every moment of my past; the one thing I told you never to do!

It was hard enough for you to adapt to the new life you had created after your separation, so I suggested that you didn't dwell on the mistakes of your past - namely the very big one of your marriage to a hypocondriachal sociopath - and that you focus instead on the new relationship you would eventually establish with your son and the future you would have with him. Evidently, that was not something that filled you will joy or happiness, or maybe it was simply impossible for you to see that - because you surrendered yourself instead of continuing on.

And here I am in the same boat. I cannot find the purpose of all this. I don't understand how somebody so good can be sacrificed to the detriment of others. And I sure as hell do not understand how somebody so fatally flawed can continue to infect others with her misery. I always suspected that was her raison d’être, and it would appear that I am right. In a way, I am glad that she wrote such a heinous letter to your sisters, because now, at last, we have some documented proof of how undeniably wicked and nasty she is.

There are still the detractors though.

She called your best friend's wife on the morning of your funeral mass, not to share condolences and sympathy, but to start the charade she continues to perpetrate. She told her that she had every intention of letting your sisters see your son and couldn't understand why anyone would think she might so otherwise. Interesting strategy.

The recipient of the call, was, by your own admission to me, your ex-wife's most reviled enemy. She had recounted to you on numerous occasions with her usual odious fervour how much she detested her - too full of herself and jumped up beyond belief; always talking about her achievements and how much money she had - and your ex-wife despised her for having ideas above her station. And yet she is the one she calls! This is completely in line with her usual behaviour - she only ever liked those who were in some way inferior to her and always chose the weak and vulnerable. What better way to spread the story than by calling the person who least likes you or knows that you don't hold them in high regard? Cunning indeed.

So now this same woman, your best mate's wife, is defending her to all who will listen. So even when people begin to hear about the nasty letter, she will be defending her corner - putting it down to grief, no doubt, and will totally miss the point that your ex-wife's actions contradict the promise she iterated earlier. That's how she always used to play it with you. If she couldn't get what she wanted, she would lay the groundwork by involving members of her family, who would then verbally harass you until you ceded.

With this then, we get a sense of the relentless attrition and abuse you suffered on a daily basis - you kept it all to yourself, so we had a very limited understanding of what you had to endure..

No surprises as to why you killed yourself. Just bloody awful that you did.

Today I Hate You

04.04.07

Today, sweet John, I hate you.

This has been the hardest day of all since you died - apart perhaps from the day of your cremation ,when I honestly thought I would not make it.

Today I hate you because I have been thinking about you all day long, and how you left us, and why, and what the fuck we are supposed to do now? No apologies for the invective by the way, plenty more where that came from.

Today I hate you because everything seems just as impossible and implausible as the day that you died. Nothing seems any easier, apart from the functional day-to-day routine which keeps us going and reminds us we are still here.

Today I hate you because you didn't leave any answers to the questions we have; you didn't give us any signs of your intention, you didn't give us a chance to help you; you didn't give us a chance, full stop.

Today I hate you because you left us the fallout of the disorder and disaster that was a part of your life - your unfinished marriage business with your estranged wife.
You left us the mess of 20 years' standing that was still unresolved and we have to try and deal with it - you know how impossible that is as you, in your infinite wisdom, decided to kill yourself rather than face it any longer. Imagine, if you had at least a legal and direct connection to your son, and how ridiculously difficult she made it for you; how impossible it is for your sisters.

She has written in her two-page diatribe that she sent, a detailed indication of how she intends to cease all contact between your son and your sisters, but intends to keep parading him round your ageing and infirm relatives, asserting that they are "John's family" - obviously not very schooled in the basics of genetics as the inference here is that your sisters are not family.

She is FUCKING BARKING MAD - and you married it ,you idiot, and stayed with it for 17 years.
I hate you for that, because now we have to deal with the sinsiter and psychotic 22-stone she-devil who thinks that life is a soap-opera in which one passes on the abuse suffered at the hands of her own "loving family" (wasn't grandad loving?) to her husband and son.

I hate you because, with every day that passes, we figure out more details of your doomed and dark existence with her: - given all that you did tell me, and all that you failed to mention, it is now becoming clear that there was a level of physical violence in your marriage too.
I know that she attacked you several times after you had separated and you returned to visit P - a couple of times she tried to prevent you from physically leaving the house, blocking your path and then literally launching herself at you and hanging on to you, the other incidences saw the initial violence turn to some kind of pseudo seduction - revolting. Such was the madness of her behaviour that your son once told his classmates that "Mummy licks the floor when she argues with Daddy"; a reference to her dramatic bent for launching herself to the ground in fits of apoplectic tragedy whenever you tried to discuss your perspective on the marriage; i.e. your frequent attempts to initiate separation.

I hate you because you didn't really deal with that for so long and eventually, when you tried to unravel it all, it began to unravel you. Your own collusion with that behaviour in covering it up means that people still, despite their misgivings about her, are loath to make that judgement, because as you said to me on many occasions, you kept it hidden and never told a soul. By not acting on it, you gave the perpetrator credence - something you always said, once she had an idea in her head, she would then be convinced of its voracity, regardless of how ridiculous or far-fetched it was, and then it was the responsibility of others to discredit it o simply accept it. You always chose the latter.

I hate you for that because those that loved you cannot fathom why you wouldn't go to them and talk about it - and they did have an awareness of how controlled you were because you never relaxed if she was with you and you were constantly under pressure to call her, return to where she was or pander to the latest whim delivered telephonically.

I hate you because you have left us here without any real understanding on your part of how much you meant to us and how difficult it would be for us to come to terms with your death, and more importantly how much we would miss you.
I hate you because you cheated on me with death and I didn't see it coming. I hate you because you lied to me - you made promises about the future that you didn't intend to keep. I hate you because I know already I will never ever get over this and I am not sure how I can move forward from this without you.

I hate you because I love you very very much and you chose death over a life filled with that love.

No llores

02.04.07

No llores porque ya se terminó... sonríe, porque sucedió."

Gabriel Garcia Marquez, the Colombian writer, once said that we should not cry for the end of something, rather smile and be glad that it happened.

We can therefore apply that to your life and our friendships with you.

We should be glad that we were fortunate to have met you, known you and shared our lives with you. We should be glad that you formed part of our everyday existence and that we were blessed to have even the most fleeting of moments with you. We should be glad, that even though you did not live nearly as long as you should have, that we walked along side you for much or a part of your life. We should be glad that you made us laugh and laughed with us. We should be glad that you loved us and demonstrated that love in countless way. We should be glad that your goodness made us better and kinder people and in some strange way, we should be glad that the very same legacy is what you left for us to remember you by.

We cannot be glad, however, that so much of your life and your goodness was dedicated to those who didn't care for you and whose unkindness and misery infected you - nor should we be glad that you couldn't share all of that with us. We cannot be glad that for all the love we gave you, we still couldn't save you and help you see that it was worth staying here with us, regardless of how impossible that it seemed. We cannot be glad at how you died, nor indeed at the manner of your death.

But we can be glad that we were privileged enough to have you with us, beside us and among us however transient and ephemeral that proved to be.

Marquez also said: "La memoria del corazón elimina los malos recuerdos y magnifica los buenos, y gracias a ese artificio, logramos sobrellevar el pasado", which means, "the memory of the heart eliminates the bad memories and magnifies the good ones, and thanks to this we are able to carry on and carry our past with us."


There you have it, I will wait for the coronary magnifying glass to kick in and tell you John that we are glad; because we love you.

The Poisoned Pen

02.04.07

Today, John as you well know is your sister's birthday.

We spoke for an hour or so on the phone, and for a while we managed to talk about her day - spent with your other sister and nieces - about the fun they had and how they all managed to laugh and smile and make this a very special day for her.

And then of course we spoke of you. As we always do, because this grief is still raw, though as many predicted, now easier to slot into the day between the things that have to be done; sandwiched between our slices of normal in the day.

Amazingly, just when we think there is some respite and some movement forward, the poison begins to seep back in, even though we have all been resolute in our refusal to stoop that low and in our contention that your memory is best served with love and dignity.

Your sisters received a two-page letter from your estranged wife, returning the birthday cards and gifts they and your nieces had sent to your son for his eighth birthday. The content of the letter was erratic, argumentative, accusatory and vindictive - in which your siblings are indicted as the cause of your death for failing to care for you and of course exonerating your wife from any part she may have played in contributing to your state of mind. She refers constantly to the fact that after your separation, they never called her or enquired after her - bizarre!

In it, she outlines her intention to ensure that your siblings and nieces will never have any contact with your son, that she will continue to contact and visit the rest of your family (cousins, ageing aunts and the infirm, I presume) and that further to this, she wishes it to be made clear that P will be cared for by his "loving family". We assume this to be a reference to her own insular, inert and morbidly obese clan.

The final paragraphs of the missive allude clearly to the apportioning of blame, uphold her claims that she supported you throughout your separation, in total contradiction to the diarised and documented evidence of the obstructive tactics she employed to prevent you from seeing your son in addition to flatly denying that she made any allegations (on three separate occasions) about you in court regarding supposed drug addiction, claiming instead that your sister made them!

The final thrust of this fantasy is that, and I quote her here, her "conscience is clear".

Not only does this fly in the face of the truth of the last months of your troubled existence, but it is without doubt a cruel and spiteful act.

The obvious question it raises is why anyone, after such a huge loss and tragedy would deny their 8 year-old son his birthday cards and gifts in a bid to continue the battle she waged with you. And why or how could she even think that this is appropriate, fitting or necessary. Those of us that lost you and loved you can only think of supporting each other through this time and working through the grief we feel. We are thankful for the gestures made to us by each and every person that knew you and shares in this loss.

To add insult to injury, she plies the merry widow story to all those who will listen, peripheral to the situation, extracting sympathy and platitudes.

How anyone who has been touched by your death could feel the need to make a reference alleviating themselves of any blame or guilt is beyond me. Psychiatrists call this transference or projection, when an individual projects their own fears and feelings of guilt on to another in close proximity.

Believe me John, those of us that held you dear question ourselves every day as to whether or not we could have done more to help you or if indeed there was something we said or didn't say that could have changed things and prevented your death.

Rest assured we anticipate that more of this psychotic behaviour will follow, of that we are certain. But we are prepared and we will act. Unlike you, we have the luxury of being disassociated from her, we have no emotional ties to her and more importantly she does not have the control over any of us that she exercised over you. Neither are we so gullible that we believe the contorted fantasies of her overactive and highly predictable imagination.

What she fails to understand, is that we have much more information at our disposal than she realises and a whole lot more courage and fortitude than she gives us credit for.

We are not you. We are still here. And we will fight for you.

Not the Tremblin' Kind

01.04.07

To quote the lovely songstress Laura Cantrell, I am not the tremblin' kind, though in the past 6 weeks or so I can tell you that I have wavered more than once.

As time passes, things in some ways seem easier. But not so much that I can forget you are not here anymore.

I curse and kiss you every day - for loving me and leaving me. For not giving this mortal coil enough of a chance. For not having the strength to call out; for having the courage to override all other wills but your own and see that done.

At this point I see that the end of life is not the end of love nor conversely is the end of love the end of life. Two sides of the same coin: I still love you exactly as I did the day you died and I see that even though this mortal love has gone, as has your life with it, we are still here in some way and still surrounded by a kind of love.

I see that the greatest emptiness is not the one we feel inside, but the empty space that surrounds us without you. The vacuum that you left - sealed and un-openable. It can only ever be changed through transformation and displacement.

You may have departed, but there is a mountain for us to climb, a long and painful road to tread before we can ever talk of you without the tears surfacing and the questions nagging.

With every small amount of time that passes, we try to tremble less and stand firm in the affirmation of our love for you - and in keeping you alive in any way that we can.

Do the Math

To coin another of your favourite Americanisms and in view of my recent penchant for all things arithmetical, I thought I would post a simple statistical analysis of our union.


20 years and three months of interrupted and resumed friendship
16 months of continuous contact until the time of your death
90 complete days spent together
1,000 plus emails exchanged
660 hours of phone calls - give or take the odd minute
6,000 plus text messages - a staggering amount - thank God for free text bundles!
20 cards between us, detailing various exchanges of mutual affection and congratulation
5 books proffered as gifts between us
4 DVDs from you to me
6 DVDs from me to you
3 CDs to bolster your spirits

An infinite amount of love

and

One great man who is very sorely missed every single day.

Benchmark: the tape-measure of humanity

30.03.07

Oh for the jargonistic speak of the boardroom!

You and I often laughed at how jargonistic our world had become. I particularly remember your references to being an "awesome time locker" when you managed to sneak an email to me during your work day!

So, I thought I would talk about how you have become our benchmark.

A benchmark is that which we measure things by, something to compare to, any standard or reference by which others can be gauged or judged.

You were most certainly my benchmark, great man, in so many ways. From this point in time, I can attest, albeit on a subconscious level, you have become my invisible tape-measure of humanity; the thermometer of goodness.

In the aftermath of your death, I spent a lot of time with my twin brother and it was he who proffered this suggestion to me. I can remember talking to him about how absolutely wonderful you were and how a great part of my sadness was linked to the fact that I simply could not ever imagine knowing another person like you; that I felt cheated that you had been taken from us - just when I had come to see that it is possible to meet somebody who makes you laugh, supports you, listens to you, converses with you and can still love you despite the many flaws you may exhibit. And then you were gone.

My brother, J, then pointed out that of all the many legacies you left us, then mine should surely be that of the human benchmark. And he is right.

As with all good measures, there must be a list of descriptors to help us in any future assessments, so here goes!

Generosity - from the tiniest to the greatest of gestures. You once got up at five am on a Sunday morning to drive your housemate, whom you only knew in passing, to his work because you discovered his car had broken down and there were no buses running.

Goodness on a grand scale. Through your work especially, you worked tirelessly in the local community, sitting on countless boards and committees which worked towards improving the lot of the marginalised and deprived as well as people further up the social and community ladder. You espoused and committed yourself to the views passed on to you by your father, Billy, who taught you that every person is equal. This was a thread that ran through your life and you demonstrated it.

Capacity for Fun - always laughing, joking, recounting stories and anecdotes; always proud and impressed at other people's achievements; always keen to share good news stories about the people that you knew. Quite amazing really as you spent 17 years of your life with one of the most miserable individuals to ever have set foot on the planet - whose life was one continuous moaning drone; yet outwardly, you continued to laugh and make others laugh, especially with your dubious impersonations and fantastically energetic dance routines.

Liberalism / Impartiality - For me, this is by far the greatest quality you possess. Clearly linked to the values passed on to you by your parents, you had the greatest take on others and their opinions. You were never dismissive, always enquiring and always accepting of other's right to opine. You talked, discussed, negotiated and always helped others move towards agreement without ever letting them feel they had been coerced or indeed compromised in any way.

This was born out of your own capacity to ponder and consider every aspect of a situation before you gave any opinion. I am not sure how much other people saw this in you, but I witnessed it at close range, particularly in your dealings with your ex-wife who really put you through the wringer in every conceivable way - and still you wanted to be reasonable, give her the benefit of the doubt. Quite incredible John. Sadly, when you were married, your attempts to negotiate and compromise were met with stubbornness and intransigence, which you mistook for strength, silly man. You once told me that every aspect of your married life began to feel as though it were a boxing match to be scored on points; whatever suggestion your proffered was always met with definitive "no" regardless of its validity and worth and the ensuing days or weeks would be spent in blind negotiation, only for the end result to be the same: you always acquiesced. So that you know, John, I recognised and loved this quality in you - never ceased to amaze me at how reasoned, reasonable and open to reasoning you were.

Selflessness - as I continue with these descriptors, I see that all these qualities are linked and interlinked - the theme is similar for all of them. You were just a good egg, Johny boy, and that is why it is so hard for us to be without you. There are countless examples of this. Let's see - driving a clapped out old car for years so that your ex-wife could have the brand new car she insisted she needed, though you couldn't afford it. Working seven days a week to pay for it and caring for your new-born son during the night. Caring for your son at weekends, so your wife could stay in bed til after noon. Shopping for your wife's family, because, surprise, surprise, they were also incapacitated. Taking your wife's brother in when he left his wife and supporting him through his marital breakdown without passing judgement. Willingly taking a sperm count test when your 22-stone wife's family insisted that her supposed infertility must be down to you - not the taking of it, simply the fact that you agreed without complaint. These come to mind more than the many others because what is clear to me is that you were treated appallingly in your marriage, and yet still you were able to be kind and generous when most would have simply left long ago.

Affectionate beyond measure and without pre-conditions - this may come as a surprise to some who knew you, but it should be documented that the benchmark here is high. You showered me with love and kisses every day that I spent with you in person and when we weren't together, you articulated your feelings in the most open and direct of ways. You were never shy in discussing your levels of affection and strength of feeling which ranged from the downright bawdy to the tenderest of tender; from the banal to the most intimate and back.

This can serve us all, then not only as the benchmark of our own present and future relationships, but also as the measure of ourselves and how we fare on the John-ometer of decency.

As Mr MacGowan so eloquently put it, John, "you are the measure of my dreams".

Broken Continuum

29.03.07

The continuum is broken.

We are no longer the solid group that is dependent and interdependent, because one of us is missing. Gone astray.

The implications of the term are innumerable, but let me give you a small insight in to this.

If a continuum is any compact, connected set containing at least two elements then you and I were that: compact and complicit in our friendship and love for each other, and as you are no longer here, floating around in the universe as some carbon form as I have been led to believe, then the continuum is broken.

Moving on to another analogy, that of you and your beloved son, who now faces his life alone, fatherless, then that contention is also true - the continuum of P and you is also obsolete, broken, undone.

Furthermore, the continuum of you and your wonderful sisters now ceases to exist in some form, as one part has been vaporised, undoing the tightly compact unit that existed previously, leaving just the two remaining. The interrelationship that was has been transformed.

The permutations, dear John, are endless, you have undone, unravelled, set aside and removed the core of all these continua - not sure if that is the correct Latin plural, but I am sure you will forgive me, as although my forte has always been the linguistic bent, not the mathematical one, at times of stress we are not always at our best! You have made our perpetuity with you finite and we are defined by that too.

All of this goes to show that my grasp on maths and its workings is proving to be better than I would ever admit to.

Broken continuum = redefined lives + your departure.

Back to Bereavement

28.03.07

In my quest for some answers, I have continued to search for definitions and meaning.

So I looked up "bereavement" as we are all experiencing that phenomenon now:

be·reave
–verb (used with object),
1.to deprive and make desolate, esp. by death (usually fol. by of): Illness bereaved them of their mother.
2.to deprive ruthlessly or by force (usually fol. by of): The war bereaved them of their home.
3.Obsolete. to take away by violence.

The answer then, is apparent - at least to me.

We are now deprived of you. The desolation that ensues from that is evident - we feel desparate and desolate as a result of this deprivation.

In some way too, there is also the sense of ruthlessness, I would say inflicted upon you by the actions of others and your inability to process that level of damage and hurt which you had clearly endured for a substantial period of time.

Even with your decision to break away from that environment which so restricted you and brought you so much unhappiness, you were still unable to reconcile yourself with your decision as your son, and supposed abandonment of him was held up as a very real and living reflection of your alleged wrongdoing.

In fact, none of us felt that about you; we were relieved that you had finally managed to find some equilibrium and glad that you had found the strength to disassociate yourself from a situation that was so untenable. The relentless bullying and harassment bereaved us of you, John.

The third definition, though obsolete, is poignant indeed; you were taken away by violence - the violence you inflicted upon yourself in taking your life and undoubtedly the emotional violence and bullying which brought you to such a point of no return.

In short then, we are bereaved in every sense of the word.

Ten Per Cent

27.03.07

Ten per cent equals one tenth of anything.

So I have been thinking about C S Lewis' assertion that nine tenths of what is worth living for comes from the affection - or love I guess, that we feel or perceive.

To follow that to its logical conclusion then we can only surmise that even with all the love and affection we proffered you, and in large measure you took and assimilated, that the other ten per cent of your life, which was not filled with affection, is the part that carried the greatest weight for you, literally.

All the arguing and frustration you endured trying to gain access to your son took on a greater value than all the love and affirmations of our love for you; and they were and are many.
I cannot think of a day during the last 16 months of your life when it was not articulated or demonstrated to you by the three women you were closest to - and doubtless the many more people around you that had some notion of your hapless plight.

Our endeavours to shore you up, John, were genuine and heartfelt. And I guess what makes me saddest in my analysis of all this is that the one thing that infected you, that single tenth of negative emotion, is the same thing that pushed you right to the end.
And now we see, and you should know that the infected poisonous sentiment was not born out of love, but bitterness at your having left and closed that chapter of your life.

I understand that you felt hopeless about it, but I am still struggling with why you could leave us all behind, and more importantly how you could leave your son behind in the clutches of that same purveyor of noxious notion and emotion.

Still she calls, still she visits the old and infirm to try and assess the fallout, still she asks how much money you left your "widow".

We don't ask any of those questions John, because ultimately, we are without you now.

We are minus you one hundred per cent.

We cannot put a price on that.

28 Days

26.03.07

It is exactly 28 days since you died. One month on and nothing seems any easier than this time four weeks ago.

Having read up on the subjects of suicide, death, grief, loss and bereavement, I can tell you the following:-

• Some psychologists believe that intense grief can last for three years.
• The more accepted period for mourning is a year.
• Bereavement is the term used to identify the loss of a loved one.
• Grief is the physical and psychological response to that same loss.
• Most people who commit suicide do it on a Monday.
• Only one in six of those who kill themselves leave a note and only half of those notes refer to love and not blame.
• The highest incidence of suicide is amongst middle aged men.
• Men who take their own lives tend to choose the more aggressive forms of self death, whereas women ingest typically.
• Grief is a form of fear of the future.
• One way we often cope with sadness or fear is by focusing our attention on our anger.
• CS Lewis states that "Affection is responsible for nine-tenths of whatever solid and durable happiness there is in our lives."
• The great man also said: "It is hard to have patience with people who say "There is no death" or "Death doesn't matter." There is death. And whatever is matters. And whatever happens has consequences, and it and they are irrevocable and irreversible. You might as well say that birth doesn't matter. "

So, in all of this I can tell you dear man, that one month on, very little has changed - apart from the very obvious and irrevocable fact that you are dead and gone and we, I have to move on in some shape of form or I too will in some way start to become dead.

We can conclude from the above that the fear we feel is normal, the sense of loss will be with us for a long long time and that your choices in how you ended your life were fairly typical of somebody in that mindset; you were unusual in that you left a note to us letting us know how much you loved us and for that we should be grateful, or comforted or something. I cannot bring myself to use the word happy in this circumstance.

As of tomorrow, we have either another 11 or 35 months to go depending on how you look at it.

Til tomorrow special man.

Angel

25.03.07

As corny as this may be, I am going to do it, because this was one of the songs that you really loved - to the surprise of some, no doubt. I have been listening to it and thinking of you, and somehow it seems appropriate. Hope you have found some comfort somewhere.

Spend all your time waiting
For that second chance
For a break that would make it okay

Theres always one reason
To feel not good enough
And it's hard at the end of the day

I need some distraction
Oh beautiful release

Memory seeps from my veins
Let me be empty
And weightless and maybe
I'll find some peace tonight
In the arms of an angel

Fly away from here
From this dark cold hotel room
And the endlessness that you fear

You are pulled from the wreckage
Of your silent reverie
You're in the arms of the angel
May you find some comfort there

So tired of the straight line
And everywhere you turn
There's vultures and thieves at your back
And the storm keeps on twisting

You keep on building the lie
That you make up for all that you lack
It dont' make no difference
Escaping one last time

It's easier to believe in this sweet madness oh
This glorious sadness that brings me to my knees

In the arms of an angel
Fly away from here
From this dark cold hotel room
And the endlessness that you fear

You are pulled from the wreckage
Of your silent reverie
Youre in the arms of the angel
May you find some comfort there

Youre in the arms of the angel
May you find some comfort here

Sarah McLachlan

Legacy

25.03.07

Dear John

I have been thinking about your legacy - all that you left behind for us to remember you by.

The quantity and quality of soundbites at a time like this fluctuates a little! I am reminded constantly that I should be grateful for the happy memories I have of you and that they can never be wrested from my grasp - actually, I would rather swap them for you, have you back here with us, amongst us and sod the memories! A bit churlish I know, but that is how I feel.

I have cried for you, or should I say, the loss of you every day since you died. Thankfully, it is with less frequency, otherwise my eyes would really be just the proverbial piss-holes in the snow now. It has been noted by closer friends and family that "perhaps I should stop rubbing my eyes if I can"; in fact I am not rubbing them at all - I just cry when I think of you and I guess all that salt has a damaging effect!

So, back to your legacy - here is where a list comes in handy, so I shall let the stream of consciousness take over:

Legacy of love - you gave a lot to others in all sorts of ways. Laughter - mainly at your bad jokes and selected TV offerings; generosity in all its forms; duty and diligence; the sweetest hugs and kisses ever offered to another; a beautiful son; three heartbroken women who will take some time to heal; a zealous love of anything by Scorsese; passion for people, places and a certain football team; honesty; liberalism; tolerance; bravery; a new twist on the word "gauche"; happiness to those you met and interacted with; a true lack of prejudice; clumsiness and forgetfulness - your keys John! Innocence and a certain naivety; faith in others; loyalty; unabashed optimism; commitment; selflessness; a bright bright smile; wonderful blue eyes smack bang in the middle of an honest, open face; sweetness; a simple greatness and our memories of your dangerous but highly entertaining dance routines.

And so you see John, while you have left us all of this in memory form, wouldn't it be much nicer to have you right back here with us?

We miss you sweet man and it hurts.

The Waiting Room

24.03.07

We are all in a waiting room - trying to work out when we will be released from the feeling of nervousness and anxiety that we carry. Waiting for the nurse to call us and put us out of our misery.

Of course, we are all, in some way or another, waiting for you to return to us; just walk in through the door, keys in hand with a smile on your face, as ever. Except, in this new and updated reality, we know that cannot happen. So still we wait.

My attendance on you has been punctuated by more phone calls from a dead man's phone. I guess the guns of poison have turned on me - and they can continue, because one thing I am sure of is that I in some way am stronger than you - proof of that is my continued existence despite my fervent requests to join you shortly after your departure.
It ain't happening! The powers-that-be have decided that those you left behind are here to stay for the foreseeable future, and so we await our fate and ponder our own destiny - without you.


In the meantime, the one that you escaped continues to call and harass. I am guessing that the six o'clock threshold is one of particular inaction within the realms of her own general levels of inertia, as the calls always come around that hour; just after tea and before there is anything worth watching on TV. She must be at a loose end at that time.

The most I can do is document each call and report them to the inept police officers that released the phone back in to her possession despite my continued attempts to retrieve it!! No surprises there then. Ineptitude and the forces of moral authority going hand in hand!

All of this makes me understand that even though you and I had endless discussions about your marital breakdown, subsequent separation and imminent divorce, you were under a lot more pressure than you ever admitted to. I think you led a dichotomous existence, playing down the relentless harassment, barrage of calls and unceasing stream of text messages and led us all to believe that things were being worked out, if with a little difficulty.

Although it is of little comfort, I do have a clearer picture than most of the darker side of what was happening, as I and some of my friends were witness to the circular conversations, the obstructive manipulation and of the impasse you found yourself in.

Don't fret dear John, the positive of sitting in this metaphorical Waiting Room is that it gives us time to think and cogitate, to formulate a plan and run it by others. My own reasoning so far tells me that you were too good, too weak and too vulnerable to really make a balanced assessment of the situation. 20 years of sociopathic conditioning are hard to undo, as we witnessed with the choice you made to end the pain.

However, special man, understand that we hover now outside of that and our judgement, with each day we spend in this room, becomes more lucid, rational and less emotional and we will do right by you.

That is a promise.

Updating reality

23.03.07

Today I have been thinking about you as always - and the changes that had occurred in your life in the 16 months prior to your death.

We corresponded a silly amount really - and now I am glad of that. I counted, and including all the one line emails, there are more than a thousand that we exchanged since we resumed contact in October 2005. There is a great deal to be said about your history from then until now, that is to say the unravelling of your own life to your death, because that is when it all really started, just six months or so after your mother's death in March 2005.

Reading back over the messages we exchanged, a clear picture emerges of the highs and lows you went through, and although it makes me sad to read them, it also helps me to piece together your life and how you were trying, albeit unsuccessfully, to regain control of it - evidently, you had been on automatic pilot for some years.

It is obvious, too, that your mother's death was a real catalyst for you - in many areas of your life. Through the correspondence that we shared, it is apparent that once you lost your mother, you began to question many aspects of your life, and whether you were truly happy. With time, I hope to post that puzzle in all its pieces here on this blog, so that we can all see your own perspective on your life to date, and not be beholden to conjecture alone.

The first point then, of this puzzle-building should start with your own comment placed on the Friends Reunited website - I am guessing that you updated this at some time in 2006 given your reference to P, or maybe early 2007. It was clear, then, in your own mind John, that you had moved on to a new phase of your life.

Separated form my wife in December 2005 One child P who was 7 in March 2006. Regeneration Manager with a Housing Association in Liverpool. Anyone who remembers me and wants to get in touch please do so.

Duty bound

22.03.07

Duty is, according to Wikipedia, the following:

"Duty is a term loosely applied to any action (or course of action) which is regarded as morally incumbent, apart from personal likes and dislikes or any external compulsion. Such action must be viewed in relation to a principle, which may be abstract in the highest sense (e.g. obedience to the dictates of conscience) or based on local and personal relations. That a father and his children have mutual duties implies that there are moral laws regulating their relationship; that it is the duty of a servant to obey his master within certain limits is part of a definite contract, whereby he becomes a servant engaging to do certain things for a specified wage. Thus, it is held that it is not the duty of a servant to infringe a moral law even though his master should command it. For the nature of duty in the abstract, and the various criteria on which it has been based"

There is quite a lot to unravel in that definition, but in applying it to your life, John, it is relatively simple.

You very obviously were a person guided by your own conscience, and sense of obedience towards those in your life that you believed you had a responsibility for - in other words those that made your understand from the expression of their guiding principles (however contorted and erroneous they in themselves may have been) that you owed them something, that regardless of your own desires, needs and guiding principles, you had to serve them first. And that is exactly what you did. While you may have questioned and challenged those assertions made to you about your so-called duty, the pull was too great for you and you always put others first.

With the perfect 20-20 vision of hindsight, it is easy to recognise that in effect, this kind of emotional blackmail worked because as an inherently good person, you failed to even suspect that the motives of others may be nothing more than honest and true. And ultimately, you couldn't extricate yourself from that conditioning and train of thought, even though you were aware that perhaps you were being taken for a fool - constantly.

The question for all of us who knew you is a simple one: how could you not see it? In fact, you did, but you couldn't act upon it. Your own sense of self-worth had been so depleted by the years and years of morally corrupt bombardment and continual harassment, that in the end, you did not have the capacity to muster courage and strength to deny the blackmailer.

Of those that truly loved you John, we are still at a loss as to how, in your final note to us you could feel you had no worth and were not worthy of those that loved you. If anything has become clear to us with your departure, it is that if we talk about worth and value, you were surely the most priceless of all of us and it is we who were not worthy of you.

In the words of your favourite band, you were and are precious to us all.

And we miss you precious man.

The Pain Threshold

21.03.07

We all have one, evidently. Some are stronger, more flexible and more malleable than others.

We are all now understanding our pain threshold and where its limits lie. And of course, where yours finally ceded.

The manifestation of emotional pain is probably the hardest to understand, because try as we might, we cannot control it. We cannot give a gesture or signal for it to stop and then enjoy some respite from the hurt. It just seems to continue and continue.

I would like for this to be more controllable - a simple switch or gauge so that I could choose those moments carefully, say select a time of day for the John-pain, and not have to always share it at the most inopportune moments with a total stranger, or people that knew you and who really don't need a living reminder of their own pain and loss rambling on down the phone at them.

So there is a kind of pain etiquette being born out of all this:-

By all means have your grief, let it take hold of you, but don't let it get too much of a grip, because in polite society the two week time slot has passed and you really should pull yourself together. It is, dear John, like navigating your way around the South Circular; everything seems somehow familiar, but you're never quite sure that you are going in the right direction, and every time you stop to ask somebody for help, they give you a vague nod or indication and tell you how they got lost here last time and it is all a bit of a nightmare!

Grief is the emotional reaction to the loss of love; and like love in its first incarnations it is really a kind of lunacy, a madness. I understand the concept of those who go mad with grief, those who never recover and those who are transformed by it.

You would not recognise the girl you knew and loved so now: no fun, no spark, no witty retorts, no spontaneous happiness at the smallest of things; no unbridled excitement at the new shoes or the favourite dish for tea, no breathless anticipationof the next call or visit. Nothing. I am running on empty.

I have passed by the first stage of absolute paroxysms of grief and have reached the point of functioning incompetent. You know John, remember we talked about functional illiterates - those with minimal literacy who manage to get on in daily life but really are challenged by all the small tasks of reading and writing that we take for granted - well it's the same for me now. I function, but in an incompetent way: I can make a cup of tea, answer the phone, watch the news, read a newspaper, all without breaking down, but not in a competent way. I guess you would call it just going through the motions. Most of the rest of my time is taken up with thinking about you, engaging in one-way conversations, musing your past and future, trying to fathom how you reached and jumped into the abyss and wondering why on earth you couldn't stay with us. No answers though. Only questions.

Like I said, it is a kind of madness that takes hold.

PADCM

The Pursuit of Happiness

20.03.07

Today you would probably have been one step closer to what you wanted - more contact time with your son. You were due in court to report on the access visits to you son, or in this case the lack of them.

All you had to do was hang on and once you had presented the case notes and diaries for the continued obstruction that you were facing, there most probably would have been a movement in your favour. You had already gained some leverage last time as the judge presiding made it clear that your wife's allegations regarding your unsuitability as a trustworthy and competent parent were just that - unsubstantiated, untenable and unlikely - and that you were perfectly entitled to access to your seven year old son.

Were we in America, I would sue the bitch on your behalf - she was, to all effects and purposes, obstructing you in your pursuit of happiness and indeed that of your son. Let's be quite frank, it is not a sentiment I believe she could easily share nor indeed attest to as her very small and insular life revolved around exposing the misery in her own self and infecting others with it.

She managed to fool you too John, because you really believed that it wasn't all bad - the morbid twenty stone obesity of 20 years' standing blamed on everything else but her own lack of self will, control and exercising of free will; the delight at being officially registered as disabled because it meant that you "had saved a load of money on parking fees" (sic); the endless mithering about all the people she knew and encountered along the road and how not one of them had any redeeming features. Your friends' wives were tarts, or far too full of themselves - thought themselves too pretty or intelligent. Your own work colleagues labelled as untrustworthy or not bright enough, and your family deemed unfit to care for or be around your son.
This was always dressed up with some kind of faux religious rhetoric or old style working class value. It really does beggar belief. Her own life could be summarised easily:- no friends, no ambition, no self-esteem, but a host of reasons why it was always somebody else's fault!!

And then the flash points of illness which further restricted your life as you knew it - you missed major moments because of them - your graduation, family parties, days out, cancelled holidays - because she didn't feel like it; not well enough. You even left your mother in the last minutes of her life so that you could attend the call of Munchausens; I later discovered that you never really forgave yourself for that, and I am sure that it was a pivotal moment in all the emotional unpacking which started at that point two years ago.

And still there is more to recount about the seemingly moribund, but oh-so-still-alive-estranged-spouse:- The four day migraines - still able to get up and make food to be then consumed in the middle of the four day attack which left her bedridden and unable to do anything but eat and sleep. The Saturday and Sunday morning rest periods which meant after suxh excruciating part-time 20 hour week being rude to the public and moaning about the meanness of all around in her role as the world's most miserbale administrator, she then couldn't get up before noon - leaving you to your normal routine of caring for P from the moment he woke, or you woke him- which you loved and helped you create that amazing bond you shared; born out of many hours together from a very early age - starting with night feeds, when guess what, your incapacitated wife could not get up to feed her child!!

And yet there was no real diagnosis apart from asthma and morbid obesity - one a by-product of the other. Still no desire to change it though. You became resigned to that. Again an incredible irony as you were the world's fittest most health conscious man: gym, boxing, swimming, running and squash every week! We came to realise after you left that you had spent a lifetime eating ready meals as your eyes nearly popped out of your head when we presented you with home-made food; always asking its provenance and how it was made. And always surprised when you discovered it hadn't come out of a plastic tray or tin foil dish!

Food, apart from football, socialism, your own family and P was one of your life's major passions.

So you poor bastard, what life did you have before you escaped the clutches of a sociopathic hypochondriac - just your son, and your immediate family - and that was controlled and monitored from the armchair or the sickbed; just in case you would enjoy yourself too much or risk not being there to lavish attention and jump when beckoned at whim.

You left him behind and your fight to get to him was the focus of the last 16 months of your life; if only you had just kept going darling, your happiness was just around the corner.

The Last Taboo

19.03.07

The unspoken term. Nobody broaches it. Nobody wants to talk about it. You are dead; that is all we are really permitted to discuss in this polite society.

Religions demonise it, quite literally; the good thing is that would just make you smile even more as your own concept of religious dogma and doctrine was limited to say the least. Paradoxical to say the least as it plagued you throughout your life and shaped so much of your life - by proxy and in your relationships with third parties.

Your sense of liberalism meant that you were accepting of other people's dogmatic diatribes even though you found them to have little or no relevance. So accepting were you of other people's right to opine that you accepted major choices from them which would influence every aspect of your life - your son's own religion, his supposed guided dedication and commitment to it. Ironically, you showed yourself to be much more Christian in your acceptance of an imposed view than the so-called Roman Apostolic that hounded you into submission of every single mis-informed and religiously upheld narrow viewpoint: therein lies the paradox of that religious zeal - the desire to overrule and impose when the real crux of religion is about tolerance, acceptance and turning the other cheek. To use one of your favourite expressions: you was stiffed son!

And ultimately we come to the last taboo - the manner in which you died. It is in effect a self death that you incurred. Your choice, however misguided we may feel it is. We should, then, should we not follow your lead, adopt a liberal attitude and be accepting of what you chose as your future - or your non-future.

Seventeen years of attrition, unrelenting dogma and misery finally wore you down. In some way, the choice you made to look for the happiness which you deserved and had so eluded you was too great for you. You felt that you were not worthy of the happiness you felt - so opposed to what you had experienced for so long. So used to giving to and doing for others without complaint that when you finally did move away, make a break, the continuous hounding and voice of unreason convinced you that you had failed her and them in some way. Even then, you couldn't be mean; you still supported, reasoned, tried to do the right thing. And the harder you tried, the worse it got.

Smear campaigns, lies, documented untruths in a court of law and allegations, abusive declarations, insults, self-pity underpinned by self -loathing - all attributed to you of course. A very heavy burden to carry and your shoulders were certainly not made to carry that cross. And when that didn't work, just good old-fashioned blackmail.

In some way, we should recognise that while this treatment was unfair - and ironically persists even after your death with your estranged wife declaring herself a widow to all those who will listen and hell bent on indicating that she knew every detail of the last 16 months of your life - even though you were separated and living completely separate lives - on the point of divorce, served by her and hell bent on finally destroying you; even asking for your mother's inheritance as part of a final settlement; this is also the result of a choice you made initially and then the subsequent desire to undo that.

You had, for the record endured several attempts at separation - all to no avail. Invented pregnancies and miscarriages abounded - two to be precise; the emotional pull of a sick and dying parent and the inevitable declaration of keeping the family together. And if in doubt a quick manifestation of the basest of sexual rituals to remind you of what you might be missing when you tired to leave. Not that it would be much as you later confided - because even that had been a source of unhappiness, lack of fulfillment and emotional blackmail during those very restricted and restrictive 17 years.