I've been thinking on this lately....and decided to write this. Most of this was written in one long emotional session, hardly even worrying about typing errors or whether it made sense, so please forgive if it meanders a touch.
Sometime in the next month, a year ago today my brother David died. I don't know exactly when, as he was not discovered until sometime after his death. It hit me harder than just about anything else I have experienced, and it seemed so sad, so cruel that as we were finding each other again and getting to know each other after so many years apart, that he would be struck down.
My brother had been through a difficult life. Both of us as children shared a childhood of uncertainty, violence and fear which only changed when my mother met Richard who she married. He brought some semblance of stability and discipline to our lives. My brother was not as lucky as me, and he had been so damaged that he could not relate to the outside world in anything but - for the most part - extremities of fear and love. I had not been affected by the pain we went through as he had, and he became estranged from the family, drifting off into bad situation after bad situation. During this time, he fathered a child but the relationship with the child's mother floundered and for many years he had to fight to gain access to his son. It was still a fight he had to deal with up to his last days.
I've had my own path, often of equal instability and trouble, but I was fortunate in how things turned out. I was so lucky to meet many people whose values were of true unconditional love, and a great joy in life. It is what I still try to be to this day, after some years of feeling lost and rootless, to trust myself and be true to how I feel. Not always easy in this world, and I have no illusions that I am anything more than trying, maybe occasionally succeeding.
I didn't see David for quite some time, years went past. But as I regained contact with David more recently, we had begun to embrace our new friendship. I was cautious but decided I should follow my gut instinct, and let him into my life again. There were times we had such a great laugh, just chatting on the phone, remembering things from when we were kids, and also our mutual outlook on life, which was beginning to mesh and grow stronger as a love for each other. We shared a fascination with computers and the internet and could rabbit on for ages. It was wonderful to see him so much more relaxed and at ease with himself, better than I had ever seen him.
My brother died in early April of last year. He was discovered some weeks later but it was not possible to ascertain what the cause was. I did not know any of this at the time. I had been calling him and calling him, only to find no response and his phones switched off. I was not in the best of health at the time, so traveling to see him was not really an option and I thought he would get in touch again soon, after having been through a bad patch of some kind or other. One day in April I was on vacation at home when I found out. It was a call from someone in the coroner's office in Greenwich, on August 14th, that gave me the news, and I only got the call because she had checked his mobile phone and found my number. I was devastated, and still I find it hard to think of it even now without a lump in my throat and the threat of tears. I was lucky that Denise was with me, and she looked after me and gave me comfort as I tried to come to terms with it. I was allowed to take some compassionate leave by my manager, who when I told her on the phone said with a gasp 'That's two of them'. She had been there when I had got the news of my brother Richards death a couple of years before, as well as my mothers passing before that. Dorothy was more than a manager, and is a friend which I bless my luck in having.
The funeral was later that month, but I was unable to attend as my health was such that I couldn't travel on public transport without great pain. I let my youngest brother Steven know, as I didn't want him to get a call out of the blue with the news as I had and he attended, with our nephew who he had taken under his wing, when my other brother Richard was murdered a few years before.
I knew of my brothers internet name which was Vipaar. He had been creating his own website, all self taught with real coding, not just a touch of HTML. I was finding that sometimes, although I work in computers, he knew as much as I did, and surpassed me too, on occasions. A internet search now finds the handful of posts he had published in a few online forums and I managed to find a few photos of him as well.
In the last few weeks on facebook, I have come to make contact again with many people I knew in the past. There are photos of people, who have aged and grown. On occasion there has been the question asked 'do you remember so and so? I heard he died'. There are folks like Dino, who I did know had gone, and others like Pete the drummer, who I didn't know about.
I have coined a phrase recently 'Its been a dozen lifetimes since...' which seems very true. I have been through so many changes since I first left home. and it has almost been as if I was finding a new family, before moving on, or sometimes being on my own for long periods with almost no contact with others. I've had my time of madness, of depression and stupidity, of too much drinking or other things waiting for some oblivion to take me away for the night or a day.
I have a feeling of having come full circle, in an odd way. Perhaps its encountering old friends, or arriving at some accommodation with who I am, and how I feel about life. I just know that I am glad to be where I am now, sad at those who are no longer here, death seems a bit more real to me now. I just felt I wanted to write this down, to mark those that have passed on, particularly my brother who I miss terribly, and think of nearly every day.
That's all I have to say.
Love
Michael
