It's hard to write a blog when you're not sure who you're talking to.
Although I know nobody reads this, it's been my little exercise in formalising thought. In the back of my mind, though, I know who I'm speaking to, and I can suspend reality long enough to pretend they're listening. I know who I'm trying to impress, to express to. There's a group of people I like and respect in my little segment of the world, and although they'll never read this, I'm still talking to them. This is who I want them to know.
In the last month one of those people died.
This is intended without melodrama. The honesty of this situation is the single most tragic thing about it. My big sister, who has cancer, is now a widow too. A year ago the happiest, most loving couple I have ever known, and who any have ever known, had none of this on their horizon. They planned to start a family, then she had the diagnosis. Quietly, her loving, brilliant husband hid his fears and drank himself to a heart attack. The day it happened, she'd left him at home for the morning. He'd got dressed that day, having agreed to commit himself to hospital care that afternoon. She was in the hospital having her chemo when they came to tell her. He'd slipped out for one last drink and had a heart attack returning, with two cheap bottles of vodka in a blue bag. Not dignified enough for a great man. Not appropriate by far for a loved man. Not right for a wonderful man. But this was how it happened.
Nobody could have made this up. How could such a beautiful, loving relationship between two of the world's most smart and incredible people have come to such an unfitting conclusion? There isn't any sense why someone's life should end, like this, abruptly at 36, or why the hundreds of people that loved him so dearly should be left wondering how the hell they didn't see it coming. Or what they could or should have done.
I woke up crying two nights before it happened, worrying about them. I didn't know why. Even if I'd done something then, I might have prevented it, but I didn't know what was coming. None of us did. When she was in hospital with a bad infection recently, he told me on the bus home that he'd never been so tired. I told him to rest, to sleep in. That was about as honest as he ever was to me, so why didn't I do more? His parents were supposed to come down, but they didn't. I just thought he was sick too.
He went into hospital the week later. I thought he was sick and sent him a card. My sister was down and she sent me a picture of a dead pigeon that was caught in some netting near his window. I told her it meant nothing.
After that, I took the guy I'm seeing to meet them at Somerset house and we saw The Birds. He was singing Bond themes (he was very musically talented) but he looked so ill. I was surprised they weren't drinking, but too stupid to figure it out, even then. I told the boy he was out of sorts, said how poorly he'd been. I really wanted him to meet my usual brother-in-law and said he wasn't normally like that. He said he seemed very tired.
Eventually, my sister told me about how she was weaning him off. He was signed off work and that hit him pretty hard. I spoke to her the Wednesday night before it happened on the phone and she was so tired and the chemo was giving her blisters. I took a day off work to spend with them. We spent some time out of the house though. She was caring for him and was exhausted. We went back there and he even mentioned the alcohol problem to me.
He showed me how to season the skillet he'd given me for Christmas, as he was the best cook and always made wonderful things for people. Every time I made a cake for them I was worried about what he would think as I so wanted to impress him. He was my top recommender for comedy too. If he said it was funny, it was worth watching or listening to. He was always one step ahead of those trends too. He sent a video around of the number 1 single weeks before he died. But then he was always up at 3am sending around funny things from the internet, which he read all of, I'm reliably informed.
Then when I went home I wanted to hug him goodbye, but he was so uncomfortable. I climbed on the sofa and did it anyway. He text my sister to tell me sorry he was grotty, but he was in pain. I didn't think he had been grotty. I thought he had been polite because he always was so gentlemanly. He had even sat up and played me a podcast when we brought lunch back, even though he had already listened to it. He really liked podcasts. My sister says he always needed input (like Johnny 5).
She is sad she won't pick him up from the station after work and he won't still have one earphone in. She'd just ordered him some new ones. We'd been to the post office the week before to send off the faulty ones and they came back the week he died. He liked information and just picked it up like a sponge. My sister used to get wound up that he would have the computer and the TV and maybe a podcast on all at the same time. He had an answer for everything. He was very good when she had the biopsy and he was talking about the prognosis to my parents. He was a good doctor. Although he had been a bit sad since some problem with filling in some forms on time meant he couldn't get his consultancy. Something very little had ruined that.
The next day he was too ill to come to the day out we'd had arranged for months. All his friends were going, my sister had arranged it. It was all paid for. I came to her house and we all went out for the day. She must have felt torn, but she was so tired and low with the chemo and caring for him, she needed the day out and it did her good. I made a picnic. She dropped me home and got back late. I feel guilty. She always puts others first, and that day she had to decide.
I know she will always regret taking that day out, because they argued when she got home and on the Monday he had the heart attack. He was just on machines for a couple of days, but she and his best friend saw the CT scans and his brain was gone and all his organs. They switched off the machines on the Wednesday and we were there when he went. His parents and sisters said goodbye first, so it was just my parents, my sister, one of his best friends and me when he went. The sun came out when they switched off the machine and I think he was looking over her then.
I felt sad for his best friend because he lost his parents and he was his family. He said he just missed his mother when I asked him how he felt. I'm glad he and my sister have each other too, because she will need her friends to get on with things. You can't only have your family, you need to get on with things.
I think I'm going over things to grieve here, because that's not something you can do with other people either, and I certainly don't want to be in floods of tears around my sister, because we need to be strong and there for her. They had 8 embryos fertilsed and she is still going to have the babies with a surrogate. The doctor said she may even be able to carry them herself in a couple of years but we will have to see, because the cancer is quite related to female hormones and we don't want it coming back. Her husband's sister is pregnant. His mother told my mother at the funeral, which upset my mother, because his mother is an alcoholic too and wouldn't come when he needed her and wanted her too and my sister is very angry about that.
This is fracas I don't need to share. It's all tangled up. I just wanted to say this stuff, because who can I say it to otherwise?
I want to come back to what I started with in this entry, that I have lost one of the people I am writing to. But then, maybe he can read it better where he is now. I don't think this entry would impress him, but i have talked about the end here, and his end was not indicative of his life.
Well, at least the funeral was, because it was filled with music and people who were queuing outside the crematorium and upstairs too. Then we all went to the pub and stayed there until 1am. I think his closest friends ended it with shots and were late for their cab, so that was very much his style.
I expect this is the case for many people. There's a format you follow for funerals and whatnot, even if you are only 36. The difference is the person, though, and I could spend twice as long telling you that he was a better, kinder, cleverer and more talented person than any memorial could do justice. He made my sister so, so happy. He loved her so, so much. He always bought her little presents and made her nice things to eat. He taught her things and looked after her and had an answer for everything, and she looked after him back. Simply, the pair of them were meant to be together for much, much longer than this.
He was something different and something special to everyone he met. There truly are a few people like that in the world. He was a hero of mine, someone I was always trying to impress, someone I would like to be like, if only I were smarter, funnier, more resourceful, kinder. He was always laughing - that was his default setting, just bubbling away with this distinctive chuckle. It made me feel confident because he was appreciating, encouraging with that chuckle. My ex got in touch and said he loved him and liked his laugh. They'd got on so well. He got on well with everyone, though. The neighbours said they could hear him chuckling through the walls. That is pretty much everyone's sentiment. Now he is gone. I have got a ukelele and tried to play it. I already broke one of the strings, but I think he'd be impressed if I could learn a tune.
I'm going to send a letter to his family now, telling them as much, telling him he was as much loved by our family. They should be so proud of him. That's the sort of stuff that should be shared, not blogged anonymously.
The thing that makes me saddest is that my sister will go on and live a happy life and see and do things she things are brilliant or funny or clever. I feel sad for him that he won't be there to share them. I hope she can share them with his children. I hope the cancer stays away for good, because it has ruined everything so far. It broke his heart when he thought he might lose her, and that is where the drinking got bad. He was so brave and strong to everyone else and yet to himself he was weak and couldn't stay away from the drink. That was how he saw himself.
We have just got to help her put things back together now.
A month ago, I might have changed all this, if only I'd known. I could have taken the burden off her shoulders and stepped in. They are two strong-willed people, but I could have done something. I'll keep thinking this. You can't do anything about regret.
Those two have been my barometer for a happy and good life. I will always look for the things I think he'd recommend. I will always aim to see my sister happy in the way he made her happy.
We'll still talk to him.
