This Saddest Day

Now Empty

25/02/2015

Mybest mate died last week.

            I’ve just been to the funeral and I’msitting here in my hotel room where the wake is getting going below, and it’sshit. We knew it was coming but we didn’t know, our certainty was all talk anda talk we’ve been having for five years now. I don’t even know what eventuallykicked him off. He was overweight and every time I saw him every few monthsworse still. Three or so years ago he had a scare, blood clots in the leg andperhaps worse but he told us around another fag and drank another sixteen cansof lager, or a box of wine and whilst he didn’t laugh it off he certainlypretended it wasn’t there. Around us at least. I think it kept him company whenhe was alone, but he had no will power and had this thing where ‘no one toldhim what to do’. That makes him sound like some feeble oaf, and he wasn’t. Hewas kind, and he was gentle – and he was funny. And there were a lot of peopleat the funeral all of whom went to the pub with him, like me not reallythinking that he’d be at it like that all the time so that over the last twoyears especially he was forever elsewhere.

            He got addled some time ago.Forgetful, you’d have to say things to him a few times.

            Once a year he’d swear offeverything. He would lose weight, cut out the booze, get off the fags. And henever did.  I’m smoking now. Funnilyenough I smoked around him (which can’t have helped) and then back with myfamily I’d knock it on the head for another month or three. The good die youngand he was fifty, I think, but it wasn’t an accident, he did it to himself – Iknow that, but I feel guilty. Rationally I’ve no reason to. A few years backhe asked me to phone him each night to check he wasn’t drinking. I soon stoppedthat because firstly he was a compos drunk, I wouldn’t know half the time – andthe other half, I worried he’d just lie to me. And I didn’t need him to lie tome.

            He was fucked up at times. He hadn’thad a girlfriend since the last century, he was engaged, and they broke up, andthat hit him hard. Even when mates would set him up with someone else, evenwhen he met a girl at a party and she asked after him he would hide. Hecouldn’t see why anyone would like him like that, when clearly they did. It washis weight, he loathed himself so didn’t understand why anyone else would thinkotherwise.

            We go way back. We met in the bar ofthe Horticultural Halls near Victoria in the 80s. We hit it off right away. Wewere good friends very quickly. We shared a few flats, when I was right down onmy luck I crashed on his sofa for a year. Later and he let me and Q stay whenwe were having our first in his big old house and we were saving. He was likethat.

            I can hear the first cheers below,toasting good-old-him. But I’m not there yet, and a couple like me too. We’regetting our shit together first so we don’t shout, or rant, or spoil theoccasion.

            We were mates, we were partners,buddies. We were a double-act. He was funny, though he lost that recently. We’dfinish each other’s piss-takes, we were the naughty corner.

            He hated suicide. He hated it whenpeople made that choice. He never understood it and there we divided somewhat,talked about it sometimes after a few beers. He couldn’t understand why theyjust didn’t go to him. But he did it too, just slower and without facing it andnow he’s dead, and it was painful, and sudden and I don‘t even want to go intowho told me, and me having to post the news. Two of us did that, we had muchthe same relationship with him, and now he’s dead.

            This group of friends we were a partof isn’t the same now. It won’t be the same again. There’ll always be this bigfucking empty space. I’d like to say I half think he’s going to be down therein a minute. That I’ll get down there and he’ll be there, large as theproverbial life, pint glass raised, all in slimming black and laughing withthat fleeting look in his eyes that now I’ll always remember as looking out forthe robed feller with the big sickle.

            It’s not fucking right, and I couldn’tdo anything then, less now.

            We were meant to grow old. And he,me and the lanky one would fall down hills in bathtubs and I’d chase Nora Batty.

            Because he’s dead, the stupid fuck, andlater tonight there’ll be a half-dozen of us left, or out in the carpark, oraway, or something and I know we’ll say nothing. And we’ll never say much toeach other again because anything we say, we’d be thinking of him.

            I love him, and I miss him, and Iwant to shout at him. But I can’t.

            So that’s that.